The In's and Out's of Fleetwood Plaice
If there is any truth in the saying that there is no Plaice for the wicked, then boat anglers turning out from Fleetwood must have been doing something very right over the past several years, as there are plenty of Plaice within a short sail of the port for anyone wanting them. Fleetwood actually has a long tradition of providing summer Plaice. These past few years however throughout the whole Fylde area, and I speak here from personal experience, have seen a season on season increase in Plaice numbers. They also appear to have been arriving increasingly earlier too, particularly over the Fleetwood marks. I was out Cod fishing with 'Blue Mink' skipper Andy Bradbury back in January when we decided to do the trips which produced the fish on the pictures shown here. And by referring to his diary in which he meticulously records all aspects of every trip, Andy hinted that we should be seeing between 30 and 40 Plaice per session late March to early April. So a suitable set of tides was pencilled in with complete confidence in the result.
Now you could argue that such confidence and actual results when boat fishing are two things which don't necessarily always follow rigid predictions, if only on account of the hand that the weather might ultimately deal. But that too is rarely a major consideration with some of Fleetwoods Plaice. Of course, there will be days when it is too rough to put to sea. But equally, there will also be days when at face value, as an outsider having just heard the forecast, that you wouldn't perhaps expect to be going afloat, and certainly when other boats virtually anywhere else in the north west would be confined to barracks. Yet because of Fleetwood's unique inshore geography, providing the wind sticks with its prevailing westerly flow and the tide timing is carefully thought through, access to some of the venues best Plaice marks may not be too much of a problem, as some of these actually lie inside the Wyre Estuary itself, which on an ebbing tide becomes virtually land locked as the surrounding banks start to expose, concentrating fish in hot spots throughout the deeper areas of the navigable channel inshore of the Wyre Light.
The trick is very much in the timing. It may well be a small area of water to fish when the tide pulls back, but the fish are not evenly spread about the place. They like to move about too at differing stages of either the ebb or the flood tide, and tide size will also have a part to play in all of this. Local knowledge built up over many years of taking parties out and trying different things has been key to Andy's understanding of where and when to try for these fish. That also includes when and where to move inside and outside of the estuary too, obviously weather permitting, as Plaice here are also willing to feed up in other areas when they are not interested inside. So to get a flavour of all this, I arranged to spend a couple of days with Andy fishing both inside and out, plus a bonus dinghy day sandwiched in between, taking some very good Plaice, Flounders, and inevitably plenty of Dabs some weeks earlier than I would have been looking for similar results from the dinghy over our more usual marks just around the corner at Cleveleys.
Day one was spent fishing outside the river. It had always been planned that way, so it was coincidental that it turned out to be one of those 'hotter than summer' record breaking days we experienced towards the end of March when you needed to wear a light jacket with the hood up just to keep from burning. It was amazing. But unfortunately, too good as it would turn out, which Andy was quick to point put the moment the anchor went down. Plaice up here like bright sunny weather. What they don't like is lack of surface ripple, or better still, a bit of a chop, and as they say, on this particular day it was like a pool of oil. Consequently, all we could seem to catch was Dabs by the bucket load. We didn't see even a single Plaice and looked destined not to either until late in the day a bit of a sea breeze appeared breaking up the waters surface. With conditions suddenly improving, Andy decided that it was the time to get serious and have another move, resulting in around 30 Plaice and just a couple of Dabs being boated rapid fire in the last hour or so. Nothing big unfortunately. But most definitely an unexpected victory grabbed from the jaws of defeat situation, and complete vindication for the earlier pessimism and predictions. That said, it was still early days, on top of which you tend to get better fish and at times more of them inside the river mouth when conditions and tides allow, which we would be putting to the test a couple of days later.
