View Fishing Report
-
14/05/2025
Fishing Report by Andy Savage
on Sea Urchin IIl (Whitby, North Yorkshire)
14 May 2025 by Andy Savage
Report on-board Sea Urchin IIl
It’s been great to get a couple of days fishing in; even though the conditions haven’t been the easiest with the Spring Tides.
Yesterday I had a lovely mixed group aboard with differing levels of angling experience. Light winds were forecast for most of the day, which is ideal on a 5.2m tide. The plan of attack was to try wrecks around slack water and rough ground when the tide was running. First stop was a wreck three miles from the harbour and after three drifts and only one small Codling, we moved on.
The next one yielded a few more fish, with Richard Gotts taking a nice 4lb Codling as the biggest. There were quite a few lads getting stuck each drift, so a change to rough ground was required. We spent the next few hours fishing the rough ground. Firstly the five mile ground (which was quiet), then we pushed out to nine miles to lose as much tide as possible to help the lads who were struggling to control their gear.
Odd fish kept coming up, mainly Codling and a few Pouting to the baited Hokkai’s. Experienced angler Steve Scott spent most of the day fishing Shads and picked up fish consistently. The biggest problem for most of the other lads was streaming lines…..
It’s essential when lines are streaming on rough ground to continually keep winding up and resetting the gear during a drift. The vast majority of bites come when the lines are almost vertical, so just dropping down and dragging the gear along somewhere near the bottom rarely yields much at all, as the bait flies along the ground and the fish don’t get time to find it. Despite my advice and encouragement it was certainly tough fishing for the less experienced anglers who didn’t quite grasp the importance of the constant resetting of the gear. That said, there were plenty of laughs with Dave and Del keeping us entertained.
Today was one of my own fishing days. The forecast wasn’t great at all, with 12-14mph Northerlies for most of the day. If it had been a regular 10hr trip with anglers I didn’t know, I would definitely have cancelled. The conditions weren’t dangerous, but they were definitely going to be challenging. Friends Ian Kellock and Simon West were still happy to have a go, so we got the 0700hrs bridge and planned to spend our time fishing Shads on rough ground for the majority of the day.
Taking account of the fresh Northerly wind as we left the harbour, it was obvious that we wouldn’t be fishing any wrecks today. Instead, we opted to just push straight out to the nine mile ground and spend the day drifting.
After a sloppy hours run, we were going over the seven mile ground and decided to have a break and try a couple of drifts to see if there was anyone at home…..bad move! After only a Gurnard and Pouting we continued to the original destination!
Once we arrived on the nine mile, we set up a drift and away we went. The Ebb tide was running and the Northerly wind was pushing us back to land. We were all fishing with Shads and it took next to no time at all before we started picking off fish. With the big tide and strong wind, we had only 3-4 minutes to fish vertically (and get a bite) before winding up and resetting. Once the tide was running, we all worked out our routine and caught fairly consistently on a host of different colour and sizes of Shads.
I set up each drift on the outer edges of the ground and we just let it run for probably half an hour or so, covering loads of different areas. Between the three of us there weren’t many dry spells where one of us wasn’t bringing up a fish. It was brilliant fun and we had the usual mickey-taking. Simon got a good ribbing about his Westin Flatfish shads, then dropped down and caught a Codling on them to keep us quiet!!
We fished on until we lost the Ebb Tide in the afternoon and the fishing slowed up again as the wind built. After a brilliant day it was time to run back home with the wind behind us. We didn’t catch anything massive, but we caught well all day between us. On the Shad front, no colour particularly stood out, no size stood out, but a well presented shad got taken willingly. I love mastering challenging conditions, so today was definitely right up there as one of my favourites.
View Boats Page
UPCOMING INDIVIDUAL SPACES ONBOARD Sea Urchin IIl
View Full Charter AvailabilityFri 05/09/2025 Autumn Festival 1 Space Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 4.82m Jeff Turner - x 1 Juned Islam - x 3 Mark Gilbert - x 5View details Wed 01/10/2025 3 Spaces Available Wrecking Trip - 4.13m Ben Cope - x 2 Derek Coulson - x 3 Robert Wojnarowicz - x 2View details Mon 06/10/2025 6 Spaces Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 5.58m Volker Bartlau - x 4View details Tue 07/10/2025 7 Spaces Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 5.86m Will sail with 4 anglers. Dave & Del - x 2 Dave Sharp - x 1View details Sun 19/10/2025 4 Spaces Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 5.31m Aaron Soloman - x 5 Jamie Ping - x 1View details Sat 25/10/2025 3 Spaces Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 5.21m Jimmy Yeung - x 1 Dave Pickup - x 3 Calvin Dipper - x 3View details Sun 26/10/2025 6 Spaces Available Wreck & Reef Trip - 5.01m Derek Hopkinson - x 4View details Thu 30/10/2025 5 Spaces Available Wrecking Trip - 4.27m Ian Kellock - x 1 Dave Sharp - x 1 Robin Lever - x 2 Carl Madin - x 1View details Sat 01/11/2025 5 Spaces Available Uptiding Trip - 4.68m Will sail with 4 anglers Jimmy Yeung - x 1 Dmitrijs Lobanovs - x 1 Greg Ince - x 1View details Tue 04/11/2025 6 Spaces Available Uptiding Trip - 5.57m Will sail with 4 anglers. Dave & Del - x 2View details
