Whitby Fishing Trips

Anyone thinking of taking a fishing trip on the Yorkshire Coast these days must get very confused quite quickly. Not only are there 20 plus boats in some of the ports like Whitby, but they also offer offer a diversity of fishing times and targeted fish species. Some boats seem to fish 10 or 12 hours a day for cod only, whilst some of the other boats fish short trips of 3 hours and target other species such as mackerel, whiting, bass and some cod when they do venture closer to shore. Another consideration for the boat angler is what tackle should I need. Do you need to bring your own tackle or does the skipper provide it ? Do you need a heavy or light boat fishing rod and do you need to use braid or monofilament line.

After thinking abut all the above and the difficulties the novice boat angler faces when he comes to places like Whitby I decided to write a few pages on the Whitby Sea Anglers website about boat fishing in Whitby. Anyone who wishes to find out more should visit one of the following 4 pages.

Boat Fishing - Hints, Tips And General Information. - This pages covers all aspects of boat fishing and contains numerous links to information on Wreck fishing, uptiding, lists of local boats, polls of what rod is best, what tackle to use, bait or artificial lures etc.

Whitby Charter Boats - A full list of all the Whitby charter boats including contact information.

Whitby Fishing Trips - All the things you will need to know when booking a Whitby Fishing Trip.

Whitby Angling Festival - All the information and updates from the UK's biggest boat fishing festival.

We Have Moved To The North East Fishing News Site

Hi there,

The contents of this blog have been moved to a new site on the Whitby sea anglers domain entitles north east fishing news. All New posts will be made on the new domain which can be found by clicking here :

http://www.whitbyseaanglers.co.uk/north-east-fishing-news/

Sea Urchin Whitby

Sea Urchin was built in Whitby some 40 or more years ago. The boat is still going strong and now under the guidance of a very experienced local skipper is taking daily fishing trips from Whitby.

With fishing at a Whitby currently at a 10 year high and large amounts of all fish being landed including cod, what better time to take a fishing trip from Whitby. If its a great days angling with a friendly skipper your after then Sea Urchin is the boat for you.

Sea Urchin is licensed to carry five passengers and she is ideally suited to smaller fishing parties, be it seasoned anglers, novices, families, all are welcome on either short three hour trips, six, eight, ten, or even. twelve hour trips,
Working seven days a week on a 20 mile cop from Whitby, your skipper (Mick) along with all the modern electronics will do his darned best to get you on the fish,

For details of fishing trips, wildlife watching on an evening and pleasure trips at Whitby please visit the sea urchin page on the Whitby sea anglers website by clicking here.

Holderness coast fishing well again for smoothound, bass and codling.

Well known Holderness angler Chris Mack hit the shore again this week and made some exceptional catches of smoothhound, bass and codling. Results for the nights fishing was :

Macky = 13 hounds to 9lb 1oz and a 3.5lb cod

Mark = 13 hounds and 2 bass

Please read more here - Holderness Smoothound fishing

Whitby fishing forum - hall of fame

The members of the Whitby fishing forum will now be competing for a place in the forum members hall of fame. The idea was thought up by local angler and forum moderator Ray Maddison (aka Ramrod) and sees anglers who report their catches on the forum finding their way into a hall of fame on the main site of the Whitby sea anglers.

There are several categories with top ten places for bass, cod, pollock, coalfish, and flounder caught from the shore. To enter the forum members much catch weigh and photograph a fish from the shore then report there catch in the forum.

At the moment Chris Mack (macky) is leading the bass section of the hall of fame with his personnel best 8 pounds bass caught from a mark on the Holderness coast. The cod section is currently being led by Tim Wright (aka Ringer) from Staithes with his personal best cod of 8 pounds caught from the beach at Runswick bay. In thye flounder section young Jay Kilpatrick from Whitby is setting the pace with his first ever flounder, a fine fish weighing well in excess of 1 and a half pounds.

To read the forums hall of fame please visit :

http://www.whitbyseaanglers.co.uk/hall-of-fame.php

Current leader in the bass section Chris Mack



Jay Kilpatrick with his pb flounder



Tim Wright with his Runswick caught cod

New bye-law means anglers must have permit to collect peeler crabs

A new bye law has been introduced by the north eastern sea fisheries committee (NESFC) under which individuals must now have a permit to be able to collect velvet crabs for use as bait.

Members of the Whitby fishing forum are astounded by the new law and have expressed deep concern at the withdrawal of their right to collect some baits from the shore without the need for a permit.

