My wrist finally seems to be getting to the point where I can actually do stuff now so some proper fishing was on the cards after a couple of months off climbing the walls. I was contemplating a solitary weekend away fishing in Wales originally however changed tack at the last minute and opted for fishing with some company on the Scottish side of the Solway Firth. Mike and me have had our eye on a few marks over there that we haven’t fished before and so decided to use the trip to try somewhere new to see if it still produces the goods. On Friday night I got a text from Tony who I fished with quite a bit last winter – he asked whether I was heading out so i offered him the chance to jump in. He hasn’t fished over this way before but has always wanted to.
So off we went at a reasonable hour on Saturday morning and after the obligatory butty van and costa stop off to keep Mike pacified, we arrived at the car park early afternoon and began making our way along the cliffs. We found our chosen mark without too much hassle and after a quick scramble down to the waters edge the rods were soon being assembled in earnest. I was a bit unsure footed on the rocks at first, trying not to put too much pressure on my injured hand, but I managed to settle myself and get set up. It was a bit tight to get the stand set up in my spot so I ended up just resting the rods against a rock crevice.
Baits for the day we’re a variety of fish baits; mackerel, bluey, herring, squid lashed in various combinations to up and over rigs. I was happy to find that casting and reeling in wasn’t much of a complaint with my wrist and quickly got both rods out and sat back to see what the day had to offer, taking in the scenery and being generally pleased to be back out again after so long. We didn’t have to wait long before Mike was into the first fish and much to our delight it was a small thornback, so that was our hypothesis on the mark ticked off nice and early! It’s always a satisfying feeling when a new mark produces the goods! Shortly after I followed up with a ray of my own. Both fish were on the small side, not much bigger than 3lb, but a welcome sight regardless.
Mike doing battle with the first Thornback Ray of the dayTony getting to grips with the ever present Solway DogfishFirst fish – first Chuck – a nice little thorny around 3lb
Over the next hour a few of the obligatory Dogfish put in an appearance for both me and Tony until the turn of the tide. All of a sudden what seemed like the entire Solway Firth was moving past us left to right as the current turned something fierce, rendering our new mark pretty much unfishable! At the sight of rod butts suspended in mid air due to the strength of the tide, we were resigned and decided on a move further down the coast to the more popular Balcary area. I must admit we normally tend to avoid these marks on a weekend as they get busy and none of us relish the prospect of fishing shoulder to shoulder, but unusually there was only a couple of local lads fishing this afternoon and there was still plenty of space for the three of us and we were soon setting back up. I hadn’t even cast my second rod before the first one started bouncing in the rest and I negotiated another ray of around the same size as the last through the strong tide, just managing to avoid wiping out the lads fishing to my right! This was followed by another slightly bigger ray in the space of 45 minutes while consecutive casts were pounced upon by the ever reliable dogs.
Tony and Mike were fishing a little ways to my right and I was popping over every now and then to avoid being anti social – and to crack open the traditional ‘SAR lads’ IPA that it was Mike’s turn to bring along today. Tony had a steady stream of dogfish tallying up and had added a couple more rays to his count and had even unfortunately lost a juvenile Tope right at the waters edge when it bit through his hook snood.
Mike on the other hand was not faring as well as he had not had anything since his first fish on the previous mark, despite fishing between me and Tony.
Tony with a nice Thornback
As the sun crept away things went quiet for the last few hours of the ebb and the crabs took advantage of the lack of predators to come out and make a nuisance of themselves on our baits. Once darkness had completely fell and the tide began to turn however the rays came back on in numbers, with each of us adding multiple fish to our tally’s in the space of a two hours. Whilst there were no monsters in amongst them it was good sport, with Mike redeeming his afternoon hiatus with the biggest fish of the session – a nice Thornback over the 7lb mark, along with multiple other smaller fish.
Mike with the biggest of the evening – a Thornback over 7lb
The sport continued through to midnight by which point the fish were still feeding, but having been fishing nearly 12 hours we were all longing for our beds (although as designated driver I was less enthusiastic about the 3 hour drive home!)
The fish were feeding hard into darkness
I managed a palm sized ray on my last cast to take my total for the day to eight thornies which is definitely one of the better sessions I’ve had over here in a few years. Mike and Tony managed at least a dozen between them that I saw as well so all in all a productive session, albeit nothing massive. And of course the uncounted tally of dogfish added a bit of monotonous variety.
A wee baby thorny to finish things off!
