We’d been trying to get to Skinningrove all year for a boat fishing trip but the weather always seemed to let us down during my time off.  On this occasion, the forecast, checked the previous evening, was promising so we packed up the van ready for an early Friday morning getaway.  The weather forecast was for a cloudy day with sunny spells but more importantly, the wind was less than 10mph and the wave height was forecast to be less than one foot.  

 Everything went as planned and we were at the Skinningrove boat park for about 5 am.  It was still dark when we arrived and no one else was around apart one camper van.  We parked up and began the boat assembly.  As my boat trolley was damaged from a previous trip I had to transport the deflated boat the water’s edge on a sack barrow before unrolling and inflating.  I actually had to make a few trips with the sack barrow to carry all the kit to the boat.  It seemed a good idea at the time but I won’t be doing that again.  Too much work and too time-consuming.  After an hour or so we were ready to head out.  The boat we had with us was my Honda Honwave T40 and the outboard motor was my new Suzuki DF6A 6HP.  I wanted to see how the 6HP outboard would perform on a 4m boat with 2 passengers and all our kit.  I also had with me my Yamaha 2.5HP auxiliary outboard which I don’t normally bring but wanted to test as well.  If this went well I would then consider taking the Yamaha 2.5 with me on longer trips as a backup engine.

 Skinningrove Boat Fishing Session

We headed out about a mile or so and set up our rods.  We both started with Savage gear sandeels as these normally work well in these waters.  I had a 100g multicoloured sandeel whilst my wife has a smaller 50g pink sandeel.  We worked the water as we drifted but we weren’t getting many takes.  After moving a few times we decided to change tactics and bring out the Cod Daylights and pirks.  The water wasn’t looking particularly clear so more visible lures would hopefully attract the fish.

This tactic worked as I now starting to catch on the pirk.  I was using a 300g bar pirk with orange muppet over the treble then a set of Cod Daylights above that.  Now we were catching.  They weren’t big but they were definitely welcome.  We were catching Mackerel, Whiting and small Codling then suddenly my rod doubled over and I was into a feisty little Pollock of about 3-4lb.  Yes, they can certainly fight these Pollock.

 

We seemed to have drifted over a productive spot so we went back for another drift.  On the next drift, I hooked what I believed to be another Codling but it didn’t feel quite right.  It would tug then relax then tug again.  It didn’t feel like anything I’d caught before.  When it came to the surface I was shocked to see quite a large squid on the end.  I’m not quite sure what qualifies for large in the squid world but it was large to me and a first.  On the video, I actually call it an octopus but managed to edit that bit out as not to look silly on camera.  It did actually look like an octopus as it was coming up as all I saw was tentacles waving about.  It managed to squirt the side of my boat and almost me with dye as it was trying to get off the hook.

After all that excitement and a quick bite to eat it was time to get back to the proper fishing.  We started catching more Codling, Whiting and Mackerel which was fun then a couple of drifts later I was into another decent fish.  This felt a bit bigger than what we’d caught previously.  It was another Cod of about 4lbs but felt much bigger as it was coming up.  Their weight can be very deceiving sometimes as they fight in the water below.  Not massive but better and the biggest Cod of the day so far.

As the day continued we caught many more but most were tiny and in the 1lb weight bracket.  By mid-afternoon, we’d decided to head back in.  Halfway in it was time to swap the outboards over and test the Yamaha 2.5hp outboard on the boat.  It was slow but it did manage to push the boat and get us back to shore.  You can see in the following video how well it did.  It would be OK in an emergency situation I think so I’ll perhaps bring it along from now on just in case.

Here is the video of the day’s events:


 

So another good day boat fishing off the coast of Skinningrove.  The larger fish weren’t there in numbers on this occasion but we caught plenty of smaller fish so were kept busy throughout the day.  I also got to test out a couple of my outboards on the Honda Honwave T40 which was one of the main reasons for going out that day.

Honda Honwave Boats: https://www.honda.co.uk/marine/products/inflatables/overview.html

Suzuki Outboards: http://www.suzukimarine.com/

Other videos from Skinningrove: https://stufishing.com/tag/skinningrove/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error: Content is protected !!