Rob q from the whitby fishing forum says :

If that is true as you say, it will have a massive impact on NE anglers, It was bad enough losing the right to use edible peelers legally. They got it right in the article when they mention the law being "sneaked in through the back door" !!
We are not allowed to collect a few crabs for bait for our own personal use, as has been done by generations before, whilst the french pair trawlers hammer up and down every day within view of the same foreshores depleting our inshore fish stocks

To read all the comments on the new crabbing bye law please visit this link :

NESFC - PEELER CRAB LICENCE

Whitby Scars

After hearing about my mate Paul Lobley's encounter with a big bass whilst fishing at Cowbar cliffs I headed out onto a local rock mark at Whitby scars in search of a bass. For the first 3 casts of the night the rod never even moved - not a sniff, so I had a little walk further towards Whitby. Due to limited time I only had 2 more casts and both resulted in good sized flounder but no bass - maybe my theory of the bigger bass frequenting the shallow rock marks is wrong, or perhaps I need to try at different states of tide.



Whilst returning to the car I noticed the Whitby inshore lifeboat heading into Saltwick corner near Saltwick nab so I stopped and watched for a while. I first I thought they were practising but then noticed they had picked 3 lads up off the rocks at the back of Saltwick scars. Judging by the tide state its is my guess they must have been stuck there since low water this morning which would have been around 10am. With the time when I saw them being 7 PM they must have been stuck in the back of there for some time - How frightening, especially with the swell in the water as it was today.

Small Boat Fishing In The Whitby Area

Small Boat Fishing - Article Kindly Submitted By Steerser From The Whitby Fishing Forum

I have been involved with boat fishing most of my life, but it wasn't till 1998 that I decided to get a boat of my own in partnership with my brother.

It was a locally built double ender in reasonable condition with a 8hp engine
We only had a few short trips in this boat before we realised that this boat wasn't what we wanted. It was a good little boat for working crab pots within a mile or so of the harbour, but no good for angling.

A lad from Staithes had just bought an Orkney 520 which is a 16 foot grp fishing boat, with a 25hp yamaha outboard on it, a lovely little boat that was capable on a good day of around 20mph..the lad was doing very well in this little craft and was beating everybody else hands down.

That was the type of boat we needed, so after a few weeks of scanning the classifieds, we found an orkney fastliner for sale for £3000. The fastliner is like the big brother of the 520 it's 19 foot 6 long and and can take an engine upto a maximum of 60hp. the boat was in a coal yard in swansea and had been stored there about three years,or so, it was in a bit of a state cosmetically, but structurally it was like new. There was no engine or controls with the boat so that was the next step.

Someone had told us about contract outboards, these are engines that are leased to the RNLI, they are used for a couple of years and are then returned to the manufacturer to be sold off. in my opinion this is the best way to buy an engine, other than a brand new one, as they are regularly serviced and have very low hours on them. we got one of these engines, a three year old 40 hp mariner for £1300 with controls, cables ,fuel tank and fuel lines adding another £250 on, we had boat that was capable of fishing upto 10 miles to sea .

Next on the agenda was electronics..an echo sounder and gps are essential if you are planning on fishing the wrecks.
you can fish over wreckage with just a gps, but you will lose a serious amount of tackle if you can't see what's under you.
After a trip to redcar fish company (marine electronics shop) we came home with a lowrance sounder a Raymarine chart plotter and an Icom vhf radio, a vhf is essential for keeping contact with other boats and the coastguard. by law you are required to have a licence to operate a vhf radio.
most vhf sets these days are dsc (digital selective calling) sets, they can be connected to your gps so if ever you are in a life threatening situation you can press the red emergency button and the coastguard, and other boats will know yor exact position..

A trip to Coates Marine in Whitby, for flares, life jackets, an anchor some chain and a compass and that was us up and running.

Wrecking

There are hundreds of wrecks along this section of the coast, some are huge and largely intact, others are no more than a big pile of wood.that are there some days and then you can't find them as they've been buried in sand. when we first started fishing the wrecks all our tackle was heavy duty... 50lb class rods big reels and 50lb+ braid, we soon realised that this type of gear is overkill ...alright if your'e fishing for large conger, common skate or porbeagle sharks.. but for inshore wrecks round here a 20/30lb rod with similar poundage line is more than adequate. I use a 20lb class shimano beastmaster coupled wth a penn 320ld when I am wrecking I've a had big ling and triple shots of cod on and never had a problem..
Wreck fishing is only possible on slack tides anything above a 5 meter and it's too big.
The main species on the wreckage around here are ling, cod, pollock and pouting, but monkfish, wolffish, and conger are not unknown on the inshore fishing grounds off Whitby.. best results for us have been from bait fishing for ling using BIG mackerel baits but pirks and muppets can be just as good at times.

