THE MERSEY ESTUARY HAS HAD SEAWARDCHANNELS WALLS FROM THE TIMES WHEN IT WAS BRITAINS PREMIER TRADING PORT. WALLS ATTRACT CRABS, AND CRABS ATTRACT BASS. THE MERSEY ESTUARY IS FULL OF BOTH
Over the winter months, I would describe myself as a Mersey dinghy angling regular. It's a great venue to fish when the tides are too small for Fylde coast codding, and a venue un-likely to get blown off in the prevailing south westerly winds we 'enjoy' up here in the north west. But I never fish it at all over the summer months. Two reasons spring to mind. The first is that I love tope fishing which can be excellent along the south Lancashire coast. Another is that most of the summer fishing from the Mersey takes place out in the outer reaches of the estuary, so much of the shelter so useful when its too rough to fish anywhere else is lost. However, a recent visit to Warrior boats was to change all of that. When Scottish international boat angler Mick Duff called in at the Warrior factory to pick up his new 175, he left a message with Paul and Phil for me to give him a ring, which led to an invite for a guided tour of what I had been missing over the past few summers.
Before looking at the actual fishing itself, I'd like to say a few words about the bait. Don't bother bringing any bait Mick said, we'll have more than enough on the boat to go around. Both Mick and his crewman John Greenfield had a cool box apiece which between them contained around 200 peeler crabs in A1 condition. By any standards, thats an impressive stash of bait. But if you don't have the right stuff in these parts, you are not going to catch fish consistently, and as an international match angler wanting to keep your name on the selection sheet, for Mick, consistency is what it's all about. A case of having to do whatever it takes to keep the bait fridges filled with prime offerings, the most important of which is crab. So much so that the pair are producing fresh peelers on almost industrial conveyor belt level.
I thinks its fair to say that crab is one of those baits that is shrouded to some extent in mystique. Certainly amongst new-comers yo boat fishing who ofyen see it as either too difficult or troublesome to obtain, and a nightmare to keep so that it peaks on the day it is required. In reality, crab is not that difficult to gather, keep and use. Providing you are organised, live close to the shore, and are willing to put in the time and effort required, it is quite literally just another bait. For some species and in some situations, you really don't have much choice, the outer Mersey being one of them. You simply have to have it. I'm sure there will be many similar situations dotted around the country where catch rates would benefit from the use of quality peeler crab. So a quick look at the collecting, keeping and using techniques employed by Mick and John could have beneficial spin offs for a lot of boat anglers.
To get a good understanding of what is required and why, a little bit of crab biology probably wouldn't go amiss. The armoured outer casing of all crabs is rigid and fixed in size. To grow bigger, the crab inside must first grow a new soft leathery skin. It then takes on water to crack the seams of the old body armour, then literally climbs out by hinging the top shell up after it splits open at the back. Once out, it then takes on more water to expand its new soft wrinkley skin which can make it up to one third bigger, after which the soft shell hardens into a new outer shell. A crab that is ready to climb out of the old shell is a peeler crab. Soft crabs have already discarded their old shell and are going through the hardening process which can take several days, which explains why some softies are not as soft and attractive to fish as others. It depends where in the hardening process they are at when you find them.
Shedding its old shell, or 'peeling', leaves a crab vulnerable to attack. Fish that would otherwise not give a fully hardened crab a second look suddenly want to eat them. The range of fish species with a taste for crab is incredible. Even seemingly strict fish predators such as tope can find it difficult to resist a big edible peeler. So, crabs that are about to peel, along with others going through the hardening process need to find a safe refuge in which to lie low until its safe to venture out again, which is exactly what Mick and John provide for them. Old car tyres with holes cut in them staked out on the beach offer a virtual guarantee of attracting lots of crabs at this critical time in their life cycle. But as rewarding as it can be, crab trapping requires a lot of time going around checking and emptying them regularly. And even then, the hard work is really only just beginning.
An old hand at the game can recognise a crab that is about to go at a glance by the colour of its under body and reddening of the tips of the legs. For the rest of us, breaking the end off one of the legs is the only way to be sure if the top shell is still fully in tact. If a length of white sinue shows, the it isn't a peeler and it should go back. If on the other hand a soft withered brown leg shows when the outer armour is stripped away, that crab is about to peel. It could be days away or it could be imminent. All go into a cool box with an ice pack for the journey home. There they are placed twenty at a time in plastic trays with several layers of newspaper soaked in sea water covering them. Kept like this they can last for 3 to 4 weeks in the fridge if the newspaper is kept wet. When it's fishing time, they should be given an inch or so of fresh sea water to 'drink' in order that they can swell themselves to crack the seams of their upper shell from the rest along the join lines. But be careful not to drown them by leaving them in water without oxygen. Do this a day or two before the trip, then on the morning of the trip, pick out those that have 'popped', putting rest back in the wet news paper trays for another try the following weekend.
