Fishing West Bay, Dorset, saturday

Well, there were no fish off the beach, crabs were stealing the bait as soon as it hit the bottom & there was too much silt in the water for the mackerell to come in close.

But once the wind dropped, it was a lovely evening.





I gave up on the beach after a few bottles & dropped back to the harbour, where it was a bit calmer.



As darkness came I started to get definate bites, so stayed for another half a bottle, but just couldn't catch the fish. Then the angler next to me landed a huge eel, that would explain the rattling bites.

Eel fishing was banned back in the spring so to avoid temptation ( and a £2000 fine ) I packed up & went for a rum or 2.



Time to go

 

So you didn't fancy Crab then?

You had a nice sunset anyway.:thumb:

 

I did enjoy the evening, and I would of had the crab, but the rig I was using had a long trace on it, so Mr bass would have time to take the bait. Not easy to detect a crab nibble & strike.

Heres some of the crabs I was up against.



From left to right, Velvet swimming crab, Edible crab & spider crab. These are not dead ones, just the cast off carapaces that they shed as they grow.

When they have cast their carapaces they only have a soft covering & have to hide away, they are then known as peeler crabs & make a fantastic bait, everything want to eat them & they put out a lot of scent.

They do have minimum sizes for keeping though, 65mm for velvet swimmers & 120mm for edible crabs, thats measured from side to side.

 

Your pictures reminded me of my beach casting days in Cornwall :thumb:

Bass, thornback rays, dogfish, gurnard, and the occasional pollock, Then there was the seaweed, bits of disgarded plastic and crabs

Happy days :yez:

 

Wow......that is some beautiful landscape.....thanks!~

 

Forgot to mention, we tried a different mark on the way back, no fish about there either, but you don't know unless you try.

This is the mouth of the river Axe at Seaton, devon.





The white headland is Beer head, a soft chalk that has been quarried for building stone since roman times, there are 17 square miles of underground mines.



Little Willow, looking like shes leaning on the shingle bar :D

 

More nice pics!!

 

Thought you'd like those Penny, the coast here (called the jurrassic coast) has got world heritage status. You can find loads of fossils on the beaches, usually ammonites & belemnites, the occasional dinatron gets found, not by me i;m afraid.



At the other end of the coast we've got a huge brackish lagoon called The Fleet, held in by the chesil beach, a 17 mile shingle ridge. This pic was taken from a church tower I was working on on the isle of Portland.

Some fantastic specialised plants grow on it, yellow horned poppy, sea beet, wild leeks, sea buckthorn, wild celery, sea bindweed etc.



Heres the fleet up closer. The novel Moonfleet was set here.

The anglers on the chesil in the middle have rowed across, its too far to walk down the bank with all your fishing gear.

The fleet is a bass nursery area, no fishing for them allowed.

 

Thank you......those are amazing, and what a view from the church tower....incredible!!

 

Glad you liked them Penny.

The church was scary, on the side of a steep hill already & the scaffold was open all the way to the top of the tower. Our mason had broke his ankle so I had to get up there & finish the masonry. Think he only did it to get out of going up there.

Heres a link to some other pics of the coast.

http://www.jurassiccoast.com/component/zoom/316/index.html

 

Oh wow, that does sound pretty scarey!!

I saved the jurassic coastline link, i have never heard of it, but what a neat place......we have something like that here, with lots of fossils, called the Craigleith Shale, its about 15 minutes away from me, on Georgian Bay, and the fossils are about 450 million years old...lots of trilobite fossils.

 

One of my favourite walks Ziggy, I have posted pics of the Fleet here before (but I don't think I refered to it as the Jurassic coast) as we regularly walk along it and from one end of Portland to the the Bill, a great bird watching area for me.

 

Penny, wow thats a lot older than round here, we're only about 160 million, all the trilobites except one had been wiped out by then.


This was the church that really got me.


Strongy, only just seen you are in Weymouth :dh: We were there on saturday as i'd messed up reading the tide times for the fleet, we got there expecting it to be low enough to pick some cockles & it was full up