Happily, my wrist held up well all day I’m glad to say so I’m still planning on heading back to the northern highlands for Common Skate fishing again in October, although hopefully I’ll get a session or two in before then.
A broken wrist on the day England blew the Euro finals against Italy has kept me out of action sadly so the blog has been somewhat neglected.
I’m still restricted in terms of what I can do – big rods and heavy leads are still confined to the garage unfortunately, but patience reached its limit yesterday and I decided on a few hours down Seaham pier with Mike in pursuit of a few mackerel for freezer bait (so pre warning – not the most exciting report!)
I just about managed with a light spinning rod and a single spinner, I thought a full string of feathers might be pushing it a bit as my wrist is still quite weak. As it happened the mackerel were quiet thin on the ground despite the good weather and I only managed 3 in the space of a few hours before the light disappeared.
We were great to a fantastic sunset though. I did end up losing my 2 spinners and taking a punt on the feathers in the end but no more mackerel were conned into my fish bag.
In contrast however the whiting were extremely obliging as the light was lost and they came on thick; I even caught half a dozen of them on spinners and feathers. Up and down the pier people bait fishing seemed to get little more than 30 seconds to light a cigarette before the whiting were jumping on their baits.
We gave it till around 11ish before calling it an evening. It was great to be out and to see Mike again, given the last time I fished was the piscan pot back in mid June.
Hopefully I’ll get out again in the next couple of weeks with something a bit more interesting to write about!
I’ve spent the last 2 weekends going back to basics and enjoying some river sport with the local flatfish. Light rods, small hooked rigs and some basic freezer baits is all it takes to get a line wet and have some fun.
I find it a bit of a novelty that at this time of year I will struggle to interest the Flounder on my doorstep in the river Wear in any bait other than crab, yet next door in the river Tyne the fish seem quite happy to take other baits – even straight up Mackerel as bait will account for its share of fish.
Week 1 – Theo’s first session
Last weekend I took my younger brother Theo on his first proper fishing trip. We hit the British Airways car park which is situated in a business park well up the river Tyne into prime Flounder and Eel territory. The area also regularly produces other species such as Codling and Whiting, along with some other novelties such as Sea Trout, Smelt and even the occasional Haddock.
Didn’t take long for Theo to master the basics
Using frozen blacks tipped off with mackerel on a 1 up 1 down rig with size 1 long-shank hooks accounted for around a dozen fish in the 3 hours we were there before Theo inevitably got sick of sitting around. The biggest of these was 32cm. It tailed off over high water which is standard for this venue, although I’ve often enjoyed a flurry of activity as the tide begins to ebb again in the past, but on this occasion we decided to call it after a few hours – the distant promise of a BBQ back at home proving too tempting for us. He’s since asked to go fishing again so I suppose that’s still a success!
Week 2 – SAR Piscan Pot fundraiser
For the 2nd weekend in a row I fished the BA car park, this time a fundraiser match for seaanglingreports.co.uk – an online fishing forum. SAR has a small but relatively tight membership base and holds this competition every year in order to raise funds to keep the website going. On a personal level it was nice to finally be able to fish this event; I’ve had to miss it every year so far as I always seem to be busy. So today was a good opportunity to meet the lads, some of whom I’ve talked to for years on the forum but haven’t actually met face to face!
Again I was using blacks and mackerel as bait. I did toy with going down to the beach to try and collect some peeler crab – this is a longest fish match and eels count so there was a good chance it would be won by an eel. In the end I couldn’t be bothered though and set my stalls out for biggest flounder instead!
It was my turn to bring the traditional SAR lads bevy this time for me, Mike and Brian – Hazy Jane goes down lovely in this sunshine
As it happens I did catch the biggest flounder of the day at 33cm – in the first 5 minutes!
5 minutes in thinking “ooo ive got this in the bag….”
That was the winning fish for all of about 5 minutes until James landed the first eel of the day at 46cm. Damn!
Over the course of the afternoon there were a few more eels landed, whereas I kept adding to my flounder count but with none bigger than my first.
A double shot of smaller flounders – they came quite regularly until about an hour before high tide
I also managed a couple of palm sized whiting over high water before things slowed down for the last couple of hours of the match. Mike, Terry and Andy all added to their species count with a Smelt – the pungent smell of cucumber blown all the way down the walkway turning a few heads
A River Tyne Smelt The whiting even put in an appearance
In the end my flounder placed me in 5th within a total of 15 anglers so I was happy enough with that – I even got a handful of Reg’s leads as a souvenir! Was really great to meet up with everyone and see some of the lads I haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
Suffice it to say that my latest trip over to the south west of Scotland didn’t exactly go to plan. Me and Mike were hoping to get amongst some decent Thornback Rays and maybe the odd Smoothound which have featured in recent reports, but alas – we were completely dogged out by the end of the day.
