The weather had been a nightmare recently for boat anglers – storm after storm has swept in from the west making it extremely difficult to pick a day to get out fishing. So it was a great relief to learn that finally we’d managed to book an elusive day with light winds and good tides to do some winter cod fishing.
Our boat for the day was the very comfortable BW Seacat 11m Catamaran Silver Spray II skippered by top skipper Sam Cumming. This is a fantastic boat with loads of space and best of all an enthusiastic skipper determined for you to catch some fish. The boat is really well equipped with all the creature comforts you would expect as well as full safety gear and the best tackle. Silver Spray’s home port is Poole and an early start got us down there just in time to pick up our bait from the quayside, board Silver Spray and head off to the cod grounds.
Tactics for the day were a couple of squid mounted on a Pennell rig on a 100lb leader, all bound together with bait elastic. There is a full list of gear used at the end of this article.
The fishing started slowly with a series of dogfish, (luckily not in plague proportions) followed by a couple of nice rays and a small smoothound. Rok Max customer, Dave Harper, was first to score with the cod landing a nice 7lb fish on his Daiwa Kenzaki Rod and Avet SX Reel set-up. By now it was lunchtime and Sam suggested a move to an area closer to the Isle of Wight. After a quick go to see if there were any bass were at home, we headed to an area with a sandy bottom to resume cod fishing. With the tide flowing again it was not too long before we were in business. Everyone on board landed a nice cod or two with some bonus quality whiting to add to the bag.
All too soon the light started to disappear on us and it was sadly time pack up, start the engines and head for home after a fun packed day.
A big thanks to Sam for providing a great days fishing – we hope to be out on Silver Spray II again before too long. You can find details of how to book with them via our South West Charter Fishing Boat partners page. We had a great day with the added bonus of some delicious cod fillets to fry for dinner – perfect!
Here’s the various tackle items we recommend for winter cod fishing:
- Daiwa Super Kenzaki Boat Rod
- Daiwa Saltist Boat Rod
- Avet MXJ 5.8 Magic Cast Boat Reel
- Avet SX 5.3 Boat Reel
- Daiwa J-Braid X8 Braided Fishing Line
- Sufix Superior Mono Fishing Leader
- Rok Max Sea Booms
- Rosco Barrel Swivels
- Sakuma Manta Sea Fishing Hooks
- Sakuma Bait Elastic Thread
