Freshwater fishing across the region

A quiet week for freshwater anglers with only a few fish reported, Tony Fordham visited Spring ponds at Rocombe for a short session and caught in excess of 50lbs of Carp in four hours on pole fished floating dog biscuits.
I had a granddaughter, Ava Sherlock, visit from Scotland, who wanted to try fishing and she managed plenty of small roach and Perch on float fished maggot at Newbarn Angling Centre.
The South Devon Species League fished its latest event with Shay Upham taking top spot with a Golden Grey Mullet weighing a shade over 3lbs. After a couple of rounds, he is firmly in the lead with his brother Corey in second place and dad in third, other anglers have some catching up to do. Elsewhere, the shore anglers have been mainly targeting the Smoothhounds, which now seem to be almost everywhere on the Devon coast, successful bait is mostly Peeler crab, although Graham Joyner fishing a Torquay mark landed three using Squid.
Tom Stebbens, Billy Evans, Kevin Elliot and Jason Johnson also caught Smoothhounds, as did George Kinch on his first trip to the South Hams. Daniel Patrick targeted Gilthead Bream and had an excellent session catching over 10 fish in a local estuary.
Alex Webb tried his hand at fishing for Thin lipped Mullet using a small spinner with a ragworm and was rewarded with several fish for his efforts. A Small Eyed Ray was landed this week to the East of our region to the rod of Kevin Elliot, and Bryan Boardman caught his first Undulate Ray, a good fish of 11lbs 5oz. Lea Meakz took a trip to Minehead and caught a Spotted Ray.
On the boats, the best fish of the week went to Mike Spiller of Honiton Sac, who caught a new personal best Gilthead Bream of 5lbs 4oz. Tony Phillips and Kevin Helman fished the Skerries Banks, finding Blonde Rays to 28lbs eager to take their fish baits.
On the wrecks, also on a private boat, David Mordecai fishing with a pink jig found Pollack and a nice Cod. Also amongst the Pollack was Phillip Ingleson.
The Fish of the month winner for June was Neil Newman with his Blonde Ray, although not the biggest specimen was a superb fish caught inshore on light tackle, a goody bag will soon be on its way from our generous sponsor Sidewinder Lures.
Please send your entries for next month to johnsherlockfish@gmail.com or by messenger.