Looking out towards Cumbria
I lost count to be honest – with baits spending little more than 5 minutes in the water before the dogs found them. I chuckled to Mike that it was like reeling in a bunch of bananas, with 2 Dogfish at a time on a single pennel rig on multiple casts. On more than one occasion one or both of the fish weren’t even hooked, just wrapped up in the rig following wrestling match to see who could swallow the bait fastest.
2 at a time is never a good sign
I’ll not bother embellishing the details as there’s only so much interesting to write about when it comes to Dogfish. I did manage a solitary Dab which obviously had some identity issues.
Hopefully the next session is more productive!
A nice view over Balcary bay on the trudge back to the car
This blog is still in its infancy and like many my fishing ventures have been scuppered by covid this past year, so I’ve not written about Skate fishing on here before. However it has been something of an obsession for me over the last five years, having spent much of my waking life perusing Google earth and shipping charts trying to locate likely looking fishing marks for these elusive ‘barn doors.’ You need to consider not only the depth you’re fishing, but access to the waters edge to physically land a fish that could potentially weigh over 200lb which means understanding any underwater obstructions/ledges that will make the task of landing impossible.
Over the last five years myself and Steve, who’s been equally as obsessed with catching one of these fish, have put thousands of hours into researching possible skate marks and tactics and put as many miles on the clock travelling to these places with only limited success, with my last trip yielding a 30lb Common Skate, my first and only to date.
My first and only Skate to date – caught in 2019
There are of course places you can go which are well known that have been well canvassed on YouTube and social media – and this is another factor. These marks will and do yield results, but you have to be prepared to potentially share a small space with multiple other anglers. Such is the growing popularity of targeting these fish from the shore that people come from all over the U.K. to Scotland in order to try and catch them.
Long time since I last crossed the border!
Personally though I prefer the quieter spots, and what better way to truly embrace isolation than in this part of the country, combining wild-camping and fishing; I don’t think there’s a better soul medicine.
Tackling up for shore Skate
I’m by no means a seasoned Skate angler – as I’ve said, I’ve only had limited success with them. Consider though that you’re fishing for something that could potentially be as big as you, so it stands to reason that tackle needs to be beefed up to handle the job at hand. A heavy beach rod with plenty of guts is a must – I use a MK1 carbon metal crest, one of the early carbon metal rods – stiff and plenty of power! These fish will glue themselves the seabed when they realise they’re hooked and refuse to budge, so you need a rod that will provide enough backbone to keep the pressure on for a long time to encourage it to dislodge itself. Reel choice is down to personal preference, but make sure you consider the depth of the venue and the amount of line the reel holds and again, it needs to have the guts to handle the abuse of hauling a Skate up from the depths. I go for the penn battle 7000 fixed spool, preferring fixed spool over multiplier as i find it easier to control when casting large baits. I load this with 90lb braid – braid being better again for keeping the pressure up due to the lack of stretch, and the improved bite detection when fishing deep water.
The point here being that if a hooked skate decides to take off in the opposite direction, there’s nothing you or any rod and reel on the planet is gonna do about it, so make sure you’re gear is up to the task.
Rigs
Again there’s no single answer and everyone has their preference. Given the size of the quarry though rigs need to be of at least 150lb – matched with hooks 10/0 or bigger (avoid stainless steel as they do not rust if you need to cut the line on a deep hooked fish).
I use a pulley rig anywhere between 5 and 8 foot long depending on depths – and always with a weak link to the lead regardless of where I am fishing.
A good sized Mackerel bait mounted on a single 10/0
Day 1
This time I was joined once again by Steve and also his mate Jamie (his first time sea fishing) on a four day trip to various marks in the north west highlands of Scotland. The trip had been planned for months in advance and it seemed like fate that the Scottish government were lifting the border restrictions on the 26th of April – the exact date we were pencilled to go!
After just over a five hour drive I arrived at the first mark at around 7pm, Steve and Jamie having arrived a few minutes before. Spirits were high in anticipation; we’ve never fished this mark but it’s one we’ve had an inkling about for over a year but haven’t had the chance to fish yet due to covid!
