That's me back from warmer climes. A very enjoyable break from UK winter, both Portugal and Fuerteventura lived up to their expectations, with challenging but incredibly enjoyable fishing, underpinned by that thing we cannot get in the Winter in the UK. Heat... If you wish to join me in Portugal 2025, I have February 5th to 28th still available. Lure fishing for bass, spotted bass, large mouthed black bass, zander, barbel, and if you enjoy flicking the fluff, carp. Plus the best gastronomy in the world and still mostly very good value indeed. Back to the UK and other than one minor issue dismissed by my engineer yesterday, BIF1 is back available for inshore lure and fly fun.
Today was just a little poke about. I havent sailed since December the 6th, and as you can imagine, the fish all need finding again. Good intel from further east already sets this year out as a "normal" year. Bass are mostly offshore spawning on their favourite spawning places, and incredibly, they are spawning right now, during the actual closed season. Last year they appeared to spawn in May and June, which meant the big spawning aggregations made themselves suckers to commercial and charter anglers lines. This year, hopefully the spawn will all be planted and the fish scattered before the 1st April open season begins.
Although my priority today was to check out my coddie spots, a bass did come and get caught, complete with electric blue fins, which tells me it was most likely recently spawning and now returned to the edges for a feed up. Coddies did ignore me although I did think I connected with one for a while. But instead of something pretty emerging from the depths, it was something pretty horrific. Lesser Spotted Dogfish are more and more showing an interest in the lures on our patch here. It brings the question... Is ANY port truly ok in a storm...? 4 small harbour porpoise also came to welcome BIF1 back into the water.
Looking like wind messing for the next week or so. I am available for shore sessions in those winds though, so if you must have your fishy fix please do drop me a line. As always, as message to 07970 112774 gets things happening. And please do check out the availability ticker on the home page here, if you wish to book at trip before the end of March. April to December can also be booked btw. The ticker is simply about highlighting short notice availability.