Johns main jobs on the boat are to drop and haul the anchor, and to keep a good half dozen or so baited traces ready to be swapped for the old ones every time a rig is brought back into the boat. Crab baits soon become washed out, so its false economy sending used baits back out again. Quick release clips are used to connect the trace to the main line swivel. When the new bait has been sent out, the old one is stripped from the hook which is immediately re-baited keeping the conveyor belt rolling. New baits are ready to go out at all times. Interestingly, both Mick and John use different techniques for putting their baits on the hook. Obviously, in both cases the crab needs to be fully peeled. Johns approach is to cut them in half with a pair of scissors, and put the two halves (or four halves if a bigger bait is required) onto the hook by inserting the point as many times as he can get it through. A good lashing of elasticated thread then holds the bait in place. Mick on the other hand only cuts the crab part way through, preferring to thread the hook through three or four times and doesn't bother with the elastic thread.
Because the baits are being sent out with an under arm lob instead of a hard cast, you can get away without the elasticated thread. The important thing is to have plenty of hook tip showing. Masking it with the bait can lead to missed fish. But despite their differences in setting up the baits, one thing both have in common is the use of a second small circle hook threaded loosely onto the trace mono. When this is brought down next to the bait, the trace mono is wrapped around its shank a couple of times to prevent it moving. The hook is them nicked in to the top of the bait. From a purely presentational perspective, a second hook isn't necessary. But from a fish catching point of view it can be crucial. Before we even started, John predicted that the majority of the fish caught would come in on the smaller second hook, and he was right. On the day, I would put its catch rate at around 90%. Thats how effective it was.
The big attraction of the outer estuary is the training wall which contains the main navigable channel on both sides for around 8 miles out to sea. This can show at low tide, so care must be taken not to collide with it. But the flood tide should soon put that particular threat to bed. Though its called the wall, it isn't actually a wall in a builders sense of the word. More a pile of rocks put in place to keep encrouchment from the surrounding sand banks at bay. It varies in width depending on where you are. Where it is narrow, the boat was anchored on a short rope on the uptide side using the rope to bring the boat back within lobbing range. Elsewhere it was wide enough to anchor the boat on top of. In both cases, the ground is particularly tackle hungry. Just the kind of place where you are likely to find lots of prawn, small fishes, crabs, and of course hungry predators looking to make a killing.
To get the best out of the wall, baits must be cast right into the thick of things, so expect to loose a bit of terminal gear. For this reason it pays to keep things as simple as possible. A single bait, a quick release link, and a disposable lead. When we fished the really tackle hungry stuff, the leads were made from half inch strips of sheet lead of the type used by builders. A strip anything from six to nine inches long, or longer if you need more weight, was passed through a loop in a weaker length of mono than the main line, then then bent over to hold it in place. The other end was then coiled up like a swiss role. No need for boil ups or moulds. Nothing could be more simple nor effective. And if you need more weight, try rolling up two strips together, though the very fact that the ground is so heavy and snaggy should be enough to make sure the terminal gear stays put.
It was bass in particular that we were after. Mick and John had had a lot of good fish pushing double figures in the weeks prior to me joining them. And it was a bass that was the first fish fish to see the inside of the net. But bass aren't the only fish out there with a love of crab. There are plenty of good starry smoothhounds too right there in the thick of it. On light tackle smoothies give an excellent account of themselves. I remember Essex angler Bob Cox pondering the reason why a crab hunting fish such as the smoothhound needs such a turn of pace and power. His conclusion was that they had to be Gods gift to sea anglers. You can't argue with that one. But it hasn't always been like this in the Mersey estuary. I remember doing a smoothhound feature for Boat Fishing Monthly a few seasons earlier aboard Tony Parry's Rhyl based boat Jensen. For some reason they had just started turning up there. Now for the past couple of years they have been invading the Mersey too. Yet a little further north off Blackpool. we've had them for around the past decade or so.
If its smoothhounds you really want, you should try fishing the surrounding banks. To prove the point, Mick anchored 'Highlander' up over one on the Wirral side where they immediately obliged. Thornbacks were also onto the crab baits quite quickly, though its a shame to waste crab on them when squid will do equally well. There are some pretty sizable flounder over these banks too, plus a few dogs, though all things considered, the dogs were not that much of a nuisance. There's a new wind farm that seems to have shot up since our last winter foray to New Brighton, and it was out towards the end of that where we finished the session off and took our best fish. This is the area where you can actually get on top of the boulders which not only makes for a better target to hit, but gives a bigger holding area for the fish. This was also smoothhound city. The bass unfortunately were playing a little harder to get, though on a different day, who knows. What this did help illustrate was the sheer extent of the potential holding area along both sides of the channel, and how much the estuary has come in in recent times thanks to the hard hitting environmental legislation, the benefits of which Merseyside anglers should continue to reap for many years to come.
SEE VIDEO VAULT – Mersey Bass
