Sea angling off Amble - 25-27 July 2002

If you want to catch a variety of fish in beautiful surroundings, then Amble in Northumberland is worth looking at.

There are several charter boats operating out of the harbour, fishing marks along the coast or a few miles out to sea for codling, mackerel, whiting, haddock, ling, coalfish and pollock to name a few.

I was staying with my old friend Walter, who had just moved back North. Not only had he escaped from Essex, he also bought himself a fishing boat, the "Charlotte". His wife is delighted with the first, as she is an Amble girl, but I don't think she is too happy about the boat. Still, it keeps him out of her way.

The Charlotte entering Amble harbour

We planned to spend all Thursday fishing and cast off at 7.10am. Bob was supposed to join us at 7am, but didn't turn up. In addition to the two of us, we had Jammy and Harry on board. The weather was warm and overcast, but turned wet for a couple of hours later in the morning. The sun did briefly come out towards the evening.

First stop was in Coquet Bay fishing for mackerel on feathers. We spotted some seabird activity near Coquet Island and drifted towards it. There was a ball of whitebait being attacked from above by gulls, puffins, guillemots, gannets and terns and mackerel from below. As the bait ball passed our stern, we all had a few mackerel and they were big. We also had a few big sand eels drifting over a wider area and Harry had a small codling too.

Coquet Bay with a salmon coble and Warkworth Castle

After a couple of hours, with the wind blowing fairly light and steady, Walter suggested we try the Craster Skeers, some 5 miles out to sea for cod. The Craster Skeers is an area of broken ground, set in 50 metres of water shoaling up to 22 metres on top of the skeers, and which usually hold good stocks of cod, pollock and ling.

He did warn me the bottom was very rough and I can confirm that. I lost my end tackle straight away. I managed 10 minutes with the second set before that also went the way of the first.

The wind here was much stronger and the sea was pretty lively and just as I was about to fish my third set of tackle, I felt a pain close to my solar plexus. I could blame it on the rolls I'd just eaten, but I'd better not; Walter's wife made them up and she can be tolerably fierce, so I'll accept Harry's suggestion and blame it on the tea. Whatever, it was, I was heaving it overboard in true landlubber tradition.

Walter being the good friend he always was, made sure it was captured for posterity on his camera. Fortunately he does not have a website. After a bag of crisps I felt fine for the rest of the trip.

Harry was in good form and picked up a nice codling of around 2.25kg (5lb), before losing his end tackle to the Craster Skeers. Walter and Jammy somehow came through unscathed and Jammy had another small codling. It was hard fishing for little result, so we steamed back towards Dunstanburgh Castle and fished just off the ‘Castle Point’ with the Farne Islands in view.

There was little activity there, but we could see a mass of terns diving in Embleton Bay. It was tempting to follow them in there, but no one was sure of the ground, so we drifted past the castle until some ignorant twonk in a charter boat spotted us hauling in a handful of mackerel and positioned himself 80 metres in front of our drift.

Terns and gulls dive-bombing a ball of whitebait

We left him to waste his and his clients' time there and steamed towards Craster. No joy there either.

At Boulmer we had a little more success. Walter would catch a mackerel and start crowing, then Harry would catch one. Next they followed each other by catching a sand eel each. It was inevitable Harry would start singing "Anything you can do, I can do better."

It was getting on for 6pm and Harry was getting tired, which was a pity as we were seeing an increase in seabird activity all over Alnmouth Bay. Naturally we steamed up and then drifted through these, catching plenty more mackerel, coalfish and sandeels. Some of these baitballs were being exploited by seals from Coquet Island, so the mackerel were absent, but others were being formed by mackerel and we had several seconds of frenzied fishing with all hooks taking a mackerel before drifting out of the shoal.

Most of the coalfish were a good size, with some up to 35.5cm (14") in length and the sandeels averaged 30.5cm (12"). We had no Joey mackerel and the best of them were up to 43cm (17").

We pulled into harbour around 8pm. The total catch was 3 codling, 27 sandeels, well over 100 coalfish and 53kg of mackerel. It wasn't bad, but most of the catch came in the last two hours. We spoke to the other boats and almost no one else had caught mackerel that day!

Friday

It was a hot, sunny day so Walter had orders to paint his porch in the morning, while I wandered down to an area of sand dunes and rocky shoreline called Pan Point. There are several lanes going out to sea from here formed by limestone pavements a good 150 metres long. These create a wealth of rock pools and gullies full of interesting creatures.

At low tide, kelp beds become exposed and anglers and others wander down to look for peeler and edible crabs, squat lobsters and occasionally lobsters. There is an abundance of limpets, pea mussels, winkles and dog whelks on the rocks and small fish in the pools. Locals often shoot their lobster pots from the shore here and frequently lose them in rough weather too.

