October 9, 2011
Graham Bird and his daughter Hannah decided to take Harwell Charter’s Raider 18 out for an early morning session. The forecast was for force 3 but this quickly rose to a 4 shortly after the sun started to rise. The intention was to drift for plaice out by the Sovereign Tower but as
the wind rose they headed in for more sheltered waters ½ mile outside of the harbour entrance. Following reports of codling being caught in the bay they carefully anchored on a short rope between two rows of nets on a small piece of raised ground. Within 10 minutes Hannah caught
a gurnard in excess of 2lbs this was followed by half a dozen undersize whiting. As the sea ebbed the wind against tide made for lumpy conditions, however whiting continued to come aboard along with 3 sizable dabs. So with 5 species coming aboard including several fish for the pot they headed for the locks. The Raider 18 has exceptionally good freeboard and they are renowned for being a dry boat as this boat proved in the choppy conditions.
Great photo of the Sovereign Light Tower, Eastbourne
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September 5, 2011
Tues 30-8-11
We finished the month on a high. Jim took John Lee and his mate Barry, who hadn’t fished off Eastbourne before, for a go at the plaice. They were rewarded with a catch of 16 fish but several of the smaller ones went back to fight another day. Barry caught three fish once he got the hang of it and will no doubt be out again. John took the helm as Jim is getting him up to scratch so he can hire it to take some mates out at a later date. Despite the massive 7.9 tide fishing was quite easy and only a couple of leads were lost. Spreaders proved the right rigs with green, black and orange beads as attractors.
John and Barry with some great plaice
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September 4, 2011
Friday 26th August
Jim’s brother John asked if he could take his grandson Chris out to catch a plaice. Chris is off to study in Warsaw University this month and fancied hooking one of the red spotted beauties before he goes. The trio set off in the 8am lock despite a very wet day forecast and headed out east of the tower. Fishing with spreaders baited with lug, rag and squid strip they were soon into fish. First one fell to Chris, a small plaice but it was a start. Then John had a small codling before the plaice came on the feed as the rain poured down. In all they had 11 plaice up to 3lbs and despite not feeling too good, Chris rounded the session off with a 5lb codling to go with a 2lb plaice he boated. They headed in at 1pm thoroughly soaked but happy with their impressive catch.
John and Chris with plaice
Jim with plaice
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August 30, 2011
Sat 20th August
Nice flatfish!
Tommy and Kelly had a super day afloat in ‘Lucky Git’, armed with a little inside info from Jim. They headed off to an area west of the Light tower and were soon rewarded with a decent plaice. Kelly on her first fishing trip took some time to find her sea legs but after a few more nice plaice, the sun came out, the sea went flat calm and she recovered to enjoy the experience. Amongst the plaice they had a plump codling then a small bass before finishing up catching several bream near the Royal Sovereign Buoy. The couple were enjoying themselves so much they contacted Jim and agreed to stay out for an extra hour, returning with a good bag of fish and a bit of sunburn as well.
Monday 22nd,
Steve Venton and his crew didn’t fair quite so well after their early drive down from London. They did pick up a plaice straight away and followed this up with a small codling. Later the trio added some bream, pout and mackerel to their catch. They must have enjoyed the experience as they were soon back on line to book another trip. When they come down in September there could well be some better cod and whiting to add to the range of species available.
Coming into the lock
Jim
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August 2, 2011
Friday 29th July.
The boat was out on Friday 29th with Jim and Graham aboard. They pushed out to try the wrecks 12 miles out but found south easterly against the tide made fishing difficult. They only found one cod and the best fish of the day was a 12lb pollack for Graham. He was so pleased to have beaten Jim on the day.
Monday 1st August
A Tunbridge Wells angler booked Jim to act as fishing guide and it was just as well as the tides were a massive 7.6m making many of the deep water marks unsuitable to fish. Using sand eels they picked up some pollack on the Horse and Tony got himself a bass. Nice present for his birthday. A spell at anchor produced some black bream and dogs then they had an hour in the goldmine near Beachy Head catching some small plaice and dabs finishing the day on 11 species including a tub gurnard.
