The South Wales Winter Fish-In April 11 + 12th 2008
By Barry McConnell

This is the ideal venue for our winter fish-in. The water is warmed by two outflows from the steelworks to ensure that the eels will still feed in the coldest of weather. Temperature recordings taken by Wayne on this trip read a water temperature of 18 degrees centigrade and an air temperature of 6 degrees centigrade. Since this fishery is next to the sea and actually a bit saline, the population of eels is massive. This mix of warm water and big eel population, along with the fact that this water only ever gets night fished by NAC is such that you can guarantee that everyone will get plenty of runs even in the depths of winter. On some fish-ins the members get scattered separately around the lake but here the swims are all together on one arm which helps collect all the members together for a better social gathering – weather permitting.

NAC veteran The Eeling Hedgehog - Nick Rose and Roy Piggott were ‘hogging’ the best swims on the point. This is the most windswept spot but fortunately you can get a car there so they were able to escape the wind by bivvying up behind their vehicles. There was no escape from the rain though. For his efforts he was rewarded by catching more eels than anyone else. Twelve in total which were mostly pounders with the biggest being a couple of scraper 2’s.

Roy seemed to have used up all his luck on the first fish-in we had at this venue when he bagged up with lots of eels to 4.11. This time the sport wasn’t so prolific for Roy and on the first night as he only caught one small eel. Things picked up the following night and he landed a few more including the biggest caught on this trip at 2.08.

I was in the nearest swim to the point where I managed to land four small eels on the first wind-lashed night and 3 more the next night to 2.06.  Late on the second evening a huge ship came into the dock with its floodlights blazing. It caused quite a spectacle as it turned round in my swim and we all came out of our bivvies to gather on the bank like excited kids

David Evans was next to me on his first NAC fish-in and thought he would survive the night under his open fronted overwrap. The wind was having none of it and directed all its force at him. He tried to escape the wind by moving the bivvy behind a tree but the wind swirled round it and found him. He caught a couple of small eels of about 1lb and also managed to hook a larger one. Unfortunately it bumped off among marginal snags or was it bumped off by the mother of all squalling gusts of wind..

Further along the same bank was Mark Two Sixes Salt. Wind-beaten and weatherworn, he had been there a night longer than the rest of us and had spent the night trying to fish into an un-fishable wind. Lots of small pulls from nuisance bootlaces never makes for relaxing fishing and since all this action was during the buffeting by the wind it left Mark looking pretty exhausted by the time the rest of us arrived. For his efforts that night he caught just one small eel. By the time the big storm came the following night Mark had gone off the idea of extreme weather eeling and stayed indoors to avoid the weather.

Wayne Staddon and his wife Suzy were fishing in the shallows too. Wayne impressed us all by long ranging it to some marker buoys that were out of casting range for mere mortals. I couldn’t quite work out how this was to be until Wayne told me he was using very thin diameter braid which is very good for long casting. He managed to catch 2 or 3 eels of 1lb+ from where he had cast to the far horizon

Mark and Dai left after the first night. Mike Brettle arrived and pitched into the swim that Dai had vacated. Mike caught 5 or 6 eels that night and had the second biggest of the trip at 2.06 or was it 2.07?

Look forward to meeting there again next winter when the water temperature everywhere else is far too cold for eels and all summer species anglers are hibernating. It would be good if one of us got a 6 during severe frosty conditions.