Scott Andries, Matt Jeffery and his son Joshua enjoyed a mullet fishing session in the estuary where they all enjoyed success with baited spinners. Joshua landed his first of the species a specimen of 4lb 6oz that stands a good chance of winning a Junior trophy with Combe Martin SAC. Matt Jeffery’s best mullet of the session scaled 4lb 5oz and Scott Andreis’s mullet 3lb 4oz.
Chris Allin enjoyed an awesome days fishing in Combe Martin Bay catching mackerel, cuckoo wrasse, scad, codling to 3lb and a stunning 8lb pollock.
Ollie Passmore has been enjoying some superb estuary sport with thin lipped mullet banking these two spcimens of 4lb 5oz and 4lb 8oz in the past few days.
Ollie Passmore enjoyed a ray fishing session to remember beaching seven small eyed ray to 8lb 11oz and three spotted ray to 2lb 9oz.
(Above) Ollie Passmore tempted this fine specimen thin lipped grey mullet weighing 4lb 8oz on a baited spinner in the river Taw Estuary.
Ollie Passmore with a stunning wrasse caught on a recent session. I suspect wrasse fishing will slow down for a few days after the rough and windy weekend. I suspect we will see a few big bass, smoothound and huss in the coloured water, don’t be afraid to use a big bait oozing plenty of scent!
Dennis Toleman secured top spot in Triple Hook Clubs Shaun Foster Cup beaching a fine small eyed ray scaling 9lb 4oz in runner up spot was Kevin Hancock with a small eyed ray of 4lb 6oz.
Ladies day aboard Reel Deal (Dan Hawkins) off ilfracombe resulted in fabulous Blue sharks up to 90lb. Stacey Bayldon landed the first blue shark of the day, followed by Jade Jemmett, Michelle Bayldon and Sharon Feakes landing the biggest at 90lb. A truly amazing experience, life long dream achieved! A massive thank you to Daniel Hawkins and Archie Porter aboard Reel Deal for an amazing day, to Dave Stenson for embracing our madness and our helping hand and huge thank you to Phil Lewis for the best birthday present ever!
Many Thanks to Stacey for sending this report to North Devon Angling News
(Above) Michelle Bayldon
Archie Porter boated a fine tope scaling 46lbs whilst fishing on Reel Deal off Ilfracombe it was tempted on ammo squid and mackerel on light gear.
Congratulations to Steve Dawe who has been raising awareness for the stroke association via his challenge to catch 52 species.
Wayne has kindly been supporting my challenge since January 1st and posting links to my blog and although the species I have been catching having been spread across the west country a fair few have fallen from the North Devon and Somerset coastline. For anyone that hasn’t seen what I have been up to I have a website that covers information on my challenge, the charity I am supporting, a gallery and all my blogs from the year
https://stevedawe189.wixsite.com/fishtytwochallenge
This Monday I managed to land the 52nd species which in theory should be the end of the challenge, I will however keep trying for a few more while simultaneously raising awareness for the Stroke Association and stroke victims. The last month was pretty busy and with the summer in full swing I had planned to target a number of the summer species from boat and shore. I also had a couple of annual festivals to fish, the 2 day British Conger Club festival and The 3 day Shark Club of Great Britain festival. The conger festival based from Plymouth went pretty well and our team managed to win the team event, and having come runners up for the previous 2 years it was great to finally win. I also managed to catch a Goldsinny Wrasse to add to the species list so a good event all round.
Then it was the shark festival and with tricky angling conditions I managed for the first time to blank during this event, but every cloud has a silver lining and with some persistence I managed to sneak out a Scad and Grey Gurnard. No good whatsoever to me during this festival but a huge bonus for the challenge, so it was a bit of a result. Another of the species that had managed to elude me more recently was the Blenny and a trip with the LRF gear finally paid off when I managed to connect with several, a bit like buses.
With the target now at 49 I knew that species 50 had to be the Blue shark and with a couple of trips booked out of Looe surely I could exercise the ghosts of the shark festival and get one. Sure enough I managed a shark a trip, not big girls but very welcome none the less.
With number 50 done and dusted I set my eyes on a Tope and my first trip booked from Minehead targeting tope from Lundy was cancelled due to lack of interest, that was a real set back. My second Tope trip was from Lyme Regis and with no others booked the pressure was on the skipper. Fortunately, lady luck was on my side and despite only two tope being landed I managed two of them, not huge but this challenge isn’t about size just species. That was number 51 and I could almost see the end in sight, I switched tactics to try for my first ever Undulate Ray and once again Neptune took pity on me and delivered several of these stunning rays to give me species 52.
Cameron Atkinson enjoyed tope success with his first ever tope from the shore weighing 15lb 7oz and secondly a tope from the boat weighing 37lb 8oz.
