Having spent a fair amount of time over the Christmas holidays inputting the last few years of points history onto the new Sinkers website I thought it might be interesting to look back to my best year in the club, the 2014/15 season.
It’s the only season I can say I concentrated on the club league from the start of the season, the objective being to weigh in as many species as possible as opposed to trying to build a big points total. Kind of a species hunt on Sinkers weights. At this time I had never won the club points league and the bar was really high with most years winners having over 20 fish and over 1000 points.
First session of the season was on the 4th December and produced the first 2 weighers, a 2-1 dogfish and a 9-2 Smalleyed Ray. I also had a couple of Pollack to 2-9 but they had to be 3lb to weigh in back then. Next fish on the board was on December 10th, a pouting of 1-1 from St Caths. Next was an improved dogfish of 2-5 before a session at St Caths produced another 2, an Undulate of 10-8 and a bonus Cod of 2-8. The Christmas break saw me trying to tick off a Flounder and I eventually managed it on December 30th with a nice fish of 2-3 to leave me on 6 fish at the end of the first month.
First new fish of 2015 was a Whiting of 13ozs on January 2nd followed by a shore Rockling of 13ozs on January 12th and then a small improver and PB Cod of 2-11.
February was a tough month and I only managed to add 1 more fish, a Conger of 16-12 to take me to 9 fish at the quarter way point.
Things improved quickly in March, a 3 bearded Rockling of 12ozs before an incredible session at St Catherine’s that produced a rare hatrick of Rays, a PB 10-12 Smalleyed, a 12-6 Blonde and an 8-10 Undulate, only 1 improver and 1 new species but a great night.
Only 1 more addition in March, an improver Undulate of 13-5 to finish March on 11 fish.
April started with a small improver shore Rockling of 15ozs followed by Garfish of 1lb, Mackerel of 1-2, Black Bream of 1-10 and Ballan Wrasse of 3-1 to finish April on 15.
At this point it starts to get tougher as a fair few have been ticked off. 2 more were weighed in during May, a Thick Lipped Mullet of 2-12 & a Starry Smoothound of 8-8 to finish the month on 17.
June started with a PB common eel of 3-10.
Followed by an improver Ballan of 4-3. Then one of the highlights of the year, an improved Starry Smoothound of 20-0
That just left time for another improver Ballan of 5-3 to finish June on 18.
July saw me away on holiday for 2 weeks so just 1 new fish added on my return, a Common Smoothound of 6-4 for fish no 19.
August started with another bonus fish a Twaite Shad of 1-6, what a way to get to 20.
Then a Gilthead bream of just 6ozs, there was no weight for Gilts back then as they were still a new arrival for us. Then the first day of that years JOSAF I had an improver Black Bream of 1-13 as well as a White Bream of 1-12 and a Bass of 4-6 to finish August on 23 and now it’s getting much harder.
September I finally managed to tick off Golden Grey Mullet with a fish of 2-0, it was 1-12 to weigh in back then and I had several near misses before eventually ticking that one off. Then added Scad another one that took a while at 13ozs before an improver Thick Lipped of 3-0 and an improver 3 bearded Rockling of 1-6 to finish on 25 with 2 months to go.
October I fished really hard for flatfish and red mullet but despite catching all 3 species none were big enough to add to the tally. I did add a Tub Gurnard of 11ozs to take me to 26.
November and the final straight started with a Sole of 14ozs, not quite big enough. I really wanted one more as I believe 26 was the most ever weighed in for one season. After quite a few near misses I finally got over the line with a Red Mullet of 1-1 for a final season tally of 27.
I think it’s a lot harder now, species like Rockling, Pouting and Dogfish you could tick off easily back then would be quite time consuming today.
I’ve often wondered if you had enough time would 30 in a season be possible. That year I never had Bullhuss, Tope, Thin Lipped Mullet, Plaice or Sole but I did have Cod, Twaite Shad, White Bream and Blonde Ray all of which would be super tough if not impossible now.
These days I want to spend too much time on certain species to really try this again, the hardest thing I found with this was having to move on once a target was achieved. My obsession with finding a big Stingray would get in the way!
Shore Fishing Jersey 
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