To cut a long story short though there’s not a lot to talk about with regards to the first night other than how uncharacteristically beautiful the weather is – the night sky is lit up by an intense full moon and the water is flat calm, the occasional twitter of a tawny owl somewhere in the hills breaking the silence.
A wee Palmate Newt in a small pool nearby
An occasional dogfish breaks the monotony on the fishing front, some managing to hang themselves on the 10/0 Cox and Rawle meat hooks. No Skate though and In the end we decide to call it at 2am as we’re all a bit shattered from the drive up, with the intention of hitting it hard tomorrow.
It’s a waiting game
Day 2
A mixed bag of weather today, with a stubborn cross wind and periods of intermittent rain making things a bit uncomfortable. In actual fact, other than a solitary pollock in the early morning mist, the mark is seemingly devoid of life throughout the daytime. Only when the sun drops do the ever reliable dogfish start to put in an appearance as we busy ourselves making a small campfire.
Bait wise we’re using a mix of things – mostly mackerel which are cut in half. It is possible to use larger baits, and there may be advantages in terms of scent appeal, however this comes at the expense of lost distance when casting. It’s certainly not necessary to use massive baits and many Skate have been hooked and lost having taken smaller baits intended for smaller species and half a mackerel is still compact enough that it can be flung out a good distance. Aside from mackerel we also try bluey, pollock and even dogfish for bait – all of which will be readily taken by Skate, which aren’t the fussiest of fish and will eat most things!
At 1:30am, one of my rods gives a typical nod nod of yet another dogfish. Resigned to having to probably change the bait again, I leave it a bit to see if it will lose interest. After a while though i notice the rod seems to be pulling down slowly a couple of inches at a time. Excitement sets in as we realise this is definitely something different – and after sitting on my hands and letting it develop a little more I decide to hit it. The resulting bend in the rod is unmistakable – I’ve hooked the first skate of the trip!
Skate on!
For the first 10 seconds it’s coming in relatively easily and it appears to just be a smaller fish, not dissimilar to the 30lb fish I’ve had previously. Then for whatever reason, it realises it’s hooked, turns in the opposite direction and (excuse the term) f***s off for the horizon – and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. The drag of my penn battle is almost fully locked up, and yet the fish has my carbon metal crest buckled, peeling line off the spool at an impressive rate of knots – it’s immediately obvious at this point that she’s a big girl! She then employs the typical “sit and sulk” tactic, gluing herself to the seabed and there’s nothing to do but jam the rod butt into a rock and sit on it, keeping the pressure constant, waiting for her to give up. She dislodges a handful of times and lets me gain a few yards, only to give me the proverbial finger and take double, triple, quadruple the amount of line back before suctioning herself to the seabed again. The lads are providing words of encouragement (and the odd bit of micky taking). At one point she is sat, completely unmoved, for a good 40 minutes. A bit of extra pressure and I feel the lead part company – reiterating the importance of a weak link. No matter how clean you think the ground is, a Skate will spend 95% of the fight on the deck, and you can pretty much guarantee if there’s a snag to be found, it’ll find it!
Sure enough she’s moving again and finally starts to come up through 90ft of water. This is probably the most nail biting (and exhausting) part of the fight, as every time I lower the rod to pump it back, the momentary slight lapse in pressure is taken as an opportunity as the skate turns and shoots back down again – and all I can do is hang on and let her. A few times she isn’t far from the surface before turning and heading back down the full way and I have to start over again!
First glimpse nearly an hour and a half later!
Finally, 1 hour and 20 minutes after first hooking her, she suddenly emerges on the surface a couple of yards in front of us and we’re all in complete shock. You see plenty of pictures and videos online but until you see one in the flesh it’s hard to appreciate their size.
A couple of nervous moments as she makes a couple of last ditch attempts to turn and get back down again – even now testing the gear to complete limits. She eventually gives up though and we negotiate her onto a low lying rock, still partially in the water, so that she can be unhooked, measured and photographed.
It’s impossible to physically weigh a fish of this size so weight is determined by pre approved charts using a measurement from nose to tail and wing tip to wing tip and we calculate that by the chart she weighs 178lb. I’m absolutely ecstatic. After 5 years and hours and hours of research and travel time, I’ve finally landed a Skate over the 100lb mark.
A shore caught, female Common Skate – 178lb according to the charts
Following a few photos she’s released, taking her time to disappear off into the depths and leaving us watching, completely speechless. In fact I’m speechless for pretty much the rest of the night, not knowing what to do with myself. I don’t even really bother continuing to fish – just sitting content having finally achieved what I set out to do years ago. It’s nearing 4am and we have a few beers to celebrate next to the campfire on a blissfully calm night before turning in.
