Sea fishing off Newquay

Posted on September 24, 2007
Filed Under - leisure |

Recently I went fishing for the first time - sea angling, to be precise. I booked on one of the regular trips out of Newquay harbour. Our boat was the Mystique with her skipper Wayne, a nice chap. I was the only woman on board out of a group of fourteen. Most of the guys were on trips with work mates. We motored about 4-5 miles up the coast and anchored opposite Mawgan Porth. On the way, we put out lines to catch some mackerel as bait. Mackerel seem to be quite easy to catch: all you need is a line with something shiny on it. I caught a couple of mackerel so I was quite pleased. However, the aim was to catch some bigger fish. As it turned out, I was the first to catch one, landing a nice pollock for my dinner! Skipper Wayne kindly filleted it for me, but not before I’d had the obligatory proud photo.

However, I didn’t manage to get another bite. Not everyone managed to catch a fish. There were a couple more pollocks, a couple of dogfish, wrasse etc. Someone even landed a cuttlefish. They are fascinating creatures - this one was changing colour as it sat on the deck. When Wayne threw it back in the water it let out a huge amount of ink and changed colour again before returning to the depths. Not nice to eat though!

When we set off to return to harbour I asked Wayne if I could steer the boat and he said yes. So I drove most of the way back, which was fun. When we got back to harbour, several seals popped up to see if we had any fish to give them. They are like dogs, they sit there looking at you with huge eyes until you feed them. They are a real fixture in Newquay and even have their own website.

I’m not sure if I’m a convert to fishing yet. It’s great when you catch a fish but it can be boring when you’re not getting a bite. I might try a bit of shore fishing next. People apparently fish off Porth headland so maybe I could get some of that action.

Stumble it!

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