Uptiding

Uptideing is my favourite way of boat fishing it's basically beachcasting from an anchored boat in less than 50 feet of water, but with shorter rods (9 foot 6 to ten foot) reels like the slosh 30, penn 535 or abu 7000 with 20lb mono mainline are ideal.
Although it is called uptideing it doesn't really matter where in the tide you cast, but you must let out a big bow of slack line so that the tide can pull your grip lead into the ground.
traces are similar again to the ones you would use for shore fishing, with hook sizes dependant on what species you are targeting.
We have had some good trips in late summer fishing in the soft ground for thornbacks with big hooks and big mackerel baits with fish up to 14lb..but it's winter when this type of fishing comes into it's own...for codlings mussel, squid ,rag, lug, peeler will all catch fish ..



Another small boat owned by Whitby Fishing Forum Member Tim Wright (aka Ringer) from Staithes



For Other Articles On Small Boat Fishing Around Whitby Please Visit The Links Below.

Ringer And Steerser Boat Fishing At Port Mulgrave

Ringers Boat - Boat Fishing At Staithes

Things Not Improving For George Metcalf The New Skipper Of Whitby's Chieftain Charters

A BBC report of Boat fishing out of Whitby with George Metcalf on his new boat chieftain charters portrays a pretty sorry state of affairs for the of shore fishing grounds at Whitby.

The BBC Radio Cleveland's Rob Barlow joined other anglers on chieftain charters for a 36 hour trip with the offshore fishing specialist Mr Metcalf. The BBC reporter appeared to have a bad experience suffering from sea sickness for most of the trip and then catching little if any fish.

Rob Barlow says

All though I did see fish being caught, we had to be 70 miles out in order to find them and from what George revealed to me it's getting worse year by year.

In an attempt to explain the poor fishing Barlow reports that skipper metcalfe says :

"The main problem with the cod crisis in the Northeast and further a field is the super-trawlers' towing massive small-mesh nets.

"Although the main intention of these trawlers is to catch sand eels, everything else in the path of the nets is taken. This targets the same species that the fish, seabirds, and marine mammals rely on for survival.

"This takes all the food away for the cod - how can they survive if there is nothing in the sea for them to eat?"

I think it is quite sad that the offshore grounds at Whitby are still suffering from a lack of cod, this must be even harder for the boats working the waters to take given the recent resurgence of cod fishing on the inshore grounds within 10 miles of the coast at Whitby, especially as in very recent times most of the Whitby charter fleet have been reporting fantastic fishing within site of land.

You can read Rob Barlow's full report of his Whitby offshore boat fishing experience at the link below:

BBC On Whiby Chieftain Charters

North East Kayak Fishing - First Cod For Ray On His Maiden Voyage.

Scarborough angler Ray Maddison finally got afloat at the weekend in his new kayak. Along with fellow Whitby fishing forum member Iain sellers Ray fished out of Flamborough underneath the cliffs at Bempton. Between the 2 anglers they managed 15 cod the biggest being just short of 7 pounds. To read more about Ray and Iains Kayak fishing adventures off the Yorkshire coast please visit their kayak fishing topic in the whitby fishing forum by clicking here

Scarborough Sea Fishing - Cloughton Angling Club First Summer Match

Cloughton Rock Angling Club held the first of their summer matches on Monday night. Catches were excellent with most anglers managing to locate the codlings. Chris Scaife from Filey just back from fishing in the states came in first with 6 codlings for 14 pounds closely followed by Mick Chadwick in second with 4 cod for 14 pounds. Scarborough's jeremy robinson took third with 3 cod for just short of nine pounds.

Full report available in the Whitby Fishing Forum Here.

Bass Fishing At Sandsend Car Park

A well known Whitby Angler has caught one of the first decent bass from the area this year. Fishing from Sandsend car park Alan tempted the bass on a ragworm and peeler cocktail fishing at medium range. The bass weighed 4 pounds 1 ounces and is the biggest I have heard of in the Whitby area this year. To read more about Alan's Sandsend Car Park Bass and see more pictures please visit the Whitby fishing forum By Clicking Here

Where To Fish At Boulby

Whitby Fishing Forum Member Dav Says

I'm thinking about targetting boulby area quite alot in the up n coming winter , so im planning on doing alot of recce work down there during the summer , sussing the ground out good and proper , especially during spring tides , etc , ive fished it a few times , but ive never really sussed it out as every time i get down there i just want to fish the first good looking gulley i see , i want to study it that much i want to be able to be confident enough to make the descent and ascent in the dark hopefully ... is there any regulars who fish alot at boulby, post on this site ? that are willing to advise on this particular area.

To read the Replies please click the link below.

