In fishing, things occasionally happen unpredictably and in ways that aren't always easy to explain. I've no doubt there will be an explanation if people dig deep enough. But when it's something that goes right completely out of the blue, sometimes you just don't care what the reason is. It's nice just to be there and be part of it. Last year I was dealt three doses of that kind of good fortune. Fingers crossed that they will not turn out to have been one season wonders, because its about time we had something positive to talk about amidst the very real doom and gloom that surrounds inshore fish stocks these days.
The first concerns plaice which suddenly made a very noticeable and welcome come back up here in the North West during 2007. The picture a lot of outsiders have of the inshore waters off the Lancashire coast is a vastness of shallow lying clean ground where the tide goes out for miles. There is a hint of truth in that description, but we also have a lot of other contrasting features too which is why our fishing is so diverse. But yes, there is a lot of sand which suggests there should be a lot of flatfish. Again, yes and no. Flatties are always there and probably always will be, though few people seem to bother fishing for them. But in years gone by we did. The plaice fishing back in the 1970's was in numerical terms up there with the best in the country, though little was ever said about it at the time in the hope that the commercial boats wouldn't latch on to it until it was too late. Unfortunately, it collapsed anyway. Then last year it suddenly came back with a 'hint' of vengeance.
It would be irresponsible of me to say where these fish were actually holed up, though it was an area that is about as immune from commercial fishing as it is possible to if there is such a place. Whats more, it was very precise. One boat would be hammering them while another a short cast away would be scratching to get a bite. And that wasn't down to tactics. It was purely location. I have to say that I almost missed out on it. After all, both the species and the location were not ones that would readily spring to mind without a little whispered prompting, which is exactly what it took. In fact, I only caught the tail end of it late April. It could well have started as early as March, I can't say. But by March of this year, weather permitting, I hope to find out, because that is going to be my early season target fishing.
As a general subject, successful approaches to plaice fishing vary all around the country, and what is a good tactic or bait at one location can easily struggle somewhere else. So the way we catch them up here might or might not work well elsewhere in similar situations. I am fairly confident the approach will. I'm less sure about the bait. If our main flattie grounds were vast expanses of sand such as offshore banks (which we do have) with fish dotted all over them, then drift fishing with a long trace from a wire boom with a lead fixed directly beneath it might work well. Drifting big holding areas all around the country with a long trace to a flashing spoon with a short snood loaded with beads has regularly produced the goods for me. Baits have included worms cocktailed with sandeel strips or small belly cuts of mackerel. Ragworm has given particularly good results. All a very far cry from how we catch them up here.
In the 'old boom' days when you could go out and catch literally hundreds of flatties of which a high percentage would be plaice, despite being in an area of clean ground with banks, we would still fish for them at anchor. We tried drifting but it never came anywhere near anchoring in terms of end of the day results. At anchor, things tend to start quite slowly, usually with a few dabs pulling and tugging at the baits. Flatties in my experience are inquisitive fish that are very quickly drawn in by the feeding activity of their mates. This was evident on so many occasions as the intensity of feeding activity would build to a point where fish would quite literally by queuing up to to have a go. Thats often when the plaice would start muscling in. And while a bit of movement in the tide would certainly help, sometimes the frenzy this provoked would keep going at the same pace right through the high slack water until the bait ran out.
Our approach in those days was to arrive on the beach just before low water, knock out around 3to 400 blow lug, then put the boat in and start to fish. We tried all sorts of rigs from flowing traces through to wishbone rigs. Far and away the best was (and still is) a wire three boomed paternoster. Pats are something else which to a degree are synonymous with fishing off the Lancashire coast. Outsiders would often look down their noses at their crudity calling them Christmas Tree's. Until that was they saw the presents they would repeatedly have hanging from their branches. Then they all wanted them. There is no better way of presenting a spread of 3 baits dapping the bottom in a way that will turn flatties on. But to do this, they need to be dropped down instead of cast away from the boat which we found wasn't a problem even in shallow water, and is a necessity once you have a feeding frenzy going because you are guaranteed to hit the same spot every time.
Blow lug certainly caught its share of the fish. Problem was, it soon ran out at the rate those fish were feeding. So we started taking frozen black lug in a cool box as a back up. Not every visit would see us breaking into the frozen stuff, which if not used would end up being taken home and going back into the freezer. But frozen bait rarely stays fully frozen all day, particularly at the height of summer, which meant that some of it was going back either partly or even fully thawed. And next time out, that turned out to be the stuff the better plaice wanted. On the subject of poor quality baits, another pattern that also developed back then was that the worst quality blow lug seemed to catch the most dabs. Until we had no alternative left, we would avoid using worms that had either been damaged in digging, or had softened or blown up because of the heat. Only when we were desperate did we start using those, and the dabs would be fighting amongst themselves to get at it. Mackerel belly strip is another good bait for dabs. It will also take flounders and the odd plaice.
