Latest Fishing Reports: Kelley's Hero Charters
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28/09/2021
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
28 Sep 2021 by Ian Dale
So, we have finally managed to grab a chance to sit down and write a report on the fishing.
This season has passed so quick since 1st April.
We have seen the business move from Hayling Island to Gosport. This seems to have been the best move for the business.
We are able to fish different marks, and get out more as we can fish the sheltered waters of The Solent.
Our half day trips have proved quite popular, in fact we couldn't fit everybody in like we wished. As there hasn't been any mackerel available, we have used our time on the half day trips, to anchor closer marks, and look for what fish were there. This proved popular with many trips throwing up rays, smoothounds, bream and congers, as well as the normal dogfish, and the bonus bass every now and then.
This year seems to be a bumper year for bass, many days have seen upwards of 60 bass caught, obviously we don't keep this amount. Even thought the limit is 2 fish per angler, not every angler keeps 2, and most are returned to fight another day.
WE had our first 12 hour anchoring the wrecks over night trip this year, and that was a great success and something we aim to repeat throughout next year, with bullhuss rays, and many congers coming to the boat, especially as it got dark they came alive.
Our sole trips have got of to a great start with plenty sole around, as well as 10 other species on that trip including a flounder which was a nice surprise.
The bream seemed to take a while to come in and when they were here, they were only in for a few weeks, but they were here for just enough time to have our annual bream competition. This was a great success with many bream caught.
We only did a few turbot trips down to the east, however the fish seem to have dwindled down there.
The offshore reef trips are as popular as ever and are producing some cracking fish.
Anchoring the offshore banks are throwing up some nice blonde rays regularly, as well as some nice bullhuss and tope.
The tope seemed to come in early this year and disappear offshore sooner than normal.
Pollack seem to be a thing of the past with only a few trips producing at the beginning of the season.
We only managed one away trip to Weymouth this year, the rest were cancelled, but hopefully things improve for next year.
Overall i think we would say that we have had a very successful season, and we hope that the winter throws up some nice fishing too.
Where we are now in Gosport, shorter trips for the cod are definitely required.
Tight Lines
Kelleys Hero Team -
08/02/2017
Fishing Report by michael button
8 Feb 2017 by michael button
Spent yesterday out wrecking with Ian Dale and Bex on Kellys Hero 3. First time out for me on Ian's new boat and its a peach. Beamy, well equipped would be an understatement. Comfortable on the cruise out, fast , she averaged 17 knots at 2000 rpm. We spent a few hours steaming for distant wrecks. First wreck had a lot of fish on it, with multiple fish coming on each drift for the party on board, which included Sean Heath skipper of Great White 2. Rattle back white eels were doing the trick , I had five fish on the first wreck with a sprinkling of good double figure fish to other anglers.
When the action slowed down a bit, Ian moved off a few miles to another wreck and we were straight back into a good stamp of fish, blue and white red gill evolution accounting for the better fish, the fish box was filling up and when action started to slow we set off for another wreck, with the tide starting to slow down the fishing dropped off but we were still taking the odd fish or two, so Ian moved to another close wreck and I managed to winkle one more Pollack out on a red gill pilchard fished very slowly.
All in all a great days fishing, had 10 Pollack with the biggest knocking the double figure mark. Went home with a lot of fish, very tired, and happy knowing Ian's trips give great value for money if you fish hard. -
15/01/2017
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
15 Jan 2017 by Ian Dale
Hi Guys,
Happy New Year to you all, hope you all had a good Christmas, and have managed to eat the last of the cold Christmas meats and mince pies that were left over.
Well it certainly has been a funny few weeks since we wrote our last blog, we seem to have gone from a very mild winter to a freezing one in less than a couple of days, “Brrrrr”!!
It seems that for us the cod fishing has slowed up somewhat, we have gone from our best day this season of 4 cod boated in a day to scratching around to find one lucky one, in saying that thought, the lone cod we have been finding have been a better size and better quality of fish.
One of the good points of the inshore ground fishing, is that the congers seem to have declined, I know they keep the rods nodding, but they do get a pain when you aren’t fishing for them and some of the anglers were losing quite a bit of gear with them. Shouldn’t moan really as it keeps them catching!
We have landed some nice size whiting over the winter this year, some reaching near on 4lb. The whiting fishing this year has certainly blossomed compared to the last few years of many pin whiting. Whiting was on the menu 90% of the time over the last few weeks, YUM!
Now, the other funny thing this winter, it seems the water temperature hasn’t dropped as much as normal, meaning that our wrecking season has kicked off a little earlier than expected. We have managed to find some nice Pollack out there so far, and we do hope that this will continue well into the wrecking season.
