Poole Harbour, Holes Bay

Evening sun over Holes Bay

Holes Bay forms the inland extent of one of the arms of Poole Harbour; the venue is alongside the dual carriageway from the A35 into the town of Poole, the A350. The area is shown in detail here.zoom out and click on Bird's eye View. You can park on the grass verge at the side of the carriageway opposite the car dealership or the pub but there is some talk of police taking action against those who do, so perhaps it would be best to park in one of the side roads behind the car dealership or The Holes Bay pub. There are no facilities at Holes Bay apart from the pub or Macdonalds off Broadstone Way, a road leading from the roundabout between the venue and the A35.
There is access at various points to the footpath that skirts the bay so that the venue is suitable for wheelchair users if they are accompanied by someone able to cross the rock armour on the bank to retrieve rigs and/or fish. One huge drawback of this place is the constant traffic noise.

The rock armour and footpath.

Fishing is onto a muddy bottom and long casting is not required although a long cast will get you into deeper water of the channel where the boats are moored. The target species here is the flounder and some very big ones are caught each year. Bass are often caught but they are usually small and should be carefully unhooked and returned, eels are also caught. Best bait here is ragworm, lugworm or peeler crab. Crabs can be hyper-active here so reel in to check the bait at frequent intervals and if they are too much of a nuisance use a popped up bait, that is the addition of some floating beads threaded on the trace near the hook. The locals tend to use a two hook rig with short (30cm) hook lengths and with coloured beads in addition to the floating beads. The venue is fishable all through a small neap tide but the water shallows on a spring tide low., as a guide use easytide, if the height of water on the graph is above about 1.3 metres you should be fine.

looking back towards Poole.

The path is used by cyclists, look out for them (some don't bother with lights at night), keep the path clear and look behind when casting. Children are fairly safe here as long as they don't stray onto the road. The nearest tackle shop for bait is the Poole Sea Angling Centre near Poole Quay or The Wessex Angling Centre on Wimborne Road.

Tide Times for the next seven days

with assistance
Warning. The traffic lights at the Poole end of Holes Bay Road are equipped with speed cameras, they are not big and yellow, they pretend to be the type that catches people jumping the lights.... the limit has been reduced to 30 to make sure of revenue.... a while ago 50 was deemed to be safe.