Pwllheli Smoothies

Interesting how sea fishing always keeps throwing up surprises. A recent shore trip I made to a mark near Pwllheli did just that.

The bream just haven’t shown off the shore in the numbers expected so far, so my expectations were not high. Having sat there for three hours without a bite we were beginning to question the wisdom of the trip. Not even the dogs were biting!

Sat on my seat box and thinking through the situation I’d expected the bream to be in an eel grass bed at about 80yds plus range. But looking at the clarity of the sea, which usually carries just a tad of colour here due to a fair tide run, it was gin like with high light penetration. This got me to thinking that maybe the bream were much further out than normal where the water drops away deeper, even though the feeding area is not as rich.

I’d been fishing 20lb Fluorocarbon hook lengths, but switched rigs to a two-hook clipped up with just 15lb Fluorocarbon hook lengths to get a bit more bait movement. I went for crab on one hook and squid strip on the other, but kept the baits down to minimum size. I needed every last yard of casting distance, so wound up a full house pendulum to give me maximum range.

In the meantime, I kept my second rod fishing just inside the eel grass bed. I’d switched from a simple three hook flapper to a pop up rig using red and yellow Fox float beads to get the small bait up in the water, but cut my hook length down to just 10-inches aiming to keep the bait just up off the bottom and above the soft silk weed and eel grass so the bait would not get smothered.

The bream rig was the first to go resulting in a small bream about a half pound. Interestingly it was the only bream bite of the session between the two of us.

Taking in the scenery perched on my box, I saw a small double tap on the long range rod. A few seconds later one little pull down, so I picked up the rod and at the next indication set the hook. The fish was spirited but not big. Close in to shore I first thought I’d hooked a baby tope, then shut out the thought it might be a small spurdog as we don’t get them inside Cardigan Bay, then realised as I lifted the little critter ashore that it was a starry smoothound about 2½ lbs. I caught two more starry’s and Clive fishing with me bagged a common smoothound.

In over 45 years of fishing my local waters between Aberystwyth and The Lleyn these were my first home caught shore smoothound, though I’ve caught loads in the Bristol Channel, off the North Wales coast, especially Dinas Dinlle, and down in Hampshire.

Why smuts are so rare locally inside Cardigan Bay is a mystery. The only ones I’ve ever heard of where some caught in a research trawl inside the old Trawling Grounds off Aberystwyth over 20-years ago, the very occasional one from the boats working the reefs off Aberystwyth and Aberdovey, and maybe once every 10 years or so a shore caught fish. In fact Mike Jr caught one about 3lbs south of Harlech some 15-years ago when bassing.

We have the reef structure they like, the inshore rough ground beaches, a good crab supply, and the influx of freshwater from our estuaries, but the smuts normally seem to pass us by.

This influx of young smoothound, size wise like peas in a pod between 2 and 3lbs, is interesting as never before have they been available in any number here. If any other anglers catch these little smoothies in the Aberystwyth to Pwllheli area, or better still bigger fish, post on the WSF forums so we can try and learn a little more of their movements and habits and gauge whether this is just a one off season or the first sign of a future trend.