Come the end of January our winter cod competition will be ending, the leader at the minute is Mark Lennox, with a cod of 18lb. The winner will receive one space on our inshore trips and £100 tackle voucher for Allans Marine.
We still have some spaces left to be in with a chance of beating this, they are:
Jan 19th: 4 spaces
Jan 27th: 4 Spaces
Jan 30th: 6 spaces
These trips are £50 each. Please get in touch for details and booking.
On the 1st of February, our new competition will be starting, this will run until 31st August. This will be for the biggest Pollack caught on board Kelley’s Hero. Likewise to the cod competition, the prize will be a space on one of our wrecking trips for the next season and a tackle voucher worth £150 for Allans Marine.
The spaces for wrecking over February are:
Feb 5th: 6 spaces
Feb 13th: 4 spaces
Feb 17th: 6 spaces
Feb 22nd: 7 spaces
Feb 25th: 5 Spaces
These trips are £75 each, and again please get in touch for details and booking.
Our Alderney trips are now filling up, available dates for these are:
May 4th-7th: 1 space
May 22nd-25th: 1 space
June 19th-22nd: 5 Spaces
July 3rd-6th: 6 spaces
July 14th-17th: 5 spaces
Aug 3rd-6th: 4 spaces
Prices for these trips are £375 per person, Plus your accommodation, you will also be required to pay £100 deposit
If you would like any more information on any of the trips we have here, please contact us on 07795 538933.
Tight Lines
Ian -
04/12/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
4 Dec 2016 by Ian Dale
Sorry we haven't written a blog for a while guys, but there has been a lot going on at Kelley's Hero. Since we last blogged, as many of you know we have bought a new boat. We now have a 11m South Catamaran, and we can carry 12 passengers. She is now back home in Southsea Marina and has already been put to work.
On the first trip since the last blog, we had a small group book the boat, they hadn't been out fishing for a few years and they were really excited about getting out on the water. The only fault we could have picked with the day is that we nearly ran out of bait by 2pm. Thankfully we caught enough live bait to keep us going. We ended the day with nearly 300 whiting upto 3lb, and 3 cod up to 12lb. It was certainly a great day with some great weather to go with it.
The trip after that one wasn't as successful, and after staying out and trying for 10 hours, our patience wore a bit thin and we ended up going back in with no cod.
The new boat had to come down from Hartlepool, which is 375 nautical miles, this should have taken 24 hours non stop. As it was, it took 3 days over a week due to the weather, We arrived back into Southsea Marina at 0130 in the morning, and we had a trip going out at 8. So it was all hands to deck, getting the new liferafts on, and all the gear swapped over.
We did manage to get out at 0800, but the fishing wasn't the greatest, with only whiting, pout, dogfish and a conger to be seen, but at least our anglers got out and were able to test the new boat out.
We had a few evening trips booked in over the month, no cod caught, just a few colds, whiting congers, rays and the usual dogfish. These night trips are very popular and are becoming a regular thing.
Many of you may know that we have a competition running for the biggest cod of the season, which runs from October to January 31st. The winner receives a free inshore trip aboard Kelley's Hero, and £100 voucher for Allans Marine. The last weekend we managed out, we had a new leader, this was Gerry, with his first ever cod, weighing 16lb 7oz.
One that competition ends, we will then have one for our wrecking season, with the biggest Pollack winning a similiar prize.
Things have been very busy, with the new boat arriving, and christmas coming up etc etc. But we are now sorting our bookings out for next year. We are doing Alderney trips, Weymouth Trips, and 2 day trips to Brighton. As well as all our normal wrecking and inshore trips.
If anyone would like any information on any dates etc please feel free to text or email with what you are after
iandale@kelleys-hero.com
07795 538933
We look forward to seeing you soon,
Ian -
04/11/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
4 Nov 2016 by Ian Dale
The weather has definitely been a little bit kinder to us this month, we haven’t managed all of our trips but the ones we have, we have had to head up The Solent. As before this paid off on most of our trips.
Not only have we been busy with day trips, but the nights trips are also getting popular.
We have managed a few of these now, not all productive but still nice to get out there and try.
We produced a lot of whiting, pout and a few dogfish, with the smallest dogfish we have ever seen i think.
We had a run of nice weather last week, and we managed to find a few nice fish, with the biggest one around the 12lb mark. The whiting have been in in numbers, and we have also seen a bass or two and a few nice rays as well.
We are running a competition for this Cod season which runs until January 31st, that is, the biggest cod caught aboard Kelley’s Hero wins one free individuals spot on the boat and £100 voucher for Allens Marine.
