Dean and I decided we would go out on the boat fishing Sunday so arrangements for food and bait were made . Down the boat for a later start at 8:15. First stop was at Cobbs Quay fuel berth to fill Madness up after our Alderney foray then out into the harbour. We had a conversation about what we should do, breaming was on the agenda but seeing how flat the sea was along with the combination of small tides we plumped for mid channel wrecks. On our previous trip over to Alderney we lost all our pink look alike eels which had seemed to be the colour preferred by the fish, a quick call into Poole Sea Angling got us something similar then off we went this side of mid channel to see what we could find.
The trip out saw a flattish sea which gave us a comfortable cruise speed at 20+ knots.
Got to our first wreck which had fished on previous occasions but unfortunately not today with just a couple of hard won fish appearing. After giving it a good length of time the decision was made to move to the next closest wreck which was about 1.5 miles further west from the first mark. This small wreck fished slightly better but was not blistering sport with just the odd cod. Off we go again another 5 miles west to a reasonable sized wreck. This move was well justified with Pollock to 15lb and a splattering of small 5-8lb cod.
Coming home was interesting with visibility down to 50 metres at one point, the fog was really quite thick and a total change from the morning.
At one point Dean said look up I can see the sun to which I replied unfortunately we were not going that way and still couldn’t see more than 70/80 metres ahead, really strange. Close inshore (within a mile of land) the fog cleared to hazy sunshine.
The point of making an issue of the fog is that if we did not have radar we would have been travelling at about 6 or 7 knots and bricking ourselves but with all the navigational aids on Madness including radar we were able to not only keep up a reasonable cruising speed of about 15 knots comfortably but we were able to see boats on the screens that were around us . Had we not had radar we would have came straight over the wrecks off Swanage where several boats had divers down. We could see these on radar 6 miles ahead so could take a slightly different course giving them a wide berth and not spoiling there (or our) day.
I know that most of the club boats that go offshore are very experienced skippers and have all the kit and more. If less experienced members want to take their boats well offshore please take the time to talk to those that have been there and done that. Your learning curve will be greatly reduced