Somehow Walter managed to talk his wife into finishing off the painting and we made a leisurely start of the fishing at 12.30pm. We picked up some rag worms from the tackle shop as we fancied fishing for dabs about 300 metres off Alnmouth Bay with its miles long sandy beach. The bottom is all sand, so there is no danger of losing gear.

I used a laser spoon baited with the worms and Walter used a baited hook with coloured beads. We just used 56.7g (2oz) sliding weights and free-lined the hooks. It did not take long before we were into them. These dabs must have a great sense of smell because we found there was no need to cast out for them; they came to us. All that is necessary is to lower your line overboard and the bites start soon after. If bites dry up, change your bait to keep the scent trail going.

I was getting many more bites than hook ups and changed my hook down to a size 8. This worked well and the hook up ratio improved. We had dabs of all sizes, but over two dozen were a good size and we kept the four biggest for the next morning's breakfast, plus a few for the freezer.

Fine looking dabs

Walter had arranged to take another one of his mates Fluff, and his daughter fishing in the late afternoon. Fluff duly called us to say he was waiting in the harbour with his 10 year old daughter Katy for a spot of mackerel fishing. We picked them up and motored out of the harbour, nearly getting brained by some prat who was too lazy to reel in his line before we passed by. His lead and hooks missed us by inches as they were jerked out by the boat.

Katy was all anticipation at first, but the mackerel were playing hard to get. It did not take long before her enthusiasm waned and she became a real pain. She might get married one day, but I would not like to take bets on it. Walter and I did hit a mackerel shoal once and I had four on at once and he had one before we passed through them never to be located again. We had a few sandeels and a handful of coalfish before calling it a day at 8pm.

We ate the cod from the day before, beautifully cooked in breadcrumbs by Walter's wife with chips.

North Sea cod are so firm, most locals like to keep them a day before eating them, whereas in the South you need to eat them as soon as possible. Even mackerel can be kept longer here.

We got well cooked ourselves in the hot sun and breezes.

Saturday

The breakfast of dabs was delicious. They have a very white flesh, not too soft and a delicate flavour.

They were so nice, Walter fancied catching some more for his freezer. The weather was a little overcast, but the sun broke through later and roasted us again.

It was decided we would initially fish for mackerel and codling close to Coquet Island, so we took the boat out again at 8.30am and drifted towards the north of the island, passing great flotillas of puffins.

A flotilla of puffins

I am told the island hosts the largest colony of puffins in the UK, but it clearly attracts a number of other avian residents, as well as a large colony of seals which can be heard mooing like cows in the morning.

A few terns were hovering and diving into the whitebait shoals and being harassed by skuas, but the mackerel were proving hard to locate again. We moved over to the south of the island and drifted towards it on the ebb tide. We had a dozen very big mackerel over the rocky ground, before I tried baiting my mackerel feathers with strips of squid. It took about half an hour, but I was finally rewarded with a nice codling of about 45.7cm (18") in length. As the tide took us to the west of the island, we were into very shallow water, so Walter switched to a light spinning rod and a Dexter wedge.

A codling off Coquet Island      Jammy in his boat

He was soon into a nice mackerel which put a good bend in his rod and fought hard all the way back. A few minutes later he had another. I also switched to spinning gear, but we failed to tempt any others.

Stevie called us then to say he had finished work and we picked him up from the harbour for another session of dab fishing. We tried for some more mackerel first, but it was a dead loss, so we made for the same spot in Alnmouth Bay as yesterday around 2pm.

They call Stevie ‘King Dab’ as he has a knack for timing the hook up. I elected to fish the same laser spoon set up as before while the others fished with coloured beads and hooks. We also changed to squid and ragworm tippet this time as the ragworm are quite expensive.

In no time we all had a couple of dabs on board. Then for some unaccountable reason, I had almost no takes while the others were reeling them in every few minutes. Walter was trying to take Stevie's crown from him and Stevie was responding with a very droll "I'm a dab hand at this." In the end Walter did take the title of ‘King Dab’, but was assured by Stevie that this would be corrected at the next Dab session.

I changed rig to the same as the others and started competing again. The takes came fast and furious except briefly at slack tide. I had the biggest fish of the day and we gave up at 6pm with over 40 good dabs plus many more undersized ones returned.

On the way back we met a lobsterman on his way back and bought six lobsters at £4.00 each and were given 4 crabs gratis. Some salad and a bottle of wine each and we had the makings of a shameless feast that night. We both managed three lobsters and a big crab each. It is total decadence and you should try it at least once.

  Crustacean feast   It was hard work