If you would like to take part in the competition, please feel free to contact us and book on to one of our individuals days. They are filling up fast so be sure to get in and have a chance at our winter giveaway.
Call or text: 07795 538933
Ian -
14/10/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
14 Oct 2016 by Ian Dale
So the plaicing season has just about come to an end for us now, and it's time to start looking some of those winter cod. The plaice weren't as prolific as previous years but the fish that we were getting were in better condition and a lot of them were better sizes. The biggest place we had on board was a 3lb 12oz fish. During our place trips, we had a nice number of brill come up, the biggest being 4lb. Normally we only see around one or two a year on these but this year we had near on 20.
On the 17th September we headed out on our first evening trip for sole. It was hard work but we managed to find a few. With the biggest weighing in at 2lb 4oz. The rest were smaller. We had red mullet, bass, bream, silver eels, dogfish, pout and whiting as well that night. The fish didn't stop biting all night.
The first weekend that we started for cod, we definitely found them, we landed 4, up to 13lb. There wasn't a quiet spell all day and we ended up with conger eel, silver eel, pout, whiting, dogfish, bullhuss, smoothound and of course, cod. It sure is nice to see them this time of year and makes a nice change to all the rushing around done in previous months. Lets hope this is the start to a good cod season.
Monday evening saw another one of our evening trips for sole. Unfortunately we didn't see a sole, but we had lots of activity including cod whiting and pout.
Lots has been happening at Kelleys Hero, for those of you that don;t know, the boat will be getting upgraded to an 11m South catamaran. This will be able to fish 12 comfortably. It will then allow us to do Alderney runs and Weymouth runs next year. If anybody would like any any information on these trips please feel free to contact me.
So lets hope we manage to get out and find some more cod, and some more pb's.
Don't forget if you want to get out fishing, call 07795 538933
Tight Lines
Ian -
09/09/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
9 Sep 2016 by Ian Dale
We haven’t had much to report on over the last few weeks. A lot of our trips had to be cancelled due to the heavy weather that was coming in. We had to cancel a few of our plaice trips, our last wrecking trip of the season and an evening sole fishing.
Thankfully we have managed to get them all to book again. Lets hope the weather agrees.
Our first trip we headed on was a Plaice trip, we had a boat full of eager fisherman waiting to see a few spots. Once we got there it was slack water so it took a while for the bites to start. As the tide picked up so did the amount of fish that was caught. We saw plenty place up to the 3lb mark, a brill of 2lb 5oz, and a few mackerel. Everybody caught and had plenty, and we returned a load to fight another day.
On the 26th Kelley’s Hero had an appearance from Total Sea Fishing Magazine, we took them out on another trip looking for Plaice mainly, with the aim to go hunting for a bass as the tide picked up. Yet again as we got there the tide was just about slack and we had to wait for it to pick up to get some bites. The plaice were hard work and after a flurry, it went dead again. So after a lot of thought, we decided to head out and see if we could catch some bass whilst the tide was right. In an hours fishing we had around 20 bass, all bar two were sizable. This made the day. On the way in from this trip we had the rescue helicopter come along and practice putting a man on the deck. That was the perfect way to end a days fishing.
We had a couple more trips over the next few weeks. Again the plaice were slow on the ebb and whilst the tide was slack, but we had to hit it hard whilst the tide was flooding to get the most out of our day. The biggest plaice was 3lb and we also saw a nice red mullet of 11oz.
Things are looking up and we have the winter cod fishing to look forward to. Bookings are coming in and the diary is filling up nicely. If you would like to book a last minute plaice trip or a winter cod trip please get in contact via email: iandale@kelleys-hero.com or call: 07795538933 -
18/08/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
18 Aug 2016 by Ian Dale
August has been a funny month so far, but then again it always is.
We started the month with a good run of mackerel and a few different species showing to where we are now with the inshore trips being hard work.
As the inshore trips are now getting harder, we have decided to focus our trips on the Plaice fishing. We have done a few Plaice trips this month with many nice plaice showing. Along with Plaice we have had a nice few Brill and turbot. This is nice to see as last year we only had 2 brill altogether, and this year we are doing this per trip.
The last plaice trip we did, didn’t end very well for us as the boat decided it was going to spring a leak, and as many of you know this is never good on a boat, so we had to head in early. We had a great start to the day though, the weather was calm, the sun was shining and the plaice were biting.
We have done 2 inshore trips this month so far. The first one which was earlier in the month wasn’t as hard as the latest one. We have had species such as smoothounds, undulates, thorn backs, blondes, and small eyed rays, bream, mackerel, plenty of scad and tope.
