Friday night at Abbotsbury

Only codling. 3 - 4 lbs.
We saw a few taken that were 5 or 6 when the match was fishing and some bloke we spoke to in carpark said a 16 lb fish was had that afternoon... So they are there... Just thin on the ground still... Me and Ray worked hard to catch ours - putting fresh baits out regularly etc...

Well me and Chris went back to ferrybridge saturday to have another attempt at the codling.
With the small weather window forcast we thought we'd get there early. we arrived at about 5am and set up quick to make the most of the cover of darkness. The swell was up a bit but this didnt cause us any problems to start with, on my second cast i had a slack liner, a few head shakes and a moment later, i pulled the first codlng of the day up, when i picked it up i noticed a chunk of its tail missing and it was bleeding heavily from it, my guess is that a conger had a go at it, this codling weighed in at 5lb 5oz. as it got light i had my second bite, this time it was a smaller codling of approx 2 1/2lb, by this time we started thinking this is going to be one of them sessions to remember - WRONG , we managed some doggies, whitting and poor cod in the next hour or two, then the swell became unbearable, our lines were getting burried and we were loosing lots of gear, we decided to keep our rods in and wait till it improved. 4 hours later and it was just about fishable again, i think i managed 1 more dog before we decided to call it a day. To be fair we didnt see much else caught so we didn't do too bad considering the conditions.

cheers Hugh,

Still not the big one im after, hopefully i'll get another couple of attempts to get him before christmas

Yep Hugh - Ray did well considering the conditions! wasn't to be for me... lol. In hindsight we could have fished the night - there was just about NO wind when we got there.
I definitely have to keep trying - as I've only had one so far this year!

Was good to get out again though - good company as always - and Ray's fire making skills are the stuff of legend...

Raymond wrote: Thats why my nick name is Ray Mears, bet thats the first time you've seen a fire made by rubbing sticks together in real life...