I had the most frustrating day out boat fishing yesterday on the Weymouth wrecks for large Pollock ! The weather was like a mid summers day and at one stage we where down from flotation suits to T shirts it was that warm, seas were near flat calm and the crew some I had fished with before were a great bunch of dedicated anglers.

So what was so frustrating you may ask, first I had two new Fishzone rods to test out and the Fishzone LW20 super fast multiplier so there straight off is using two new rods and reels too is an Omen. Ok so how does that cause frustration, in my years of experience and adding new rods and reels to my kit have I yet to christen a rod and reel on the first trip out and yesterday it was par for the course, No Fish !! Pollocks.

I had the Akita Japanese style 20lb class rod with the Spyder LW20 reel and 45lb braid as my primary rig. Using a 12″ plastic sea boom for fast drop with minimum tangles I put on a Red Gill original red and orange 175mm size on a long trace 2.5m approx and away I went.

We had ten anglers on the Katie Ann which is ok as it’s a good size cat 10m and loads of space with 4 along the back and three each side. So here is how it fished all day on every drift when the fish wanted to play, taking it in a clockwise direction looking towards the stern of the boat.

Angler 1 a novice and using the on board kit, 1 pollock and plenty of pouting, Angler 2, 2 decent Pollock and pouting, Angler 3, 6 good pollock plus pouting, Angler 4, 15 good Pollock, Angler 5, 25 good Pollock, Angler 6 10 good Pollock plus some pouting, Angler 7 8 good Pollock

Now we come to our side !!! Angler 8, 2 good pollock, Angler 9 O catch, Angler 10 ZILCH, NADA, NONE, ME !!! this has to be the worst boat trip I have ever had to not catch anything all day. What is even more frustrating I didn’t miss 1 drift due to my quick rigs of ready to fish out of the bag tackle, so even when I changed lures or caught the wreck I was still ready to drop when the skipper gave the order.

I tried everything to hit the fish and I did have plenty of snatches which in my own mind I would put down to pouting grabbing the Red Gill tails and letting go as Pollock usually don’t mess about with takes they can be quite vicious at times. Even the lures that the top catching anglers were using I had on the rig and still no fish for me.

Technique I used was to drop to the seabed and wind up 20/25 turns on a slow retrieve, similar in dropping onto the wreck same method. On a take I slowed the retrieve to try and induce a second attack. Past experiences with Pollock fishing what methods and tackle I used worked fine and returned good catch rates, but not yesterday.

Moral is don’t test new rods all day, take the old faithfulls to catch for the freezer and test the new kit after that. Other than not ctaching fish the two rods and reels worked well, the other rod is not even in the store yet and it’s the Mako sport 8ft boat rod which will be up soon with images and video and for less than thirty quid you can’t go far wrong with them.

The reels were terrific as I expected so the matched pair of LW20 and the LW12 are in my kit already,  just need to catch the FISH don’t I to confirm this kit as A1 go and buy them boys, must have kit, perhaps next time eh.