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I'm not sure how; but John Elvins seems to have the uncanny ability to pick dates out of the calendar and say 'Thats a good tide for a trip to {x}' and the weather seems to fall right; I don't know what or maybe who he sacrifices to the weather gods, but it seems to work!
Saturday was proposed probably 3 months ago as a good tide to head down to Lundy, to keep the fuel consumption low we running down and back with the tide, which limits the dates available. As luck would have it wind speeds were low and the swell charts showed 0m for the area!! Unfortunately we're experiencing a fairly heavy May Weed locally, and from speaking with a few others who have fished the area recently their having the same problem, but we had a plan so we stuck with it.
7 of us boarded at 6:30am and joined the armada leaving on the first lock, the run down was pleasant, seeing porpoises, lots of gillimots and started picking up pods of dolphins when we got around 12miles from the island.
We got to the first mark; a large sandbank, where we found good numbers of launce and a lone herring. While there a pod of dolphin made there way behind us along the edge of the bank, which was pretty cool to watch.
We then moved up to the north end of the island, here we found reasonable water clarity and good numbers of pollack and the occasional wrasse. While there we saw a minky whale only a few hundred ft off the north end of the island, I've seen a few while sharking towards the celtic deeps, but never that close to land.
Once the tide became too strong for the step pinnicals of the north we headed the a large reef on the south west, here we found more of the same, but the clarity was worse than on the north of the island.
We ended the day with another couple of drifts on the north in the tidal eddies caused by the water rushing over the reef, but only found a few small fish.
We were back in around 7pm, after sorting the fish and fueling up we were away by 8:30pm.
Saturday was proposed probably 3 months ago as a good tide to head down to Lundy, to keep the fuel consumption low we running down and back with the tide, which limits the dates available. As luck would have it wind speeds were low and the swell charts showed 0m for the area!! Unfortunately we're experiencing a fairly heavy May Weed locally, and from speaking with a few others who have fished the area recently their having the same problem, but we had a plan so we stuck with it.
7 of us boarded at 6:30am and joined the armada leaving on the first lock, the run down was pleasant, seeing porpoises, lots of gillimots and started picking up pods of dolphins when we got around 12miles from the island.
We got to the first mark; a large sandbank, where we found good numbers of launce and a lone herring. While there a pod of dolphin made there way behind us along the edge of the bank, which was pretty cool to watch.
We then moved up to the north end of the island, here we found reasonable water clarity and good numbers of pollack and the occasional wrasse. While there we saw a minky whale only a few hundred ft off the north end of the island, I've seen a few while sharking towards the celtic deeps, but never that close to land.
Once the tide became too strong for the step pinnicals of the north we headed the a large reef on the south west, here we found more of the same, but the clarity was worse than on the north of the island.
We ended the day with another couple of drifts on the north in the tidal eddies caused by the water rushing over the reef, but only found a few small fish.
We were back in around 7pm, after sorting the fish and fueling up we were away by 8:30pm.
