It’s that time of year where Loni’s start another Neptune League, the 4 man team event that is based on aggregate weight. This year our target, apart from winning obviously is to get back in the mix with the other teams due to our teams shortage a ray catches as we have only recorded one small eyed ray in the past two campaigns.

The first venue for 2018 was Milford Shingle Bank, with the venue failing to produce on recent outings & matches due to the prolonged winter weather we have all experienced lately.

Considering the tide and the options that presented along with a catch report from the night before we decided the 4 of us Garry, Malcolm, Arron and John would fish to the right of the rocks in two key locations. The first cast (second if you count a snap off) produced a dogfish for Garry and shortly after Arron landed a flounder at the teams other location.

It wasn’t long after this that we began to hear reports from further up the bank that a undulated ray of 12lb had been caught by an angler fishing in one of the other teams, so bigger baits for the remainder of the match. A short while later we saw anglers rushing around each other 200m away this later proved to be another ray.

Just after 9pm Malcolm had a double shot of dogfish and then another on the very next cast boosting the teams total but we still had a way to go to make up the difference for a undulate ray. Arron in the meantime had managed to hook what he believes to be a ray, only to loose it went his hook length snapped!!

We couldn’t manage another fish amongst us in the last 45mins of the match, we needed up with 1 flounder and 4 dogfish, time to head to the weigh in……

Back at the scales we began to hear of more rays than the two we knew about as well as a conger and a number of  other species such as pollock, rockling and smoothound.

The largest of the rays was a 15lb undulated ray caught by CADFC (Keith’s lot) member helping his team to a winning weight of 32lb 11.5oz which included another two species of rays I believe.

Our little haul totalled 6lb giving the team 4th the highest placing of any team without a ray (clutching)

Here are the full results

1st CADFC (Keith’s lot) 32lb 11.5oz,                                                                                                                         2nd Bournemouth 26lb 5.5oz,                                                                                                                                    3rd Christchurch Angling Centre A 26lb 2oz,                                                                                                              4th Loni’s Angling Centre 6lb,                                                                                                                                      5th CADFC (Tony’s lot) 5lb 5.5oz,                                                                                                                                6th Christchurch Angling Centre B 2lb 2oz and                                                                                                             7th CADFC 914 DNW

The next Neptune match is a due to be held at Hengistbury Head on Monday 14th May.