More Pike and Carp, Sussex

Since the previous trip I made here where I caught my first pike, my mate who originally put me onto this fishery had always wanted to catch and pike and to make use of his many lures that he had collected over the years but had never caught a fish on. So when we arrived at the fishery, we went straight onto the predator lake and plugged for the pike. A couple of hours went by and we hadn't had a pike but we and several follows and takes but no solid hookups.


White Goldfish - Carassius auratus


Red Goldfish - Carassius auratus


Bream - Abramis brama


Brown Goldfish - Carassius auratus


Rudd - Scardinius erythrophthalmus

We decided to move on to the ornamental lake to take a crack at the goldfish and koi. Not much happened for a while and had a couple of missed bites. I did hook up on a few tiddly rudd which came off the hook before I could land them, no big loss. I then had a solid take which ended up in a beautifully coloured white goldfish. I think it may have been an albino, but it did have blackish eyes and a lot of orange on its body where there we no scales. Shortly after I a second goldfish which was a proper red goldfish with quite a long 'comet' tail. We decided to fish the main lake to get something better, so I set up a ledger and waited. I kept on getting tempted to fish the ornamental like with my float rod and pulled out several tench, goldfish, bream, rudd and two carp, a little 1lb ghost carp and a common of about 3lb. Unfortunately, no koi this time. My mate managed to get a decent 1lb goldfish from the main lake, but I was unable to hookup getting only several missed runs.


Tench - Tinca tinca


Ghost Carp - Cyprinus carpio


Common Carp - Cyprinus carpio

After a while, get got a little bored and wanted to take another crack at the pike. I wanted to try to catch some decent carp or bream from the predator lake as we were told there were some nice fish in there. My mate persisted with the lures and managed to get a nice little jack of about 2lb. Not a very bit fish, but was beautifully marked compared to the one I had about a month ago. After that I tryed a little bit of spinning but wasn't very successful. I went back to fish a different corner of the main lake setting up a ledger and a float. Nothing much happened, I did have a few takes on the ledger, and lost either a small carp or a large goldfish on the float. I had the float rod in the water and walked up the bank for a chat. When I came back, the float was gone and I reeled into a heavy weight. After several minutes, I had a nice near double Ghost Carp in the net. I would say that it was a little under 10lb, the biggest ghost carp I had ever seen. A nice end to the day.


Northern Pike - Esox lucius


Ghost Carp - Cyprinus carpio

Brighton Marina

Been planning a fishing trip to brighton for a while looking for some new species. Likely targets were Gurnards, Weaver, Red or Grey Mullet and Gar, but none of these appeared on this trip.

It took me almost 5 hours to get to the Marina from my front door, tube closures, no First Captial Connect from London Bridge and trains to Brighton diverting to Hove first. When I finally arrived at half two, I found the marina completely packed with every bay full. I had to fish between anglers which had already settled into their own bays. It was high tide and I think it was a 7m spring tide.


Black Sea-Bream - Spondyliosoma cantharus


Tompot Blenny - Parablennius gattorugine


Shanny - Lipophrys pholis


Atlantic Mackerel - Scomber scombrus

Fished black lug to start off and had a nice bream on after a little while, my first for the year. It was really quiet though, I was told there was a lot of mackerel caught early on but didn't get anything on feathers. Later in the afternoon, I did get a single smallish mackerel on tiny hokkai feathers. There was nothing much except for usual shannies and tompots close in until about 7ish and when I started to get a few Pouting. Then a Sand Smelt on baited hokkais with the glowing bits charged with my head lamp. This was species number 101. A few more Pouting and then a good take, it was a Scad on the baited hokkais again, species number 102. I've only every caught Yellow-tail Scad back in Australia which looks pretty much the same, but this was a nice suprise. I left at about 8:30pm after about and hour of catching dozens of tiny Pout.



Pouting - Trisopterus luscus


Sand Smelt - Atherina presbyter #101



Atlantic Horse Mackerel - Trachurus trachurus #102

Life - 102
2010 - 41
English - 34