Prior to this visit, the last time I fished this end of the Menai Strait from White Cottage was with a launch by Ron Edwards who sadly died a few weeks after. It was a nice little set up he had going there with boat storage and tractor launching from his own small private slip, and I remember thinking when I heard the news just how much he was going to be missed and pretty much left things at that. Then rumours began circulating that the business had been taken over by a new team and had also begun to expand. So on the basis of that, we decided to head back down that way to take a closer look and hopefully repeat some of the excellent catches enjoyed over previous years. And yes, the rumours were true. As we rounded the final bend of the narrow coast road leading up to White Cottage, the whole surrounding area was a hot bed of activity. Speed boats, RIB's and fishing boats were all making ready on the small car park opposite the house, while others were being taken down the stony beach and put in. The boat storage area to the side and around the back of the cottage looked like it was full to capacity, and the tractors looked to be new, or at least a whole lot newer than 'old faithful' used by Ron. Not only that, when I made myself known to Chris Seddon who now runs the show, he showed me the new facilities which include customer toilets, a small tackle shop that at the time was still something of a work in progress, and a bait shed containing sea water tubs fed by oxygen bubblers full of live sandeels for those who do not have nets to get their own in the sandy coves either side of the slip. All very impressive, as was the level of support interest being shown by the number of boats waiting outside. The big question had to be, would the quality of the fishing still be impressive too.
When I asked both Chris and other regular anglers waiting to launch about the prospects and how things had been going of late, nobody really seemed to have anything concrete to say. The reason for the vagueness, as anyone who tried to get afloat regularly last summer and autumn will know only too well, was the consistently appalling weather due to a southward drift of the jet stream delivering a seemingly endless series of low pressures to us that should have been destined for someone else. For as sheltered as the fishing in the Menai area can be, to get the best of it in terms of variety and size of fish, you need to be venturing outside into Caernarfon Bay, which not only has the weather to contend with, but also shallow banks across the entrance which can contrive to make matters even worse. So we were pretty well as much in the dark as everyone else, perhaps with the exception of Chris Seddon who obviously gets feed back from a wider source as he brings the boats back in. The tope fishing was something of an unknown quantity as nobody had really had the chance to venture off beyond the banks much, and had been attracted more by what was on offer closer to base which centred more around the bass and black bream potential either just inside, or just outside the entrance to The Strait, with those that had been able to venture further off reporting bass on the banks, pollack around the heavier ground, and plenty of rays and huss just to the seaward side of the banks. Mixed in amongst that lot had been the usual gurnards, dabs and the like. But not too many mackerel, which made us feel better about having put a few frozen ones plus a box of squid into our fall back cool box to supplement the live sandeels if required.
Getting There
Caernarfon is a pretty major place on the North Wales scene, so getting there should be straight forward enough. The problem is that White Cottage it isn't actually in Caernarfon. It lies a few miles out of town along a narrow country lane which hugs the mainland side of The Strait. My advice would be to take a look at a map of Caernarfon on Google, a site link for which is included in the information pack at the close. Meanwhile, you need to be heading through Caernarfon on the A487 in the direction of Porthmadoc which is clearly marked on the road surface just out of town where the road lanes split to take different directions. This then crosses the river just upstream of the castle and the harbour. Immediately you cross the water make a right turn into a narrow road called Lon Coed Helen in the direction of The Royal Town of Caernarfon Golf Club which you will ultimately drive around the edge of. At a small T-junction turn right where the road then becomes Ffordd Yr Helen, changing to Ffordd Yr Aber when it reaches the waters edge opposite the harbour and castle, then simply follow it around past the golf club until eventually on the left hand side you will see White Cottage with its dozens of parked up boats and small private launching slip. The actual address is 'Ty Catch', Aberforeshore Road, Llanfaglan, Caernarfon, and for those navigating by in-car GPS, the post code is LL54 5RA. The parking area is on the coastal embankment on the right just a few yards beyond the cottage with the slipway directly in front of the house and the cost of a launch, retrieve and parking is £15. White Cottage is even marked on the admiralty chart.