The second trip was very hard work and we only had a handful of mackerel, scad, 2 dogfish and a smoothound.
Two other trips we did this month so far, were the Cowes week fireworks, and a half day trip.
We headed up towards Cowes for some mackerel fishing, before heading to our spot to watch the fireworks and eat our hot dogs. We caught a few mackerel scad and a herring.
The half day trip produced many dogfish, a nice thornback ray and some smoothounds. The mackerel weren’t playing again but the scad were. The only thing we have noticed about the mackerel we have had this year is that they have been perfect bait size.
Looking forward at the weather it looks like we are going to have to cancel our evening trips that we had scheduled and our last wrecking trip of the season. We will be putting on another evening trip or two but not another wrecking trip. Seems our bait freezer is going to have to stay full for another few days.
We will be mainly plaice fishing for the remainder of August, if you would like a chance to catch a nice plaice, brill or the odd turbot, then please call on 07795 538933
Ian :-) -
31/07/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
31 Jul 2016 by Ian Dale
We have had a busy week this week, mackerel trips, wrecking and inshore trips.
Firstly, what a pleasant surprise it was waking up to find some mackerel at the beginning of the week. We headed out of the harbor and literally ran straight into them before we could even get into deeper water. They were bubbling on the surface and the birds were going mad. The shoals around us were absolutely amazing to see. We haven't seen this for a good few years.
Thursday's weather wasn't looking great in the afternoon, so we decided that we would have an early start, we left the marina at 0630. Once we got out of the harbor, it didn't look that nice on the horizon, so we headed straight for shelter. The first thing we did was drift for some fresh mackerel to use as bait, after about half an hour we had a bucket full of bait and table fish. We put the anchor down and the first fish we had in 10 minutes was a bass of around 3lb. Over the duration of the day we had another 2 bass (the biggest of 5lb), and 16 undulate rays (biggest being 16.5lb). We headed back in with the weather getting worse, having had a great day. But being a charter boat we have to take the rough with the smooth. We had a great day fishing, but the downside was we lost our anchor. So off we went and had to buy a new anchor, chain and rope :-(.
Saturday we headed mid channel, to try and find some of the late pollack and cod off of the wrecks, it certainly was hard work. We tried wreck after wreck, and were begining to lost sight of our goal. Eventually we managed to find a wreck, that produced some nice cuckoo wrasse, pollack, and a nice ling. We ended the day with a bit of drifting for bass, and had around 7 or 8, the biggest being 7lb+. The weather chopped up a little bit so we had to head inshore sooner than expected. After the 110 miles we did, the net around the prop we had and the weather that came up, we were glad to get back in and head to the bar. Still a good day had by all.
Sunday we had another inshore trip. This started very slow, even though we did have a couple of good bites and fish that came off half way up. We moved and waited for the tide to get away. Im glad we did, as we managed to find some smoothounds, undulate rays, and spotted rays. We did have some fresh mackerel to start with so that helped in finding the fish. The weather picked up again in the afternoon as they said it would. So again we had to head for shelter and try and find some more mackerel to take back in with us for dinner. As it was still pretty much slack tide, we didn't find too many. However after quite an eventful week, Kelleys Hero is back in for a rest for one day, and back out again on Tuesday.
So apart from a bit of hard work, a few glitches in the plan, a great week was had!
Ian -
25/07/2016
Fishing Report by Ian Dale
25 Jul 2016 by Ian Dale
So, Kelley’s Hero has been on a variety of trips since the last blog. We have had days inshore where it has been flat calm, and some days offshore which were as slow as anything.
The wrecking trips we have been on have been hard work recently, with each trip getting harder and harder, and the fish getting further away. When the weather eventually let us out on the wrecks, we have had to end our day on the Bass to save ourselves. Even though when we finally found the cod and the pollack they were a nice size etc and in good condition.
When we fished inshore over the last few weeks, we have struggled to find any mackerel for our bait, but thanks to our friends the hardback crab, we have managed to find a few smoothounds Among the other species such as rays, bream, tope and wrasse. As the tides have been building, during the tide run we have headed out to try and bag a few bass. This has worked nicely with our customers. The bass we are seeing on board have all been on avaerage 5lb.
As it is now nearly the end of July, we thought it would be a good time to go and try and catch some Plaice. We took our first trip last Friday, and well what can we say, we found our first spots of the year. The plaice are in very good condition and fighting fit.
And at last we can now announce the mackerel seem to have arrived. About time is all we can say.
Kelley’s Hero has now been out of the water and blasted off, ready to go and catch some more plaice, bass, mackerel and whatever else it is you are after.
Please take a look at our schedule and see when we are available to get you out fishing.
Ian
