Tuesday, April 23, 2013

At Last - Good Signs Offshore

A weather window today allowed another foray to visit some offshore wrecks. Even in Conwy Bay the signs were there, hinting towards a big change in the water temperature, since a fortnight ago. Temperature inshore had increased from 4.7 to 8.7 degrees! Offshore the difference was less marked, rising from 6.7 to 7.4 degrees. Doesn't seem like much, but enough to put the pollack back on the feed. We had about 40 pollack to 7lb. Not startling fishing but at least the season seems to have finally started. Pollack fell mainly to rhubarb and custard 4-6" sidewinders.

Another charter boat from Conwy also had plenty of whiting, dabs and dogfish inshore on Saturday.

I have room on both Saturday (27th April) and Sunday (28th April) on 8 hour inshore fishing trips if anyone would like to book.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Cold water temperatures.

The first angling trip of this year, yesterday, proved to be very poor. The cold winter has lowered the sea temperature to over a 1 degree centigrade cooler than is normally seen at this time of year. This doesn't sound much but it makes a huge difference to the activity levels of fish and other species inhabiting the Irish Sea. The water temperature inshore was 4.9 degrees C and closer to the Isle of Man the temperature rose to 6.7 degrees C. The water in the western Irish Sea is deeper than in the east so retains more heat through the winter than the shallow eastern side. We fished 7 wrecks up to 37 miles from Conwy and only managed to catch one pollack. We had an hour ground fishing on the way in and managed to catch some whiting, dabs and dogfish.

So the next angling trip is in a fortnight and with warmer weather predicted from next weekend hopefully the sea water temperatures will start to rise. I'll be potting later this week to bait up the gear ready for the start of the season.


Satellite image of sea surface temperature (24th-30th March) (NERC)





I spent most of last week taking advantage of the perfect late winter season snow and ice climbs to be had in Snowdonia. Its been a long season of winter climbing this year and due to the persistent strong easterly wind through this last cold spell there have been some amazing ice formations up there.