I say that, but in truth that isn't the entire story, for as I mentioned earlier, Charlie Pitchers and myself put our Warrior 175 in as a between 'Blue Mink' trips filler. Again it was sunny and quite warm, but with more in the way of wind, which with hindsight marked the beginning of the end of that pleasant weather spell. The breeze freshened steadily throughout the day, which on a flooding tide, gave it the potential to really cut up later as the exposed banks started to cover. Fortunately, we managed to get the main productive part of the tide in before it started to get really uncomfortable. Initially, and probably due to a complete lack of low water run leaving the boat positioned by the wind, the fishing was rather slow. But, as the flow picked up enough to beat the breeze and swing us around, the Plaice really got themselves into feeding mood for an hour or so before petering away, which is perhaps when we should have been making a move to a new feeding area. But not having Andy Bradbury's depth of local knowledge, plus the breeze continuing to build, and not really knowing where next to try for the best, we stuck it out for a further increasingly fishless hour, then as the chop really started to make its presence felt, decided to cut and run.
The second in-river trip with Andy to compare and contrast the inside and outside marks was actually the following morning, which was maybe as well, as the previous days breeze had continued to build over night to the point where had I been anywhere else, I would have seriously been expecting the trip to be abandoned. It was howling, it was grey, it was cold, and it looked like rain. What a weather contrast. But it was fish contrasts that we were interested in, and the trip was on. No problem Andy said. Whatever we found up the channel in terms of sea conditions would be as bad as it would get, and as the tide ebbed it away, things would improve accordingly. Well, we certainly had some surface ripple which Andy described as being perfect. So on a miserable, dare I say grim looking day at the start of April, 'Blue Mink' punched her way up the river to our anchoring point which would provide some very nice Plaice, quite a few sizeable Flounders, plus the odd Dab, and on a day when I'm sure nobody else would have even harboured thoughts of catching fish from a boat. Then, as if to round things off, that evening over much of the higher ground of the North West, we saw blizzards closing quite a number of trans-pennine roads.
I mentioned earlier putting the anchor down. That's how Plaice fishing up here along the Lancashire Coast is always done. We still use beads, small spoons, and all the rest of the bling associated with red spotted flatties. But here the force of the tide has to rotate the spoons, probably because no one Plaice mark is usually big enough to warrant drifting. Though some people swear by flashing spoons, at anchor, I personally prefer to stick with just the beads. I had recorded an Audio Angling podcast several weeks earlier with boat trace making expert Alan Sharpe in which on line attractors were given a good looking at. Alan swears by them and had even conducted comparison experiments, so he obviously knew exactly what he was talking about. One in particular he was singing the praises of was the Gemini Genie floating bead, which is luminous green with orange spots, and can have its luminosity charged up using a camera flash gun. So when I was last at Gerry's at Morecambe and spotted some on display, I decided to give them a go, which as it turns out was an inspired decision. Black was another colour recommended by Alan, in all cases butted up to the hook on the snood. Otherwise, the recommended rig here is a four to five foot flowing trace with a second dropper, again with a size 1 hook, tied in mid point, baited with frozen blacklug, and tipped off with either a tiny sliver of squid, razor-fish, or a cockle.
But I also wanted to do a bit of experimentation of my own. So while out in the dinghy, I was able to fish and compare two rods. One was rigged up as described and the second armed with exactly the same trace without the beads. Instead, on the point, I attached a small luminous yellow chemical light stick which I have used in deeper water before and had results. The beads did actually win out in the experiment. But the light stick also made a difference, as the dropper bait above it without any bling at all did virtually nothing at all. Hardly scientific I know. It takes many more comparisons than a single trip to eliminate chance and start arriving at conclusions. But the Genie beads have had many more than the one trip. Then as the tides starts to slacken and the longer flowing trace starts to become a self tangling liability due to the lack of run, a switch to a bling emblazoned two boomed wire paternoster can be a particularly worthwhile move until the new tide has sufficient strength to straighten the flowing trace out again.
Despite what's been said, it's actually debatable whether the Plaice arrived early this year, stayed late from last year, or simply didn't bother to move out in all cases at all, as over the last winter, parties aboard 'Blue Mink' took a few Plaice right throughout the winter, which when you consider the hooks and baits they were using targeting the Cod, certainly makes you wonder. They were definitely showing signs of increasing in numbers as early as February, and should if things go according to plan, be with us until October and maybe even beyond, depending of course on the weather, which means a potentially long season both inside and out when the tides are also favourable for everyone to grab the chance of seeing those adrenalin pumping big red spots coming up to the surface out from Fleetwood.
Andy Bradbury can be contacted on 01253 354567.