I’ve spent the last 2 weekends going back to basics and enjoying some river sport with the local flatfish. Light rods, small hooked rigs and some basic freezer baits is all it takes to get a line wet and have some fun.
I find it a bit of a novelty that at this time of year I will struggle to interest the Flounder on my doorstep in the river Wear in any bait other than crab, yet next door in the river Tyne the fish seem quite happy to take other baits – even straight up Mackerel as bait will account for its share of fish.
Week 1 – Theo’s first session
Last weekend I took my younger brother Theo on his first proper fishing trip. We hit the British Airways car park which is situated in a business park well up the river Tyne into prime Flounder and Eel territory. The area also regularly produces other species such as Codling and Whiting, along with some other novelties such as Sea Trout, Smelt and even the occasional Haddock.
Using frozen blacks tipped off with mackerel on a 1 up 1 down rig with size 1 long-shank hooks accounted for around a dozen fish in the 3 hours we were there before Theo inevitably got sick of sitting around. The biggest of these was 32cm. It tailed off over high water which is standard for this venue, although I’ve often enjoyed a flurry of activity as the tide begins to ebb again in the past, but on this occasion we decided to call it after a few hours – the distant promise of a BBQ back at home proving too tempting for us. He’s since asked to go fishing again so I suppose that’s still a success!
Week 2 – SAR Piscan Pot fundraiser
For the 2nd weekend in a row I fished the BA car park, this time a fundraiser match for seaanglingreports.co.uk – an online fishing forum. SAR has a small but relatively tight membership base and holds this competition every year in order to raise funds to keep the website going. On a personal level it was nice to finally be able to fish this event; I’ve had to miss it every year so far as I always seem to be busy. So today was a good opportunity to meet the lads, some of whom I’ve talked to for years on the forum but haven’t actually met face to face!
Again I was using blacks and mackerel as bait. I did toy with going down to the beach to try and collect some peeler crab – this is a longest fish match and eels count so there was a good chance it would be won by an eel. In the end I couldn’t be bothered though and set my stalls out for biggest flounder instead!
As it happens I did catch the biggest flounder of the day at 33cm – in the first 5 minutes!
That was the winning fish for all of about 5 minutes until James landed the first eel of the day at 46cm. Damn!
Over the course of the afternoon there were a few more eels landed, whereas I kept adding to my flounder count but with none bigger than my first.
I also managed a couple of palm sized whiting over high water before things slowed down for the last couple of hours of the match. Mike, Terry and Andy all added to their species count with a Smelt – the pungent smell of cucumber blown all the way down the walkway turning a few heads
In the end my flounder placed me in 5th within a total of 15 anglers so I was happy enough with that – I even got a handful of Reg’s leads as a souvenir! Was really great to meet up with everyone and see some of the lads I haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
Till next time!