August 2023

The reports have been non-stop throughout August, with anglers from all disciplines making the most of the pleasent weather spells to target their favourite species. Enjoy this this months round up of all the action in the blog below.

Fly Fishing

The river fishing has been magnificent in recent weeks across the country, especially for our fly anglers. Amongst plenty of stunning fish, this report from Fishing in Wales stands out the most:

"Welsh rivers international Kyle Cheshire is no stranger to specimen wild trout on his local South Wales rivers, but this one is next level! 6lb 6oz of wild river brown trout, weighed in the net and safely released

The superb capture is an example of the incredible trout fishing that we have on Welsh rivers. Season ends on 30th September, so get out there and enjoy!"

Ceri Thomas' most recent adventure saw him visit some of Northern Frances' most beautiful chalk streams. As these streams are ‘wild’ waters it means that the fishing is far more challenging than it is on English chalk streams. Ceri Said "Each 'Fario' is hard earned, with absolutely no margin for error. To Catch just one is a real achievement. I now know why the French make such good anglers!'

With this being said, Ceri's angling ability shone through as he got to grips with the difficult French waters. Armed with a Greys Tail #3/4 on a Greys Lance 8' #4, Ceri landed some fantastic fish throughout his trip, with the highlight being a stunning 50cm fish which tipped the scales at 3lb 2oz (pictured in the bottom two photos). 

The weekend of the 19th & 20th saw the Welsh river trials take place on the River Ebbw. Over two long days of wading it was Kyle Cheshire who came out on top, crowned as the Welsh National Rivers champion for a second year running.

Carp & Coarse fishing

With the schools breaking up for the Summer holidays, it's great to see lot's of kids have been out fishing. Around South Wales in particular, we are blessed with an abundance of freshwater venues whether they are Syndicate or day ticket waters. 

Dan Morgan is a member of one of South Wales best Syndicate waters called the Birch and during the summer Dan enjoys taking his son for overnight sessions. During the last overnighter,  they had some awsome action throughout, landing some stunning fish in the early hours of the morning.

As always, the Wharf Fishery has been producing some stunning fish. Pictured below, Callum Woodward (Left) had some fruitful sessions over the last month or so, catching up to 4 fish in a session! His go to approach at the moment is a size 4 hook on a spinner rig with a yellow wafter for the hook bait, fished over a bed of Mainline essential cell. 

After seeing some fish surfacing, Callum James (Right) set up for the night near the Graffiti boards. A monster crab and halibut wafter topped with an ESP Corn, fished over a bed of corn and hemp proved to be a deadly approach with this stunning Linear falling for Callums trap. His rig of choice was a Slip D made up of Korda tackle components.

Since retiring at the start of August, our former dispatch manager Ryan has made us all envious with the amount of fishing he has been spending on the bank! After collecting his new campervan, Ryan enjoyed a fews days of exploring the banks of the River Severn on the hunt for some of it's double figure barbel.

The river was in perfect condition which resulted in some fantastic action on the feeder rods. Ryan fished on a day ticket water just up from Shrewsbury, using a small selection of 8mm pre drilled pellets like the Dynamite Robin Red's and Sonubaits Pellet O's in the Spicy Sausage flavour.

The Perch fishing has been good throughout August, with anglers opting for a ledger approach instead of lures in an attempt to pick out the bigger fish. Fishing at distance has been doing the trick, where the bigger perch seem to be hugging the bottom instead of patrolling the shallows.

For Rhian and Dave, this tactic worked a treat. Using a circle hook on a running ledger rig baited with our dendrobaena worms, the duo finally worked their way through the small perch and ended up with some real specimens.

6 year old Hunter also got in on the action and caught some beautiful fish. With some guidance from Mum and Dad, Hunter landed plenty of small perch, a 2lb 6oz and a new personal best which weighed in at 3lb 5oz! Certainly a family session to remember. 

Sea Fishing

The smooth hounds are still around in big numbers, with rough ground marks along the Bristol Channel providing plenty of action for those who are prepared to lose a few leads.

Whilst fishing at West Aberthaw, renowned Rod Builder Dai Llewellyn bumped into one of his child hood fishing partners and regular Garry Evans customer Dan Paskell. In between the story's, the fishing was all action with some lovely hounds being landed and some great snaps to show for it!

The Pembrokeshire Coastline has become well known for it's Tope fishing from the shore in recent years, with one of it's marks even producing the shore caught UK record back in June 2022. This summer the Tope reports have been very consistent, with an increasing number of anglers targeting these toothy predators.

 One of our regular customers Olly Hughes has put lots of effort into learning the marks over the last 2 or 3 years and this summer he has been landing some nice tope. The best approach is to use pulley pennel rigs with a variety of fish baits such as mackerel and bluey, just like Olly's in the pictures below.

With a few days off work and ideal conditions, Olly made the trip West for a session on one of his favourite marks. He managed to nail the target species eventually, in and amongst countless dogfish, spider crabs and some nice Bull Huss.

The Pembrokeshire coast has so much more to offer than just Tope, Bullhuss & conger eels, there is a variety of smaller species which are exciting to catch on lighter gear as well. Recently, regular customer of ours Rob Daws met up with well known Guide Gareth Griffiths (GG) to target a range of species at one of his favourite marks. Whilst waiting for a run on the big rods, 'GG' set Rob up with some light gear to target some smaller species, which kept the guys busy throughout the session. This stunning Gurnard pictured below was certainly the highlight of the session.

