The Tamar has been a bit slow for the latter part of May and the beginning of June. Although some nice individual fish have been caught, these have not been in great numbers. The Plymouth Sound and local rivers have seen a big run of Mackerel and Herring which has pleased the week-end float anglers, but the species hunters have ventured out to South Devon Rock marks for Rays and North Devon beaches for the Smoothound. Dont forget to dig your prawn nets out as they are starting to show now on most walls.

One Plymouth species hunter is Paul Fenn who is always fishing the Cornwall Estuaries and catching some nice fish. He has now turned his hand to fishing the same marks in his Kayak and this is his report on his latest PB Gilthead Bream.Caught from my kayak whilst fishing a Cornish estuary, tackle used was a century flattie rod, shimano bait runner loaded with 20lb braid and a simple running ledger and size 2 Korda micro barb carp hook, lugworm for bait. The fish gave a superb fight, with several powerful runs peeling plenty of braid off before finally being netted after about ten / fifteen minutes. The gilt was taken ashore to be accurately weighed and photographed before being released, it went 5lb 9oz on my Salter digital scales, and a full pound over my previous best also had several other gilts up to 3lb2oz and some small bass in the same session.
Now for a quick round up from around our local marks:

Marks looking into the Sound, Mostly Mackerel and Pollock with some nice size Ballan Wrasse.

Marks in the Rivers, Some Mackerel and Pollock, a lot of Pouting and Dogfish. The better Bass reports have come from marks further up the rivers like Laira Bridge and Halton Quay.

The Plymouth and District Shore League has finally kicked off with 20 teams competing in two leagues. Into the top flight this year comes the two promoted teams “Plymouth” and “The Tackle and Bait Shop Juniors” all eyes are on the juniors this year to see if they can maintain their fantastic form of last season. New to the League this year are two Cornish teams, the Saltash WMC and The Tackle and Bait Shop Pirates.

Now for something interesting, last year Graham Tippett from Castaways SAC organised and ran the hugely successful Breakwater competition. This year he has the same plans to run more from this venue and the first one will be on Saturday 1st August 2009. Due to health and safety rules for this venue only 100 anglers can fish this event which also includes media coverage from a national angling magazine. This year the entry cost will be £12.50 per angler which includes juniors, the prize table will consist of tackle prizes for the juniors and cash back for the seniors (1st £350 – 2nd £200 – 3rd £100 – 4th £75 – 5th £50 – 6th £25). This is a non Penn point’s competition.

Tickets for this competition are on sale from July 1st 2009, these are only available from The Tackle and Bait Shop on an individual basis. Anglers will have to give their contact details when purchasing tickets to enable the organisers to contact you if any changes are made due to weather conditions cancelling the competition. Rules for the competition will be displayed in the shop from July 1st 2009.

That is it for this month, hang carefully on those ropes, drive carefully to Clovelly and enjoy heat 2 of the P&D shore league.

Regards

Tom

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