Geography
Local geography is not something I would normally become too involved with for a small boating venue. But due to the specific nature of this area, plus what lies beneath the sea at high tide, and will emerge from it as the tide drops right smack bang en route to pretty much everywhere outside the entrance/exit to The Strait, perhaps a few words here won't go amiss. For ease of explanation, let's take it that you are launching at low tide, which is what most do wherever possible, if only to tuck into one of the sandy bays either side of White Cottage, pop the anchor over to stop the boat drifting away, then get out with a fine mess net looking for sandeels. There is a video demonstration of catching sandeels here using a home made net on the website www.fishingfilmsandfacts.co.uk. The actual exit from The Strait is between Fort Belan on the mainland side, and Abermenai Point on the Anglesey side. There is accessible water there at all times. Even so, best to keep the speed down at low water and have an eye on the echo sounder. It's when you exit The Strait and get beyond the mussel bank which is marked by a red buoy with MB painted on it that you need a greater understanding of the local geography. And in that respect you should really by carrying an admiralty chart (No. 1970) for Caernarfon Bay. Several drying banks of varying sizes straddle the entrance, the most notable and supposedly best fished of which being South Bank. Sand carried through The Strait dropping out of suspension as the water flow outside suddenly decreases is responsible, the result being a potential hazard to shipping, some excellent bass and turbot holding marks, and a nightmare scenario if you are caught out beyond the banks by a freshening south westerly breeze as I know from personal experience. That particular day the whole area was so alive with white water that there was no chance of finding the route back through. Instead we had to motor across the bay, which means heading further offshore and something that is hard to bring yourself to do in deteriorating conditions to the Llandwyn Island side, then creep our way in around the edge of the banks back to sheltered water on the other side.
Mark No. 1
Back with the current visit, Chris put us in, and having already got live sandeel onboard there was no need to stop off, so we motored on slowly down in the direction of the MB buoy wondering how best to kick off the day. The sea was like a sheet of glass under a clear blue sky as by that time the sun had burned off any remaining autumn mist. Within a few hundred yards of the launch we could see the backs and dorsal fins of small bass well out of the water as several of them worked a small shoal of panicking sandeels. One of the drawbacks I find with Caernarfon, particularly if you only go down for the odd day here and there, is that the potential variety of the fishing causes more problems than it solves. It can very easily put you in a situation where through wealth of choice and wanting to try a bit of everything, you end up up doing no one thing justice. On top of this it was a neap tide weekend which meant a limited amount of effective fishing time, so we needed to be decisive. But despite this warning, and having done the same thing so many times in the past, yet again we looked in danger of repeating it yet again. Seeing several other small boats anchored up in a small area surrounding the MB buoy catching black bream didn't exactly help. In fact it stopped us well and truly in our tracks en route for a few drifts over the banks. So we put the anchor down just to the Anglesey side of the buoy and flicked out a couple of live sandeel baits on six foot flowing traces, then quickly set about tying up a couple of dropper rigs with small hooks for the bream, a job which was immediately interrupted by a small bass for Charlie and a bull huss for me. But unfortunately in the end no bream. The other boats all around us seemed to loose them just as we arrived. Time then to be reverting back to our original plan of nipping around the rocks and reefs off Llandwyn Island to spin live sandeel on the longer traces close in for pollack until there was enough water over the top of South Bank to see what might be feeding there.
Mark No. 2
A narrow reefy ridge runs out between the tip of Llandwyn Island and a southerly cardinal buoy just offshore which holds some pollack and occasionally bass. Protruding rocks and the small island of Ynys yr Adar are yet more known pollack and occasional bass areas. But you do need to be very close in to the rocks. The water here is deep though I would be reluctant to get in too close in anything other than ideal conditions which was exactly what we had. Unfortunately for us, the pollack were small, so it was more a case of biding our time until we could get onto the banks. We had thought of going out and anchoring beyond them. But with tope, rays and huss all species that can be caught on our home patch, we decided to wait for South Bank to fully cover. That said, and contrary to form, all the turbot I personally have caught over the years in this area were actually taken at anchor beyond the banks while fishing for other things, though I do know that they are also taken drifting the banks. And while I have given a set of GPS coordinates for the top of South Bank, there is no specific mark. More a case of repeated drifts up and over the bank using the GPS numbers as a point of reference, then motoring off uptide of that point to the base before starting your drift. But while this was our plan, in the end, mindful of trying to spread ourselves too thinly and of the fact that the run of the tide would on this particular day be quite short lived, we decided to sail right over it and beyond towards an area we had heard of but had never tried before close to the shore off Dinas Dinlle on the far mainland side of the bay.