Day’s 3/4
Despite the success of the previous night we decide to up sticks and head further north, given that the current mark doesn’t appear to fish well during the day and the forecast is for the wind to swing round into our faces. In hindsight we probably would have been better off staying where we were as our efforts were only rewarded with a handful of dogfish, and we can’t help but feel the day was wasted a bit. We decide that tomorrow for the final full day we’ll go back to the area where I caught my 30lb fish 2 years ago.
This Loch has a reputation for smaller Skate and I suspect it acts as a nursery.
We busy ourselves making camp and once again spark up a fire, cooking steak, sausages and pork chops on a flat piece of slate – proper bushcraft style!
Kettles boiled! Steve with a little Thornback Ray
The fishing is a little slow but we do manage a handful of Thornback Ray’s each throughout the evening and into darkness, including a first ray for Jamie, although sadly no more skate.
And another for Jamie – his first
And so ends another trip. I’m still in awe from the experience, and my arms still hurt 4 days later! But I can’t wait to get up there again.
Fly fishing is more of a reserve option for me nowadays – I used to split my time between sea and fly fishing pretty much 50/50, even occasionally dabbling in the odd bit of coarse and pike fishing back in my youth. Nowadays 99% of the time I get the urge to go fishing however, I usually find myself contemplating saltwater venues up and down the country rather than freshwater. Today was an exception to the norm – the sea has been rough on our north east coast for over a week and in general this is a pretty dire time of year for sea fishing without putting in a few hours of travel so I decided after a 3 year hiatus to dust of the fluff chucking gear and head to my local fishery, Sharpley Springs in Seaham, County Durham.
Looking out on the main lake at Sharpley. ‘The Doxford’
Sharpley is a made up of 5 fly fishing only lakes stocked predominantly with hard fighting rainbow trout, although there are also some absolutely stunning brown trout, which are a lot more shy and seldom seen in comparison. There have also been some more recent introductions in the shape of tiger trout, although I’ve yet to be lucky enough to pick one out! Aside from the fly fishing only lakes there is also a small kids worm lake at the entrance of the site stocked with rainbows for the young’uns to cut their teeth on.
Most of the time when fishing this venue I tend to stick with midge patterns of some description as they’re more often than not the staple and readily fed on at some stage during the day – be it bloodworm larvae imitations, buzzers or emerging patterns. The lakes also get a regular smattering of olives also, especially in the warmer months of the year, as well as the occasional good hatch of brown sedge which can make for some really exciting dry fly fishing on a late summer evening. As the fishery is bordered by conifers and hedge rows, it’s no surprise that it gets its fair share of terrestrials as well – and this is about the time of year when hordes of adult Hawthorn flies begin to make an appearance, which on a blustery day can see the fish gorging on wind blown adults.
I arrived just before 10am and signed in at the golf lodge before heading round to the fishery. As it’s still early spring, I decide to start off with a team of 2 buzzers on a 12 foot leader to see how things go, choosing a black buzzer for the point fly and a self tied quill buzzer in dark olive on the dropper. There doesn’t appear to be much rising to start with so the idea is to straight line these to test the depths until the fish are found.
Starting off with 2 Buzzers
Well the first couple of hours pass with little more than a couple of twitches. I try a few different patterns and sizes but the fish are really slow on the uptake until around half an hour before midday when suddenly the lake starts to come alive with emerging midges of all sizes. There seems to be a mix of colours from pale olive, black and even orange – some of them are massive as well, the biggest I’ve seen on here before. Sure enough the trout are soon homing in on them and I quickly change to a couple of shipmans patterns to fish in the surface film. That does the trick and after turning a couple of fish over I finally hit one on a size 14 brown shipmans and the thrill of fighting a good stocky rainbow comes back – I’ve missed this!
Fish on!
A fine conditioned fish is soon landed and unhooked in the net – I’m on a catch and release ticket so he’s quickly unhooked and slipped back. I follow this up with another fish shortly after, this time on a black size 16 shipmans before the weather takes a turn and the luke warm sunshine turns to grey cloud and snow in a matter of minutes, putting the fish down again. The fish are still feeding though and a swap back to buzzers fished deeper and allowed to move with the wind brings a few more to the net over the course of the next couple of hours – all on black buzzers in sizes 16-14.
