The last few weeks have been the worst spell of winter weather for a long time, unfortunately this had a dramatic affect on the fish, a combination of gale force east wind and sudden drop in water temperature pushed the fish a long way offshore.
The good news is that the Thornbacks are moving back into the Estuary in big numbers. The weekend was calm and this allowed us to try offshore again where we had excellent sport with non stop action on the roker, there were some good females up to 15lb showing.
These female fish are carrying eggs and should be returned alive, there are plenty of smaller males to take if you want one for the pot.
The fish that we were catching at the weekend have already moved off that ground and are pushing inshore as we speak, hopefully by the Easter weekend they should be more widespread and closer inshore.
There are still cod inshore but they are up in the water eating herrings, there is still time for some of them to return to the seabed once the herring shoals move off, we just do not know yet what their pattern will be.
There are a few dogfish showing but not as many as we would expect although I’m sure they are on their way !.
We ventured further offshore on Sunday to try for some Spurdog but no sign of them yet, possibly the water is still too cold for them, there were plenty of big roker showing which is encouraging.
Inshore was dire for a few weeks but the skate are moving back inshore and things should be much better come this weekend.
Prospects as ever depend on weather, fish movements, water temperature and so on but it is going the right way and the seas will be warming up all the time, there still might be some codling before they move off and it won’t be long before we see the first Bass.