Mark No. 3
Off Dinas there is a small patch of heavy broken ground which in our opinion had to hold a good head of black bream. But that was all we had to go on. Looking at the chart didn't help much either. All we could find was a couple of features shown as Caer Arianrhod. So guessing this might be the spot, we decided to see if it was shown on the GPS map, and there it was. Charlie quickly positioned the cross hairs over it and we were away. Finding a scattering of lobster pot markers in the area also gave us a confidence boost. Heavy ground showing on the sounder boosted us a little more. We could see a boat in the distance which we thought might be working the pots, so decided to put our anchor down on the Caernarfon end of the reef and give that a go fishing one rod with a big bait and heavy mono, and a lighter rod rigged up with small hooks on droppers above the lead hopefully for the bream, both of which scored results right from the onset. But not the results we either expected or wanted. All four rods with both set ups continually came up with a seemingly never ending succession of bull huss. But not your regular bull huss. Every single one was small and almost black, suggesting perhaps a nursery area ,and pretty much confirming the heavy nature of the ground. Time then for a move. A glance inshore revealed that the boat we had spotted earlier was still there and possibly fishing, so we headed over in its direction and discovered it was a Warrior 165 named Hale Bop that was familiar to us from our home patch, and they were catching black bream. Not only that, but they weren't getting pestered quite so much by the huss either as they were getting the bream on slider float rigs fishing just off the bottom trotting them down in the tide. Unfortunately for us, by this late stage the tide was starting to die away, so we opted for a different ploy of putting down a rubby dubby bag full of old pulped mackerel marinated in pilchard oil on a short weighted rope over the stern, and placing our baits directly in front of it in the hope that bream working their way back to the source would find our baits and have a go, which is exactly what happened.
By this stage, the un-seasonally hot sunny weather had heated up the shoreline to the extent that quite a brisk onshore sea breeze had developed as the warm air from the land was beginning to rise, pulling in the cooler air from over the sea to replace it. As a result, quite a chop had started to cut up. So as soon as the tide had completely gone, we decided to cut and run back into The Strait to finish off with a few drifts from the MB buoy back to the lip of the banks to compensate for not having had time to drift the banks themselves earlier in the day for the bass. The problem was that in our haste to grab that last hour with a bait in the water we forgot about the rubby dubby bag, which as soon as we started motoring up on the anchor buoy promptly wrapped itself tightly around the prop. It's at times like these that the value of having an auxiliary engine makes the investment seem very worthwhile. Not that it was called into service. Having climbed over into the rear splash well, and with Charlie holding on tight to the tail of my jacket, I just managed to reach over far enough to cut the rope free. But only just, and I got soaked in the process as the boat dipped and rolled in the chop sending waves up over the transom and me, though not into the boat. It just goes to show how easy it is to do something stupid at sea running the risk of knock on problems as a result. And it all happens so quickly with what had been a problem free good fishing session quickly disintegrating into a worrying farce. But that as they say is fishing. And so long as we are prepared and equipped to deal with all manner of problems, more good fishing trips like this one will follow in the future.
Accommodation – as a major tourist area, accommodation on all sorts of levels including hotels, B&B, caravans, chalets and camping is available. Have a word with Chris Seddon at White Cottage explaining your needs and see what he can suggest.
Launch Site – the slip at White Cottage is private and its use comes only with a full tractor launch and retrieve at £15 per boat. Parking and boat storage is also available. Chris even winches the boat back on for you which can't be bad. Tel. 07917 859345. To find the Google map location on the Internet go to Google Maps
Shop – the nearest full tackle shop is probably Coopers at Pool Street in Caernarfon, though White Cottage is also developing its own small tackle shop which will be specifically geared up to the needs of the area.
Mark No.1 – MB Buoy: 5307278N/0420948W – the whole area of the mussel bank can fish well. This particular mark is just slightly to the Anglesey side of it where we caught our fish.
Mark No.2 – South Bank: 5306658N/0422064W – this is the actual top of the bank. Position the boat uptide of this point at the start of the incline and drift back over the bank making slightly different drifts each pass.
Mark No.3 – Reef Dinas Dinlle: 5303850N/0421332W – the part of the reef where both ourselves and the Hale Bop lads caught the black bream.
Tides - Tidal Predictions for CAERNARFON
Safety – Holyhead Coastguard. Close proximity to helicopters used in sea rescues from RAF Valley on Anglesey is also an extra reassurance.
Weather – Holyhead Coastguard or by going online at Met Office
RATINGS
Location and travel ****
Facilities – *****
Tackle Shop ***
Location Safety ****
Fish Quality ****