So when the plaice suddenly started to show again last spring, we had a wealth of flattie bashing experience to fall back on which proved invaluable. Granted, it was a different location with different terrain. This time the fish were holed up in pockets of very shallow water with quite a bit of rock and weed mixed amongst it, which we very quickly became aware of through tackle losses when the boat started to swing on the anchor rope in the slackening tide. Another good reason then not to be casting. This really was drop down territory. And as it was in a location where blow lug was not available, the winters left over frozen black lug supplies were very quickly put to effective use in what was in many ways an action replay of how things used to be, with mainly dabs along with a few plaice starting things off, quickly developing into plaice virtually every drop, sometimes as loners or two together, and occasionally three at a time.
I mention the multiple hook ups for no other reason than to illustrate both the intensity of the fishing, and the catching power of the paternoster. But really, to get any sort of angling pleasure out of what are at the end of the day are always going to be small fish in real terms, they need to be fished for light and caught one at a time. For make no mistake about it, plaice are extremely capable fighters on a light fixed spool outfit. You can usually tell when a plaice has taken the bait rather than a dab or the occasional flounder. Dabs in particular tend to hit surface white side up, and it you are lobbing baits over the stern, give up some way out from the boat. Plaice rarely if ever do this. They hit surface coloured side up which is great, because that sudden show of red spots, particularly on one of the bigger fish, is certain to get the adrenalin pumping. Plaice also stay deep right up to the boat making what are for their size quite powerful dives to get away. Unfortunately, they also have a tendency to swallow hooks which with such a small mouth can give disgorging problems, so strike early and use fine wire hooks. They can also be greedy fish, often taking two and sometimes even all three baits on a wire paternoster rig.
Later on last year when we were thinking more about cod and whiting, we found a couple of spots where vast numbers of good quality dabs showed how much of a come back they had also been making in the area. Years ago we would start our inshore winter fishing along the Fylde in October, though some cod and whiting would have been on the inshore scene from September. Not so any more. Even as late as November we were struggling to get cod and whiting, and not particularly because of lack of numbers, though that is a factor as well. Just the sheer volume of dogs getting onto the baits before anything else much had a chance, which I guess is a pattern a lot of people will identify with. But it never used to be like that. Dogs were a rarity off the Lancashire coast 30 years ago. Over exploitation of marketable species opening up new larders for what is a very hardy fish that nobody seems to want must in part have led to the current nationwide dogfish explosion.
To get around this to some degree, we decided to motor offshore to the heavy ground around the shell wharf area along the Fylde side of the Lune Deep. You get a lot more tide out there which may be one reason why there are fewer dogs. The cod also seem to like this area, particularly on the smaller tides when it can be fairly dead inshore even when the dogs have gone. As it was early season, I decided to put one cod rig out, and tackle the other rod up with a wire pat and small hooks. You can always pick up the odd few flats over small sandy patches amongst the boulders. But this particular day, they were there in big numbers. As ever, things started slowly. But by the time we were leaving, it was a full house with the dabs virtually every drop. Again small pieces of frozen black lug with tiny slivers of mackerel belly did the trick. Yet the bigger cod baits on their flowing traces were hardly bothered by them at all which again proves the value of the pat in tapping into a much revived resource we didn't realize was back in such force.
One other fish we've noticed (and heard about on the jungle telegraph) which again somewhat out of the blue seems to be making something of a sudden come back is another flatfish, well of sorts, the thornback ray. We used to have them in their hundreds right across Morecambe Bay, and along the edge of the Mersey Channel on the Southport side. Sandwiched between these two along the Fylde, they were always a lot thinner on the ground, with one bit of a holding area in the big shallow depression right in front of the Norbreck where the dinghies would pick up a few while after tope or early season cod. I fished a competition aboard Fleetwood based Happy Hooker some years ago, when following a move part way through the day, we boated 97 rays and would have caught more had we not had to pack up to make the weigh in. Then, like a lot of things, and like rays at a lot of other venues around the country, they were gone.
One particular way in which rays differ from fish egg laying like dabs and plaice when making a come back is that their return should be a more of gradual affair due to the small number of well developed offspring skates and rays produce. So it was a bit of a nice surprise when they suddenly started popping up fairly regularly at a number of locations, and not just here in the North West. I know BFM is about boat fishing, but I have to mention the twenty or so thornbacks taken at Rossall last backend in a shore competition. You simply don't catch thornbacks from the shore in these parts, yet there they were. Quite a few put in a show off Southport and along the edge of the Ribble where once they were plentiful, then missing for quite a number of years. The inner Mersey too is full of the things with some really good sized ones amongst them. And lets not forget the outer banks all along the edge of the wall there you can virtually catch them to order if you fish mackerel or squid. There are a lot of small fish still amongst them which suggests some good breeding years not too far back in time, so perhaps their comeback might have been more anticipated.
I have a friend who fishes out of South West Scotland who has been telling people for years that the rays, including a good head of spotted rays, that could once be relied upon had long since gone to the commercial longliners. So much so that when he updated his electronics recently, he only swapped over what he thought would be useful sets of fishing coordinates. Then one day early in the summer when bad weather ruled the offshore fishing out, he decided to tuck in close to get the day in, and to his surprise found that both the thornbacks and the spotties were back. So much so that he has set about trying to retrieve the numbers from his old GPS, which like the Lancashire flatties is great news for fishing generally, and even better news for him if his old navigator can be tracked down and hasn't been wiped clean.