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July 29, 2011
John Lynch Bream
John Lynch from Perth, Australia travelled nearly 9,000 miles to the UK and managed to grab a day fishing with Harwell Charters self-drive boats in Eastbourne. John caught 12 different species of fish and was amazed at the quality of the fishing. ‘I thought the English Channel was polluted with no fish, I could’t have been more wrong!’ he said. This black bream estimated at 4lb was caught on a wreck 10 miles offshore.
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July 8, 2011
Sunday eve 3-7-11
You must get down to Eastbourne and get out in the ‘Lucky Git’ as the cod are definitely on the feed. On Sunday (3rd July) Jim Whippy took keen shore angler John Lee out to show him what was possible from the boats. They hit the jackpot with a sunny 24 degrees and no wind all day. Jim took the boat out about 13 miles to the wrecks just inside the separation zone. Fishing from two and a half hours before high tide they were straight into fish using sidewinders on four foot long traces and just winding 5 slow turns up off the bottom. John was overjoyed at the fishing, catching his best ever pollack and best ever cod. When the tide eased off the fishing just faded but with nine cod from 4lb to around 7lbs and a couple of nice pollack they called it a day.
John Lee with a fine pollack
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May 15, 2011
For the first time in living memory Eastbourne has enjoyed a spring run of cod. Not the ones 20 miles out on the wrecks but on the inshore marks from 4 to 6 miles out. Harwell Charters self-drive fishing boat has managed to get amongst them despite being out of the water for some time getting updated for coding.
The fish run from 3lbs to 8lbs and are falling to artificial such as Sidewinders and Eddystone evolutions. White and pearl lures have proved very successful along with imitation mackerel and blue backed with white body. Best time is on the ebbing tide and the lures can be worked on the drift using a four foot trace of 25lb fluorocarbon line. Weights of 4oz to 8 oz are all that’s needed.
Nearly all the reef marks have been producing so try the horse, long shoal, sovereign shoal and the head ledge. On Friday morning (13th May ) I was out with Graham Bird and his father Geoff. Despite being on the wrong side of 80 years Geoff ended up with a 6lb cod, a bass and 7 pollack and these all fell to a 3 muppet paternoster with the red and black lures working best. We rigged him up with this as he was losing rather a lot of lures on the bottom but it certainly worked for him. Graham and I landed four more cod to the box plus a few pollack but it was Geoff who had the biggest smile at the end of the day.
A note for anyone thinking of booking the Raider we only used £16 worth of fuel despite dashing around several marks up to 6 miles offshore.
Jim Whippy
Geoff Bird with two of his catch
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April 29, 2011
Well, we’re nearly there. Isobel sold much quicker than expected and was delivered to her new owner this month. We are now operating a Raider 18 cuddy called ‘Lucky Git’ (she already had this name and some say it’s unlucky to change a boats name!). We are in the final stages of coding and once this is complete I will update this page with the details.
On the training side, things are really hotting up with courses quickly filling up. One of the most popular is the RYA VHF DSC course. A radio is an essential safety tool but knowing how to use it is equally important. In fact, if you don’t hold a certificate you are only legally entitled to use the radio for emergencies. So with the season underway it’s time to get prepared:
Current dates available are posted in the training section of our website.
Please get in touch if you’d like to book a place or discuss further.
All the best,
All at STS/Harwell Charters
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February 6, 2011
To all our customers. The cod season ended rather abruptly and rather early this year. They were there one minute and in the blink of an eye they were gone! That said some great fish were caught this season and I can’t wait until the cod season starts again.
Inshore, things will be quiet now until the end of March but there there are plenty of dabs to be caught. On the right tackle they are great fun to catch and can be taken literally outside the marina. Our good friends Jim Whippy and Graham Bird had over seventy in one short session last week!
On a sad note, we have sold Stonefisher. The cost of running two large boats just didn’t add up. The picture shows her leaving Eastbourne last week to begin her new life in Falmouth.
We are in the process of getting another boat coded. As soon as we have everything in place I will update the web pages. The sale of Stonefisher has prompted a review of our fleet in general so at this point I am only taking bookings for Isobel until the end of May. We fully intend to replace her but until we know more I don’t want to dissapoint people.
There you have it. I’ll get back to the decorating now and look forward to the longer nights and screaming reels!
Alex
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