Boat Anglers Find Codling Off The Fylde Coast

Things are very quiet for the shore anglers on the Lancashire coast with only the smaller fish including the obliging whiting providing a measure of sport. On the other hand the boats, when they can get out, are fishing extremely well for the cod.

Fleetwood and District Angling Club fished their latest match around the Point bays at Rossall.

The weather was overcast, and with very little wind felt quite pleasant. Was not expecting it to fish to well due to having north and easterly winds over the last few days, but there were quite a few fish.

Fishing was almost exclusively whiting with one in size cod and a sprinkling of little codlets. There was some good whiting caught, Dave Brown having one of 40cm and John Hughes landing one of 43cm. Dave Norton had the only in size codling at 46cm. 23 anglers fished the competition and all had fish.

Results

1^st Dave Norton 1 cod 1 rockling 4 whiting – 93 points

2^nd = Bob Egan 8 whiting – 75 points

2^nd = Neil Stonely 9 whiting – 75 points

4^th Tony Costello 6 whiting 1 cod 67 – points

5^th Dave Wilson 6 whiting – 64 points

6^th Craig Thompson 6 whiting 1 cod – 58 points

7^th Dave Brown 5 whiting – 55 points

8^th Hughie Porter 5 whiting 1 cod – 45 points

9^th John Hodgson 4 whiting 1 cod – 41 points

10th Tim Wrigley 4 whiting – 35 points.

Next Sunday’s match is on the Gynn Wall.

Wyre Boat Angling Club member Kevin Fletcher with a haul of codling

Leyland and District Angling were out on the Gynn Wall at Blackpool.

Results

1^st Fred Howard with 12 whiting – 324cm

2^nd Paul Pilkington – 253cm

3^rd Norman Pilkington – 242cm

4^th Brian Nixon – 235cm

5^th Alan Smith – 234cm

The biggest whiting was Peter Pilkington’s fish of 35cm. 12 members fished and all caught. Thanks also to Alan Slater and Martin Darwin for the excellent hotdog supper prior to the match.

Blackpool Boat Angling Club member Jonathan Hall headed out on the 20^th 4am after a night of little sleep and a belly full of Chinese food from the night before. He set off after grabbing his butties, the largest flask known to man and a head full of anticipation for the cod fishing session ahead.

Jonathan met Neil Whittle at the boat house to get the boats ready for the session ahead. With crew Jan Louis Van Deventer he managed to get launched in the dark just after 6am into perfect flat calm seas and headed North to fish a mark off Rossall School. They found Neil Whittle anchored up and already fishing.

The chosen method for the day was a running ledger using a three foot trace of of clear 25lb Amnesia with Mustad 3/0 bass hooks set up as a Pennell rig. This set up seemed to be much more successful on the day than the 5/0 set up Jan was using.

Jonathan Hall with some of his catch

This led to Jan changing his rig to smaller hooks and was then in to the fish. Various bait presentations were used; black and squid raps, black worm tipped with squid and black lugworm on it own. They also tried some old frozen crab and razorfish. The best on the day for the skipper was frozen double black lugworm.

The pair were in to fish right from the start with codling, whiting and a pouting for the species hunt with only a few doggies. They had around 20 codling and kept nine for the table. All the fish were of a similar stamp, around 3 to 4lb fish which are the perfect size to take for tea.

The session finished around 2pm and headed they back to the beach in perfect conditions. A brilliant day out.