Recreational Boat Fishing Trips are organised by Marc Duncan 07810 876281.
Recreational fishing trip Saturday 3rd January. Report sent in by Dave Price.
The club's recreational fishing trips started early this year with a trip on Saturday 3rd January from Poole aboard "Ocean Runner" skippered by Ryan Jones. It was a very cold start with the temperature at zero degrees when we boarded via a rather slippery pontoon at Poole. The temperature did pick up a few degrees as the sun came out later and stayed out for most of the day which made things a bit better. There were predicted north westerly winds of 15 mph gusting up to 25 mph which was the case but as this was an inshore trip we were pretty well sheltered by Studland and the Poole/Bournemouth coast.
According to the skipper, the water temperatures had only just started to lower and this has delayed the arrival of the whiting, so they were not around in the same numbers as they might usually be in early January. This made for quite tough fishing. We moved around 4 different marks during the day but never really found the fish in any numbers.
In total we caught several pouting, some small congers, quite a few small dogfish, a single dab, one very impressive 7lb 2oz small eyed ray caught by Robin Lane and a few whiting, although the majority of the whiting were on the smaller side with only a few keepable sized fish, the best being a 2lb 3oz fish caught by Andy Southwick.
Another cold spell may bring the whiting inshore more, so hopefully the next recreational trips might have a bit more luck if we choose to target them.