Most of Gareths guiding takes place along his local South Wales Coastline, but during the summer he spends lots of time around West Wales as well. Make sure to get in touch with Gareth if you are looking to get yourself booked on to one of his guided sessions. 

Cardiff Barrage is certainly one of South Wales' most popular sea fishing venues with easy access, close parking and a variety of fish available to catch.

Dogfish, thornback rays and conger eels can be caught at the Barrage, but it's the bass fishing that attratcs the majority of anglers. After picking up some fresh rag worm and frozen squid from our store, Kyle headed down to the barrage to see if he could find some silver bars for himself. After weathering the storm over night, his persistance paid off with two cracking bass both averaging 5lb.

The Beaches on the Welsh side of the channel have also been producing some stunning bars of silver. Sakuma Tackle consultant Steve Tucker has been enjoying some good sport on the bass, heres what he had to say about the photo below (Left):

 “I had a couple of good sessions last week. First session i decided to fish live baits. One rod was fishing a light pop-up rig with small strips of Mackerel to catch live Mackerel to fish as live baits. This was successful and i managed to catch six Bass mounting them on Sakuma 535 Trebles in size 6 and also 440 Circle hooks in 2/0. I didn't weigh any but there were all of a good size.”

Osian (Right) is a keen all round angler, who is tryinghis hand at lot's of different fishing disciplines. As of late he has been putting plenty of hours into his sea fishing, with some great rewards for his effort. His best catch so far is this fantastic bar of silver which was caught at Ogmore Deeps and tipped the scales at 7lb 11oz. It's always great to see the younger generation showing us how it's done!

Lot's of competitions took place across the UK in August, just like any other month. Although the conditions were not ideal all of the time, there were still some good bags of fish caught. 

The South Wales Sea Anglers had their club match at Morfa Beach on Sunday 20th. The conditions were tough which hampered the fishing until the flood, where the sea started to flatten off. This allowed the fishing to improve for a short window, with 1st and 2nd place both picking up a couple of Smoothounds.

Morfa can be a fantastic beach throughout the Summer and it's certainly up there as one of the best Smooth hound Beaches across Wales, but it can be difficult to fish when the wind picks up, binging in huge swells and lot's of weed on occassions, as it proved for the guys fishing this competition!

Our Course angling expert has been trying his hand at a bit of sea fishing as of late, whilst spending some time on the Dorset Coast. Alan has been exploring the clear waters and stunning marks mainly around Weymouth, such as Newtons Cove.

After a quiet spell on the lures, Alan switched up his tactics and had some great success by fishing a ragworm under a 35g TronixPro float Kit. Check out the unbelievable colours on these Ballan Wrasse and small Corkwing wrasse.

Spinning & Lure Fishing

As always, Jake Jones has been putting in the hours with his lure rod on the Coast of Western Australia. With the smaller species becoming a pest, it was time for Jake to start targeting the bigger fish. For big species like Samson fish, fishing live baits under a sliding balloon is the most affective method, but it goes with out saying that lure fishing for these fantastic predators is a more exciting approach. Set up with his trusty Samson Long range rod & heavy braid, Jake has been plugging away in search of a the fish of a lifetime over the last few months. Thousands of casts and numerous hours later, Jake finally landed the fish he was after. 

Jake said he “was just about to call the session off as the conditions were starting to get dangerous when the lure got absolutely smoked.” He added “it might just be a big smelly fish but it represents a stubborn amount of hard work.” 

The Samson white “Bomb” surface sinker was the lure of choice. For any queires about Samson lures, don't hesitate to get in contact with us.

Garry & Paul have recently returned from an awesome trip to the Ebro Delta, where they were targeting big Tuna on board Green Flake Charters. In order to tempt one of these big blue fins,  the approach was to use a mixture of big lures and large live baits. Catching the live baits made for some great sport on the light Gear, using lures such as the Westin Salty's & Flying Condoms to catch some agrresive species such as Mahi Mahi.

Once the bait had been collected it was time to go after the target species. On the first full day trip, the big rod screamed off and this stunning blue fin was landed after an epic battle which lasted over an hour, estimated at a whopping 150kg. With a variety of locations available to fish with Green Flake, Garry and Paul have both agreed that they are looking forward to the next adventure!

Proffessional Footballer Callum Patterson is hugely in to his river fishing, so much so that he has recently set up his own Youtube channel to share his sessions whether that be on his centrepin set up, fly fishing or on the LRF gear. In the photo below Callum is fishing in his new Vision Scout waders which he purchased from us recently, whilst wading some stunning sections of the River Don, Sheffield. Brown trout, grayling, pike and perch are amongst the species that call these stretches of river their home.

As seen throuhout the report, the Pembrokeshire coast has fished extremely well, however the high winds have made it diffcult for Kayak anglers to get out consistently. Joe Shaw's Catch & Cook kayak fishing trips have made sure they make the most of the calm patches in the weather. Once again, soft plastic lures have been doing the business with Pollock and bass taking a liking to the lemon back and khaki patterns in particular,

We hope you enjoyed reading this months review, for a chance to be featured in next months catch report, feel free to send in your catch reports with a brief description to our email or in the comments section for this blog. Make sure to keep yourself up to date on our social media platforms for daily content.

For tips and advice, don't hesitate to get in touch and we will be more than happy to help!