NOVEMBER NEVER HAPPENED
What a rotten spell of weather November brought with it, eh! I couldn’t fish much through September and October as I was working away a lot, but I was all geared up for making the most of November. It never happened!

I came home from working in Dublin on the Holyhead ferry the end of the first week of November and the crossing was rough to say the least. From then on it was one big weather depression after another racing across the Atlantic with repeated winds to storm force and lashing heavy rain resulting in severe flooding for many areas. My heart goes out to the people in Cumbria, Scotland, Yorkshire, South Wales and the South West who bore the brunt of it and suffered terribly with some of the worst flooding ever recorded!

Chatting to tackle dealers scattered across the UK they’ve obviously had a tough time over the past few weeks as anglers have been stuck in the house unable to fish in impossible conditions. Obviously charter skippers too, who’ve had a torrid year all round with persistent bad weather. Even on the East Coast I spoke to anglers who’d had to cancel beach sessions as the weather was so severe! Let’s hope December gives us more sensible conditions and we can all get a few fish caught and put a smile back on the tackle dealers and charter skipper’s faces!

GO CHECK YOUR BEACHES
I’ve mentioned before in past blogs after bad weather that it’s a wise move now to go and check out your favourite beaches, especially shallow surf beaches. It’s likely you’ll be in for a shock!

One of my local beaches has been scoured out to such an extent by the storms that it’s exposed an old pre World War 2 stake net post that I’ve never seen before and I’ve fished the beach from when I was small child. The consistent pounding seas have scoured out as much as 3-feet of sand from in close forming a deep gully and moved the sand out a good 250-yards where a sandbank has formed out by the low water line that wasn’t there before.

Given time and normal weather patterns these features will revert back to how they were pre storms, but in the meantime the fish react to feature on a day to day basis, so get your self down in daylight over low water and see where the gullies and rough ground patches have appeared as these will be the hotspots while the feature stays there.

COD ON THE ROCKS
Sat at home feeling glum during the storms, I did notice a small window in the weather and fishing buddy Clive Griffiths and I nipped up to North Wales for a short low water session and bagged a couple of codling each to 3lbs or so. Sorry about the quality of the photo but the weather was evil!

It’s nice to see some codling of a size worth catching in North Wales as over the past decade or so it’s been hard going, at least I’ve found it so. I’m keeping the mark quiet, and make no apologies for doing so, as there are netters about in North Wales and I’ve no intention of making it easy for them!

With all the bad weather we’d only got frozen black lug and we took our fish on this tipped off with frozen razorfish. Normally I’d prefer fresh lug, or at least frozen black mixed with fresh. We also took the razorfish as these tend to get washed out by the storms and the cod do tend to favour baits utilising razorfish at this time rather than just plain lug baits. It was a good feeling to cheat Mother Nature and dink out a couple of fish in between weather fronts.

Anticipating bad weather I always order some freshly dug blacks on the big tides in August/early September packing these individually in cling film while still fresh and get them in the freezer. Providing they’re frozen really fresh, they make a great back up bait for periods of rough weather when fresh dug bait is hard for me to get. Frozen fresh the lug don’t collapse when put on the hook in to a soft blob like lug frozen when past its best will do. Likewise I always have some packets of frozen razorfish in the freezer knowing they will give me an edge when after fish in between and directly after prolonged big sea conditions. The razorfish also make great flounder and coalie baits in the post Christmas period and this applies wherever you live in the UK.