Becky M Newsletter

Monday 22nd August, 2005

Doesn’t time fly, it seems as though it was only last week that I sat down and wrote my last set of jottings.

Well since then we have had the West Wight Charter Skippers Association’s “Light Line Competition”, which incidentally was the first competition that I have actually run from scratch, and I must admit it went nice and smoothly.

The results for the competition can be found on the WWCSA’s website. Unfortunately my crew didn’t win, but an enjoyable day was had by all.

Last Sunday I promised to take my crew out over to the back of the shingles where I thought that we would have a good chance of some Black Bream, and a good possibility of picking up a nice Bass or two. We managed to find a few Mackerel for bait, but the area where we were fishing was full of weed, so I decided to move off to another mark and try.

We made our move and anchored up and managed to find Smalleyed Ray, Gurnard, even Dogfish, then on the turn of the tide I had to get my net wet with a nice 4 lb Bass, caught on half a fillet of Mackerel (as we were nearly out of bait), then Mark Harris had the smallest of takes, and it soon became one of three memorable moments of the day for me.

I knew it was a Bass that he had on, so I grabbed the “small net”, and made my way to the back of the boat only for Mark, (memorable moment one) to say to me “you’ll need a bigger net than that Skip”. So there was a quick change of net, and then I saw the reason why, (memorable moment number two) as a superb Bass entered the net, and I lifted it aboard, a huge bar of silver, glistening in the sunlight.

I immediately grabbed my camera and the “bogga grip” scales, the fish weighed 12 lbs 2 ozs, and after taking some photographs, (now in the picture gallery) Mark decided that as a fish of that size was obviously prime breading stock, he wanted to return it alive.

The fish was put back into the water, but it just lay on the surface, and I thought it was a gonner, so as I prepared to go and net it again (memorable moment number three), the fish rolled, flicked it’s tail and was gone, much to every ones relief, and the fish was captured on camera, and not killed.

Every one onboard agreed that on their future trips that they would keep the 4 to 6 pound size fish, but release the bigger ones as the are the ones who will be producing the future generations of the species.

Congratulations Mark, it made my day as well!!!

Tight lines,

Dave

Monday 1st August, 2005

Well hear I am once again, late as usual, so what’s new!!

The new bearing that I have had put onto the shaft is brilliant, I wish now in hind sight that I had done it years ago, still it is now in place and I am chuffed to the “vicars knickers” with it.

At the moment in our area there appears to be a hell of a lot of whelk pots being put down as it seems that all of a sudden this is the new commercially viable catch that is now in demand. I am glad that the commercial lads have found a catch that the public want, as it is all too often that they end up with the sticky end of the stick when the buyers don’t want to pay a decent price for what takes a lot of hard work, and effort, to bring to the quay. Oysters are a good example that springs to mind, the lads work their bums to a point, only to find that the middle- men don’t want to pay a decent price for the catch, but sell it on at a high price.

Now I am getting up onto my high horse!!

The thing that concerns me is that with such a heavy concentration upon the one targeted species, is it is going to cause damage to the rest of the ecology.

For instance, the whelk, when it dies, or whatever, its shell is utilised by hermit crabs, these then become food for fish like Smoothounds, and Bass, but if the whelk is removed from food chain then the roll on effect is quite worrying.

I have been led to believe that once the whelks have been removed from their shells, DEFRA, (the department who is responsible for the protection of the environment) will not allow for the old shells to be returned to the sea, because it would cause pollution.

Now this same department of beaurocrats, allow big corporate conglomerates to extract umpteen thousands of tonnes of sand, gravel, and shingle from offshore banks, to be used for construction, even though they know that these areas are breeding grounds for a large variety of species, but they don’t give a toss about the damage that this causes, because it is (I believe) exported abroard to the continent, and the continentals have their own banks, but they don’t touch them, our government allows ours to be sold off instead.

Back to the whelk saga again, I have heard that it is not just in this area that these effects are happening, it seems that it is all along the south coast.

No doubt that something will be done about it, let’s hope that it will be in time, and not too late.

Anyway that’s enough moaning from me, we are now in a new month, let us hope for good weather, and that the BBC get their act together, and start giving out a proper weather forecast, instead of the crappy excuse of the one that they now dish out. (I am off again)

Tight lines,

Dave