Recreational Boat Fishing Trips are organised by Robin Lane. Contact Robin on 0787 6471 901.
These trips are non-competitive and target various species when in season.
Week-End trips for 2025. Sun 24th Aug, Sat 13th Sept, Sun 5th Oct, Sat 18th Oct, Sat 6th Dec..
Mid-Week trips for 2025. Thurs 7th Aug, Wed 24th Sept, Wed 5th Nov, Tues 11th Nov, Thurs 20th Nov, Tues 16th Nov,
3rd Recreational Week End Fishing Trip. Report and photos sent in by Robin Lane.
Eight club members travelled to Weymouth on Sunday 27th July to fish on charter boat "Meerkat" skippered by Ryan Casey. The weather was dry with light winds but overcast. Ryan headed for the entrance to Portland Harbour where we managed to catch some mackerel for bait. Ryan then steamed for an hour to a wreck where we dropped anchor. While we were travelling to the wreck Mike Fox demonstrated how to prepare bait to the members. Thank you, Mike. The target fish today was big bream and we catching them around the 2-1/2 lb mark. Also, a number of nice pollack were caught, the best by Neil Mitchener 8lb 5oz. We were disturbed by a couple of small boats bass fishing, so Ryan moved to another wreck where we caught much the same. For the last 2 hours we drifted for turbot with no success but we did catch some blonde rays and Mike Fox caught a brill of 2lb. A good day's fishing with nice weather.
A tale of two bass trips report sent in by Dave Price.
This report combines two recent club recreational bass trips to show how different our fishing can be sometimes. Both trips were on Ocean Runner out of Poole, skippered by Ryan Jones. Trip !. Wednesday 25th June, winds calm, weather was cloudy with sunny intervals. Trip 2 Thursday 10th July, winds calm, weather was warm with bright sunshine all day.
Tides and tide times were reasonably similar for both trips. There were 8 members on trip 1 and 7 member on trip 2. 6 of the same members were on both trips. Both trips started with catching baitfish on the marks out from Bournemouth Pier, with lots of pouting and scad on both trips and on trip 1 some very big mackerel.
Once the bait tanks were full enough, we headed out to the banks to try live baits on Portland rigs just off the bottom. Trip !. we did about 5 drifts and only managed 1 bass between us which was caught by Dave Bathgate, who was on his first recreational trip and showed us how it was done. Trip ". we did about 4 drifts and had no fish and not even a shingle bite between us. Next on both trips, we moved over towards the Needles to try live baits under floats. Trip !. Ryan the skipper said that this was his first time this year trying the floats so he wasn't really sure how well it was going to go. The result was immediate total bass madness. On our first drift we had 5 bass with three hook ups almost straight away and then another two as the drift continued with the skipper running round madly trying to net everyone's bass for them. The next drift bought more bass, and this continued on and on for each drift with more bass landed, several takes that dropped off before they to the boat and several fish returned straight back into the water. In the end there were 14 really good bass landed, all in the 3-to-5 pound range.
Trip 2. - we went to the same spots, did the same drifts over and over again, not a single fish between us, not even a single take. So, we went off and drifted with live baits on some other areas, same result - no fish, no takes. We then went out to some banks further out and tried the live baits under Portland rigs again or lures on the bottom. Same result - no fish, no takes. We did this for quite a long time with the same result.
On both trips we anchored up for short periods whilst waiting for the tide to turn. On trip 1 the mackerel were definitely around. On trip 2 they were very few and far between. On trip 2 we did hook into a few tope with Robin Lane the only member to actually land his tope and Neil Pullman produced the fish of the day on trip 2 with a stunning red gurnard.
The lesson from the 2 trips is that you can go on the same boat with the same skipper in similar conditions to the same places with the same anglers and use the same methods ...and sometimes the fish are there and other times they're just nowhere to be found.