Boulby Fishing - A Guide To Fishing At Boulby - Including Boulby Gulley, White stone, Boiler Hole And Hummersea.

Small Boat Fishing From Staithes

Whitby Fishing Forum Member Tim Wright from Staithes has been taking some excellent catches from his small boat. Tim says they use Jiggers, hokeyes, shads and leadheads to catch some decent cod and pollock from the fishing grounds off staithes. Fishing with several friends over the past few weeks Tim has had some truly great catches. Fishing the marks in the Staithes, Boulby and Port Mulgrave area Tim Says.

Sailed out from staithes yesterday for an hour. Caught 10 codlings all around the 4lb mark and a pollock that weighed 5lb.it gave one hell of a scrap and crash dived for the bottom several times.all codlings kept but released the pollock to fight another day.most fish were taken on leadheads and over half of them were full of pipefish.

The fruits of our labour today.Went off with steerser and his cousin on their boat today.fished from 4pm until 5.45pm.we fished half a mile off port mulgrave.all fish between 3lb and 5lb.never caught any on shads.most were taken on pirks with the odd one taking muppets.caught roughly 6 stone.only species caught were codlings.not a pipe fish in sight or in their mouths/stomachs.

To read more about Tim's boat fishing exploits please visit the whitby fishing forum at the links below.

Port Mulgrave Boat Fishing

Staithes Boat Fishing Report

Cos Crisis ? What Cod Crisis ?

Cod Crisis ? What Cod Crisis ? These were the words of sea otter 2 skipper Paul Kilpatrick recently. After experiencing an excellent start to the boat fishing season at Whitby Paul says :

Over the last couple of months ths cod fishing of whitby has seen some dramatic developments with catches of cod suddenly booming things are on the up and up even the local trawlers have been getting some very large catches

Cod Crisis ? What cod crisis - Click to read more.

North East Kayak Fishing, Whitby, Scarborough, Filey

I'm probably putting myself in the firing line knowing you lot but all being well I'll be collecting my Ocean Prowler 13 Angler kayak on Saturday from Robin Hood Watersports. Iv,e been trying to get everything sorted these last couple of weeks. Got myself a spinning rod...........................




Read More - North East Kayak Fishing From Whitby, Scarborough And Filey.

Paul Kilpatrick Whitby Charter Skipper Criticises The National Federation Of Sea Anglers Over Their Stance On Bag Limits For Sea Anglers

Local charter skipper Paul Kilpatrick has spoken out in opposition to the NFSA who say they are in favour of the Priniciple of bag limits for sea anglers. In reponse to this statement by the NFSA

Re : Bag Limits - The NFSA will therefore support the concept of bag limits where it is part of a balanced campaign to conserve or improve a specific fish stock or stocks. For the avoidance of doubt we will oppose such proposals where controls are placed solely on anglers whilst other users have free access to fish stocks important to sea anglers.

The Sea Otter 2 Skipper says

There is one thing for sure the NFSA wont get 1 pence out of me bag limits which planet are these idiots on.

Please visit the Whitby Fishing Forum To Read More.

Yorkshire Division Of The National Assocition Of Sea Anglers To Reform

The Yorkshire branch of the National Federation Of Sea Anglers is to reform. After a meeting on the 30th April 2007 at the Scarborough sea anglers social club it was decided there was enough interest to reform the Yorkshire regional division of the NFSA.


Read More Here

National Federation Of Sea Anglers - Yorkshire Division

I attended the NFSA Regional meeting tonight at the anglers social club in Scarborough. The turn out was pretty decent (better than I expected I must say). With no exact agenda other than looking at the potential for reforming a regional division of NFSA I felt things went ok. It was good to see the 2 reps from NFSA travel over and put the view point of the NFSA across on the Licence and Bag Limits issues.

Re : Licence - The NFSA position is to oppose the principle until significant improvements in the sea angling experience are recognised.

Re : Bag Limits - The NFSA will therefore support the concept of bag limits where it is part of a balanced campaign to conserve or improve a specific fish stock or stocks. For the avoidance of doubt we will oppose such proposals where controls are placed solely on anglers whilst other users have free access to fish stocks important to sea anglers.

Info On Bag Limits And Licences From :

http://www.nfsa.org.uk/news/2007-03-05.htm

Communication between the NFSA and anglers in the region was raised as an issue and the gents at the table said they hoped to improve that in the future.

Please read full article at NFSA In Yorkshire

Fishing With Shads

Shads arent expensive at £3.50 for a pack of 6 that is just under 60p each and some dys you can fish all day with just one shad plus the catch rates on them far outweigh most other lures including pirks which are far more expensive.

Read More On Fishing With Shads Here