Boat blonde ray fishing, sea weed

BOAT BLONDE RAY TACTICS
Blonde ray continue to show right through to Christmas in the western half of the English Channel with the Kidney Banks off Weymouth always a hot mark. Blonde ray are also likely from marks off the Isle of Wight, and from close in off the Devon and Cornish cliffs.

Blonde ray like sand banks that have a steep angle rising up from deep water. They tend to favour the downtide side of the bank, but switch sides or areas as the tide slackens. This is often when they feed best, though you'll take fish right through a tide on some marks. Neap tides work well for blonde ray, with the periods either side of slack water generally best on the bigger tides.

Catching a good size blonde

Blonde ray like a moving bait, so either choose a lead weight just light enough to bounce off downtide and down the steep angle of the bank but keeping the bait in contact with the seabed, or methodically keep lifting the rod tip upwards and back to move the bait towards you before letting it drop back.

They bite quite shyly and tend to bounce the rod tip around as they settle over a bait. Wait until the rod tip pulls hard over before lifting in to the fish to set the hook. They will make short but powerful runs and then kite in mid water using their weight to deflect the tide.

Standard 20 to 30lb class tackle is ideal for most marks, but they can weigh near to 40lbs, so judge tackle strength against the tide run expected. They take best using a long 4 to 6ft hook trace with a 6/0 Mustad Viking 79515 hook, and adding a few beads and a small revolving spoon before the hook can increase the catch rate.

TIPS AND TRICKS
With the whiting and dab season in full swing, here's a tip that can get you extra bites during the quieter neap tides.

Use either a clip on Starlite Cliplight Stik, or push a length of silicone tubing over the wire tail of a long tailed lead and slide a small chemical light stick in to the tubing. When activated the light stick acts as an attractor and will pull fish in towards the baits. It's especially effective for dabs, but also seems to give you an edge with rockling and flounder. A friend fishes Taddiford beach in Hampshire and says it also works well for nocturnal sole.

WEED IT OUT

Trying to avoid weed

Think about the wind and tide direction carefully before electing where to fish. For example if a southwest wind has been quartering a west facing beach from left to right with a flooding tide from the same general direction, then less weed will be evident in the left-hand corner. Weed is pushed along not only by tide direction, but because weed tends to float in big rafts, also by the wind. The right-hand corner will hold the bulk of the weed during the flood tide in this case. The opposite would be true for an easterly facing beach with a southeast wind and tide flow.

When the tide direction changes on the ebb tide and flows right to left with no change in the wind direction, the weed will tend to be worse in the mid beach section forced their by the wind effect which to some extent overrides the tides influence.

Only when a storm passes through and the wind dies will the weed fetch up in the corner facing directly in to the tide. The worst scenario is an onshore wind and lateral tide which distributes the weed pretty much evenly right along the shore.

Just prior to the biggest tides, if weed is being washed up on to the high tide line, then with each bigger tide the weed gets washed back and forth, but as the tides peak, the weed at the high water line is left behind, so expect easier fishing just after the biggest tides have passed.

Fine fern type reef weed that sinks to the seabed and washes around the seabed tends to collect in the deeper gutters and holes as the tide washes over these. Fish the shallower areas over slack water to minimise the weed effect in this case.

You'll never really beat bad weed, but you can minimise its effect and get some fishing in with a little careful thought.