THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

I love to fish on and around offshore banks. When I charter boat fish for bass, it's almost exclusively on
the drift with live-baits, whereas from my own boat on our local patch, a good proportion of the fishing
will be at anchor with lugworm.
We do occasionally fish squid or dead sandeel, and we have in the past also fished with lures such as
redgills and large hokkai's. But usually it's fresh black lugworm on a simple flowing trace. We've tried
all sorts of other baits over the years with the results always bringing us back to the worm.
The tide quite literally screams over these shallow bank tops, so a flowing trace that it able to gather up
any loose weed hitting and being forced down the line it is a must. This leaves the bait clear as the weed
gathers up at the lead, sometimes to the point that you can barely get it back in to clear it if you leave it
out for too long.
So it's no relaxing alternative to lure or live-bait fishing on the drift. In fact, it's very much a constantly
hard working day, with bass in the small to middle range as a result. And when they hit with all that
tide running through it will be both fast and hard. So hard in fact that we've had rods vanish over the
stern without any prior warning, so these need to be tethered or held.
What we did find was that circle hooks work well for these hard running high speed takes. Because of
their ability not to deep hook or take hold until they actually start to exit the fish’s mouth at the scissor,
fast moving fish have a greater tendency to hook themselves in a spot where disgorging is easy, all of
which happens long before you've even had time to grab the rod and react. Their one big draw back is
getting worms over that in-pointing hook tip.
We also at times fish the exit and entrance points to narrow gullies between closely adjacent banks,
which bass will often use as motorways for getting around the area rather than running the bank tops
through the tide at peak flow, and these too can be quite productive at times.
When it comes to charter boat fishing offshore
banks, though I've done it in Wales, Devon, and
Cornwall, the bulk of my experiences, and most
certainly all my better fish have come from around
the Channel Islands fishing out of St. Peterport on
Guernsey.
I've probably fished all the main banks around
Guernsey, Aldernay, Sark and Jersey. Most of the
time it has been with Dougal Lane fishing live
sandeel on a long flying collar type rig with a watch
lead to minimise lateral drifting and tangling other
people’s lines.
There was one occasion though when we got an
invite to join a group of local anglers on a different
boat, chartered specifically for a bass tagging
project. This took us to within sight of Cherbourg,
where numerous double figure fish were tagged and
released. The average size of the many bass caught
there must have been between seven and nine
pounds, some of which were taken on small
mackerel live- baits.
Charlie Pitchers, Rossall 8 lbs 2 oz
Typically, when fishing with Dougal Lane, we would see between forty and sixty bass per trip, also
typically between seven and nine pounds, plus turbot, brill, and an occasional pollack.
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