Saltwater Boat Angling 25
Colin Penny, skipper of
Flamer IV from Weymouth
A regular customer, Peter Gillett and his friends, who
had their original angling break blown out in June re
scheduled the trip for October. Despite, at times,
dealing with breezy conditions managed to fish all of
the five days. Some fishing was done from close inshore
in the lee of the land where they were well impressed
with the size and quality of the fish caught.
The group caught 23 different species i.e. black bream,
undulate rays, blonde rays, thornback rays, tope, turbot,
brill, conger, gurnards, wrasse to name a few, over the
five-day period.
David Barton caught 19 different species and won the
friendly/competitive competition with 516 points,
Runner up was Lee Page with 416 points. Peter Gillett
and David Barton both had hat-tricks of turbot and brill
respectfully during a drifting session on a bank. Twice
during the week Peter Gillett and Russell Latimer had
un stoppable runs from which must have been
porbeagle sharks. There were also some big rays lost
as well. With all this going on it only added to the
banter and Mickey taking that went on all week with
every-one enjoying themselves. The lads have already
booked up their big angling break for 2018.
The reef and bank fishing on Flamer IV has been really
good on my latest trips with good catches of rays, tope,
congers, bull huss, black bream and whiting which have
also seen a few personal best’s beaten. These include
Tim Goble’s 40Ib tope and 13Ib 4oz undulateray, Robin Amor’s 18Ib 5oz blonde ray, and Tomasz
Kopinski with an 11Ib 2os bull huss. The bigger fish
have been caught on pennel rigs of Sakuma Manta
hooks baited with squid and mackerel cocktails.
http://www.flamer4fishing.co.uk Tel: 07968 972736Tim Goble with a
40Ib topeJamie's 11lb topeKevin Wyatt skipper of
Obsession Charters based in
Brixham describes his
recent refit
After lengthy discussions whether to either buy a new
boat or just upgrade our current Obsession we decided
that because she is such a fantastic boat, and does
everything we need we would give her a refit. Really, she
just needed to give us a bit more speed so that means a
new engine and drives with twin props which we ordered
from Advance Marine in Portishead.
Our plan was to transport Obsession to Portishead so that
she was close enough for Phil and the boys at Advance to
undertake the refit in a tight time scale of 4 weeks from
lifting out until putting her back on the mooring in
Brixham.
Obsession arrived in Portishead yard ready for the refit to
begin on the 21st of August. By the 23rd the old engines
and drives had been removed and Bradley was preparing
the engine bays and transom for the new gear to be
fitted. Meanwhile Mitch was working away installing the
bow thruster.
The following day the drives were installed in the transom
ready for the engines to be lifted in. First, he starboard
engine went in, not without a bit of wiggling. After a few
days, the port engine was lifted in. It took a few more days
to rig up new dash panels and looms. Both engines fired
up straight away and the boat was then lifted intothe Marina for sea trials. On the 6th of September, we
made for the lock out of Portishead Marina in great
anticipation.
With Phil from Advance at the helm we headed out in to
the Bristol Channel in a slightly choppy sea. The engines
were purring and everything was going great. Phil
opened her up and she flew along at 34.6 knots which
exceeded our expectations by a mile. Phil got the drive
ratio and prop size spot on, at 2600 rpm we were cruising
nicely at 25knots.
The guys at
Advance marine
did an absolutely
fantastic job from
start to finish
completing all the
work a week earlier
than we expected.
Another week in
the Marina allowed Obsesssion Charters
us to have a good
spruce up. On Friday 15th September the transport
arrived and Obsession was on her way down to Portland
for launching. An overnight stay in Portland Marina and
then a good run down to Brixham to shake out any
niggles.
So now we have a refitted boat which is ready for the
winter. To find out more or book a charter call Obsession
Charters on 07964053347 or go to our ad on page 85.P24-27 Charter Boat Report.qxp_Layout 1 08/11/2017 14:24 Page 2