Boat anglers in the Pembroke area of south west Wales probably don’t reflect much on the fortunes of their local geography; then again, perhaps they do. Either way, they most certainly should. If they had to suffer vast open exposed pieces of coast like my home patch along the Lancashire coast, or even Cardigan Bay just around the corner from them, they would most certainly be counting their blessings. Guaranteed 365 days a year boat access to fishing is not to be sniffed at. That is what they have on offer at Milford Haven. Regardless of the quality or otherwise of the guaranteed fishing, and I speak here from regularly frustrated experience, the opportunity simply to get afloat whenever you want is something most boat anglers can only dream about.
Fishing inside The Haven seasonally includes bass, conger, bull huss, thornback rays, cod and whiting for both the dinghies and the charter boats when anglers at other ports in the area, and the rest of the country, may well be shore bound. With the exception of the conger, these fish are taken mainly over clean ground along the shelves either side of the main shipping channel. Fortunately for me, my day with Bob Chapman and Alan Thompson aboard their boat Overdale landed smack in the middle of a spell of un-seasonally warm and settled back end weather allowing us to go straight to 'plan A', which was a series of reefs including the Hats and Barrels stretching seaward from the island of Grassholme to The Smalls lighthouse some 26 miles from Overdale’s base at Neyland marina inside Milford Haven.
Despite their obvious expertise at both boat handling and finding fish, amazingly, Bob and Alan had just only just completed their first full year of taking out angling parties. That however does not mean they have only been putting to sea for that amount of time. Far from it in fact. Bobs original involvement with the sea was as a diving instructor taking out dive parties, and as such is very experienced in locating and positioning over small precise targets well offshore, which he also fished as a hobby. He has an equally good understanding of boats, particularly Overdale, which, as owner of a structural engineering business, he and Alan built with from scratch to a Bruce Roberts offshore coastal worker design.
Work on Overdale was completed around prior to starting with the charters. The original plan was to operate the boat out of Milford. But the prospects of waiting for the lochs to open and going through the system in and out of the marina put paid to that plan. Neyland marina may well be an extra 20 minutes sailing time inside The Haven, but has access 24 hours a day. The Haven itself is only fished when the need arises, and then only when the anglers on board request it. There are other sheltered spots outside such as around the islands of Skokholm and Skomer to tuck in behind when conditions dictate. There are also banks in the area holding bass, turbot and rays. But the main thrust of the fishing is with lures out beyond Grassholme over the miles of offshore reefs within a couple of hours of port.
Conditions on our day were perfect as we left The Haven, rounding St. Ann’s Head, then heading over to the inshore islands. The sea remained flat all the way out to the Hats & Barrels reefs. Having enjoyed a bit of a 'heavy' evening the night before socialising with Bob, Alan and their wives, our leisurely mid morning start unfortunately brought us over the reef just as the tide died away for slack water. Considering the fact that parts of these reefs climb so high that they are exposed at low water from adjacent depths of 60 meters and more, there was surprisingly little in the way of surface wave pattern disruption to give away the position of the shallower heavy ground marks.
The initial plan was make a couple of exploratory drifts using feathers, muppets and hokkai’s to see how the boat and fish would react to what bit of breeze and tide we had left. Neither reacted much, though in fairness to the fishing, we had great difficulty getting through the mackerel, which must have been about in their suicidal millions. My approach to situations such as this is to put on a bigger lead to get down quicker, and switch from multiple small lures to a single jellyworm of sufficient size hopefully to put the mackerel off. This approach both worked and failed at the same time. The mackerel certainly gave it the cold shoulder, but so too did everything else. Yet the smaller lures when they managed to get through the mackerel shoals picked up some quite nice pollack, coalfish and the odd small cod.
Despite several moves to different parts of the reef, this remained the situation for the first couple of hours. When you could get the feathers down to the better fish they would gab them. Bob, Alan and Dawn were picking up some very nice fish, sometimes two at a time. But as productive as jigging can undoubtedly be, I have to admit that I am not its greatest fan. I much prefer a lighter rod, smaller lead, and single lure on a long trace running through a tubi boom. Individual fish always fight better than two or three together. But it’s the fish that make the rules, and for the first couple of hours it was feathers or nothing. The problem was that while individual lures such as redgills and jellyworms fished on a slow retrieve will take pollack well clear of the bottom, short dropper rigs seem to work best when the lead is bouncing bottom, which over a reef with un-even peaks and troughs inevitably leads to tackle losses, and my stock pile of feathers and hokkai's was soon running perilously low.
Fortunately, by the time I was down to my last couple of rigs, the wave patterns over the reef suddenly changed signalling the start of the new tide. Perhaps now a swimming lure worked well clear of the snags on a flying collar rig might start to do the business. Only one way to find out. I rigged up a wine coloured multi-tail and flicked it away from the boat to avoid tangling the main line on the drop. As soon as the light lead touched bottom, I slowly started cranking the reel. The handle probably hadn’t rotated more than a couple of times before the rod went solid. That feeling you get when a hook or lead snags bottom washed over me then faded just as quickly as it had arrived when the rod tip started thumping as a spooked fish suddenly started looking for cover, and it felt good. After a brief tussle, a nice cod pushing double figures broke surface and was quickly shown the inside of a fish box.
It was as if the proverbial switch had been thrown. After the cod it was quite literally a pollack every drop. I don’t often fish for pollack these days and had forgotten how much of a handful they can be on moderately light tackle. Judging by the timing of the takes, these fish must have been holed up very close to the bottom, and they were hungry. As soon as the reel handle was cranked you could feel fish mouthing the lure. Resisting the temptation to strike is very difficult, but is essential when fishing lures on a flying collar rig. Keep the handle turning and let the fish hang itself, which they do with such power and speed as they grab and kick for bottom as to hook themselves in the process. A dozen or so fish later, I decided to try a large red split tail jellyworm, but the pollack weren’t having any of that. As keen as they were to feed and to feed, not just any colour or size of lure was acceptable to them.
As sporting fish go, pollack certainly take some beating. We had the odd coalfish too, which size for size are equally good fun, but these tended to peak here at around 6 pounds whereas the pollack in these parts can run up into the twenties. Cod well into double figures, ling topping 30 pounds, wrasse, pouting and an odd bream make up the rest of the reef potential. That is unless you include the sharks that are fairly frequently spotted both by anglers and divers on and around these reefs. Porbeagles and threshers have both been seen here on a number of occasions. Plans were laid to have a go at fishing for them in previous seasons, but always bad weather put paid to any attempt. Shark fishing will no doubt be back on the agenda again for the coming season should anyone be interested in giving it a go.
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