Region's biggest sea angling festival enjoys great conditions

The Torbay Sea Angling Festival, the biggest in the south west, has been taking place this week, with competition boundaries from Bolt head in the west to Lyme Regis in the east - and weigh-ins every evening.
The competition covers shore, inshore boat and wreck fishing with different specimen weights for each category and prizes awarded for the best specimens overall.
For once the weather has been kind, allowing the boats to go to sea every day.
As usual, many fine fish have been landed, with the early leader being a magnificent wreck caught Tub Gurnard weighing 7lbs and giving a specimen percentage of 162 per cent to the rod of Wayne Mayhew.
Other notable festival fish include as Small eyed Ray of 11lb and 118 per cent to Jack Marler, 14lb Pollack and 110 per cent to Jack Knight and a shore caught Mullet of 5lbs and 100 per cent to Steve Hadley. I hope to bring you the full results next week.
Pleasure anglers are still finding Bass from the shore and rock marks with a couple of good fish falling to the rods of Dan Hale and Saleem Ali. Aaron Colhoun fished during a recent night session travelling to the Bristol Channel and had a great trip.
He managed to land several Small Eyed and Spotted Rays.
Another fish coming from the Bristol Channel this week was a superb Smoothhound of 20lbs 14oz, caught by Ross Stewart of Newton Abbot. The Mackerel fishing has been sporadic this year but a few have hit the beaches this week chasing whitebait and fish weighing in excess of 1lb have been recorded.
Other competitions this last week have been the latest round of the Kennick Flyfisher Snowbee Top rod and the monthly competition at Spring ponds.
The Kennick anglers travelled to the beautiful Wimbleball reservoir high on Exmoor where 12 anglers took 35 fish with the winner being Chris Bolt of Kingsteignton with a top weight of 15lbs 4oz including the biggest fish of the day a Rainbow Trout of 4lbs 5oz. Andy Gooding and Alec Hoare took the next two places. Darren Penfold won The Raffle.
At Spring Ponds Elliot Fay took top spot with a bag of 71lbs 10oz from peg 8 using pellets on the pole with Matt Crocker and Jason Fay taking second and third.
Newbarn Angling Centre continues to fish well for anglers, with regular visitor Steve Brettle landing three fish in a session. The best of these tipped the scales at 26lbs 8oz and Ste Oliver caught several over a few short sessions.
There’s also been some stiff competition for the fish of the month competition, where there were two outstanding fish, the boat caught Cuckoo wrasse of 2lbs 3oz by John Bovey and the winning fish a 1lb 13oz Red Gurnard caught by Chris Sweetland.
A prize pack from one of our kind sponsors, Sidewinder Lures, will be on its way to him soon.
Congratulations must also go to Chloe and Leo Algar of Honiton SAC, who came first and second in the recent SW Seabaits open competition, Chloe winning with a Smoothhound of 5lbs 9oz and Leo also with a Smoothhound of 3lbs 9oz.
The next junior open competition is at West Bay in West Dorset on the East pier on Saturday, August 17 with the sign-on from 11.30 and free entry.
This time of the year the most asked question in sea angling is where can I catch mackerel? This is a difficult question to answer.
Last week, I heard about plenty in Torquay but the next day, no-one caught any.
They are not around in the numbers they were in years gone by, although hopefully with tuna being seen and caught in Cornwall, they will chase the shoals up the channel along with Garfish, which have also been in short supply in recent years.
Please do keep your photographs and reports coming in to me at this email address: johnsherlocfish@gmail. com for our fish of the month competition which is kindly sponsored by our friends at Sidewinder Lures and the Newbarn Angling Centre.