The inaugural and eagerly anticipated WSF Boat Meet 2008 was held at the species “Mecca” of Weymouth. Here Lee Shilling, WSF Member, Boat Fanatic, and ale drinking angler (allegedly of course), gives you the low down on his attendance at the event.

Lee takes up the story...

THE VENUE
With a stunning coastline and a myriad of different species, it was an easy choice to make for the location of the first large scale boat meet to emerge from the WSF Forums, Weymouth! With its excellent harbour facilities, mooring berths and (more importantly) extra wide slipways, it makes an ideal venue. Not only that the fishing ain’t bad either!

Weymouth and Portland itself has a wealth of fishing marks and species enabling both the boat and shore angler to sample some of the best and most exciting angling action in the country. Testament to this is the fact Weymouth is home to the largest professional angling fleet in Great Britain!

This southern coastline is said to have some of the sunniest climate in the United Kingdom, and, unusually, it didn’t disappoint! The weather was very kind over the duration of the meet, giving good temperatures and some nice hot weather to enjoy whilst fishing on flat calm seas.

THE SETUP
The first day saw an early start, Cascars and I were driving over to Weymouth from Essex. As is customary on early morning Saturday fishing sessions we ditched the CD’s and tuned into Talk Sport to listen to the “Fishermans Blues” show. Realising this was an ideal opportunity for some “plugging”; I called up the show and managed to get a slot on the radio to mention the WSF Meet, and of course worldseafishing.com (nice one Lee! – Ed).

Whilst we had a long drive across country, other (could say more sensible -Ed) members of WSF who had brought their boats down had already set up camp the day before. Some had even managed to get a few practice hours in to familiarise themselves with the coastline and angling potential available.

TO THE ACTION
As Saturday dawned, Cascars sprang a surprise, a guest angler, none other than Jim Whippy from Boat Fishing Monthly Magazine. With all this talent on board (well Jim, obviously - Ed) we thought we would be in for a good days fishing, unfortunately as is often the way with angling, hope and reality is often leagues apart and the fish just didn’t want to play ball. We had a few species (mainly caught by Jim) but much of what the day promised didn’t materialise.

We were lucky with beautiful weather and lovely calm seas that endured for much of the meet, which made drifting over the Shambles ideal. The shambles is a series of banks which are just to the East of the Tip of Portland Bill. These banks vary in depth and are ideal for drifting, with Turbot, Brill and in season, Plaice a likely catch. If the conditions are good for anchoring on the Shambles, double figure rays can be caught too (also on the Adamant Banks to the North East of the Shambles).

This certainly rang true for BFMs Jim Whippy, who managed to boat a lovely Blonde Ray of 23lbs from the Shambles banks. If you look closely at the resulting picture you can see the choppy water formed by the Shambles bank in the background.

There were plenty of Turbot and even a Brill was caught by other anglers drifting over the Shambles. Both Cascars and Raymondo94b managed to catch good size Turbot with Raymondo94b also boating a Brill. Dean, Skipper of AWOL also managed to catch a nice Brill from the Shambles Banks. A huge congratulations has to go to Dingbat for managing to catch his first ever Turbot in over 61 years of fishing, a beauty of 9lbs 13ozs!

There were plenty of species caught around the other participating boats too. The Welsh Contingent aboard Welsh Warrior as well as the lads aboard Great Escape did well targeting Huss, as did Raymondo94b aboard Sea Mistress.

A night sortie by the lads aboard Welsh Warrior proved to be an excellent move when Fisher Jay Robbins managed to capture a specimen conger eel.

Rig making guru and sea angling coach; Ian Houlton joined the lads aboard Sea Mistress for a day’s fishing. Not content with his encounter with a Tope on ultra light tackle in Cardigan Bay two years ago, he decided he wanted another “PB” on ubber light tackle...he wasn’t disappointed either, when he managed to boat a new personal best Conger of 14lbs on light tackle.

There were plenty of other species caught over the course of the meet too. Some nice Cod and Pollack were boated, with some real beauties around the 8lb mark landed aboard Great Escape. Jumbo Pouting, Ballan and Cookoo Wrasse as well as Bass were also caught in abundance. Pedrothefisherman managed to boat a lovely bass with a live baited Joey Mackerel.

I also managed to get in on the action by catching a 4lb Smoothound, which gave me a tremendous scrap on a light spinning rod, size 2 hook and a piece of head hooked rag!

Other notable species included Tope, with John the Dog managing to catch a nice sized Tope around 40lbs, as well as Spurdog, Launce, Garfish, Plaice and million Mackerel (they were everywhere)!

Overall 12 boats attended the meet and managed to produce some excellent catches and variety that will no doubt have made this meet one of best WSF meets to date.

FOR THE CHARI’DY
In addition to the non-stop angling action, on the Saturday night the meet boat crews descended on the famous Sailors Return pub (very angler friendly!) for a charity auction in aid of the RNLI. The auction was presided over by Steve, landlord of the Sailors Return Pub. At the auction end over £200 was raised, this will be added to the other monies raised and handed over to the RNLI by Cascars, shortly.

LEE’S SPECIAL MENTIONS
Harry Sailor the skipper of “Coral Beauty” for attending the meet despite suffering ill health.
Sandie (Cabin girl J of Coral beauty), for being the only female angler and getting stuck into the fishing.
Dingbat for catching his first Turbot.
Worzel and his crew for trying there best despite regular tow-ins!
Congeraider – for letting me go on his boat for a few days.
Raymondo and dingbat for being good crewmates and having a laugh with.
Barryjohn for getting the t-shirts and pennants sorted out.

A special thanks to The Sailors Return Pub for putting aside part of the Pub for the auction and allowing us some freezer space for some Turbot fillets! As well as being able to see some of Weymouth’s finest charter boats unloading on the quay near the pub, it also houses a great range of beers (I sampled a few!).

To all those who turned up well done and thanks for taking part, for those who didn’t , you missed out big time, but there is always next year!

OUR TEL’
The biggest mention of all has to go to Terry (Cascars), for putting the time into organising this meet and spending endless hours on the computer making sure that everything went to plan. I know how much time went into preparing the meet and organising things including, pennants and t-shirts for the event. Thanks for having me as a crew member mate!

So will there be a WSF Weymouth boat Meet 2009? Of course!