A fine conditioned Rainbow Trout caught on a Black Buzzer
The weather is really making things difficult however. The midges continue to emerge infrequently, taking advantage of brief intermittences of sunshine which encourages tentative rises from hungry trout, only for them to be put down again by the onset of regular of flurries of snow and an icy breeze. The wind direction is unusually inconsistent as well which makes finding an optimal cross wind to drift the buzzers round more difficult than it should be!
Frustrating conditions. The wind is all over the place and getting a decent drift is a challenge so a slow retrieve at different depths is necessary.
Moving around a few pegs over the course of the afternoon proves fruitful however and the fish continue to oblige on the buzzers when I actually manage to get them drifting well. By the time 5pm rolls around I’ve had my fill and am starting to feel the cold! I’ve had at least a dozen fish which is a decent day really, especially given my 3 year absence!
A nice Rainbow. The brass tool is handy for unhooking in the net when practicing catch and release – minimal handling.
I really enjoyed today actually despite the frustrating weather. Sea fishing is definitely my go to in most situations but with poor prospects locally at the moment it’s good to have this on the doorstep as a backup. I might even have another go in the coming weeks.
Finally, after 4 months of lockdown, I’ve managed to get out and actually have something to write about! Sods law I finally get round to starting a blog after a few years of thinking about it and then covid comes along!
Anyway, i headed up to Druridge armed with ragworm and mackerel from baitsrus.com (first time using these and must admit I was really impressed – mackerel was still solid when the package arrived and the worms were brilliant).
There’s a canny surf running, in fact it was a bit on the bigger side of what I prefer but I was determined I was going to make the most of it. Despite clear skies and sunshine all day the temperature was really low and I regretted leaving the second hoodie in the car!
An hour into the flood and the first Bass made an appearance, a small schoolie which had a fair bit of growing to do to get to keepable size! It looked like it had been though the wars a bit with some scarring across its flank and was a little lean – hopefully this is a sign that it’s starting to feed well and will be back to prime condition soon!
Fish number 1 and the first of 2021.
Shortly a surprising Turbot followed – I always fish a rod for Turbot when I’m up here but with the combination of rough sea and murky water I wasn’t expecting there to be any about.
From this point the next 4 hours are a struggle – the sea is big and the current strong, bringing in the weed but I stick it out. It’s not until an hour before high water that the rod finally registers some interest and Bass number 2 pops out – pretty much the same size as the last.
Bass number 2
I give it another hour to use up the last of the worms but no more fish show so decide to call it a night. Not quite the return to form I was hoping for but there’s always next time!
A crisp evening on the beach to blow away the lockdown cobwebs!
What a truly rubbish few months (and year) it’s been. Truthfully I haven’t gotten out fishing since my last report in December – primarily because of the latest Covid lockdown in England. I could have maybe gotten out locally as i live not far from the sea, but in all honesty most of my preferred venues are outside of my immediate locality!
With restrictions relaxing though I’m off out for the first time in months on Saturday – I think I’m Druridge bound fo some general pleasure fishing for flatfish and Bass. Then off work for a week so may have another session further afield as things start to relax a bit more hopefully.
Another opportunity beckoned to break the monotony of lockdown this weekend. Conditions weren’t as favourable as they have been on my last couple of outings but Tony and I were still hopeful of a few fish. The choice of mark was another new one for me – though Tony has fished it for years. The mark has a reputation for good quality fish, with bigger doubles common.
A 10 minute walk through a farmers field had us circumventing some curious cattle – mostly young bullocks from the look of things. Thankfully they don’t get too excitable and we were shortly down on the coast and scrambling over smooth rocks and boulders to get to our first mark. Ive been toying with investing in some wader studs and at this point i think my minds made up – it took some careful judgement as I hopped from rock to rock, praying to god i didn’t slip and break my neck! Some of the rocks are really mossy and an absolute death trap when wet, especially at night.
We soon had baits in the water whilst waiting for the tide to recede enough to wade into our main mark for the evening. A couple of tentative knocks showed that there was at least something about.
We only had time for one chuck before the first part of the skeer was exposed so we quickly moved over. First chuck on here on a squid, black and cart cocktail proved a winning combo as I got a very convincing thump after 5 minutes – and upon lifting into it there was a healthy weight on the end. It kept low all the way in and made use of a few of the ledges, which I suppose added to the surprise when it finally surfaced and turned out to be smaller than I was expecting. Still at 4lb 10oz I’m happy with that for a first fish on a new mark!
This lulls us into a false sense of confidence – surely an early fish means a half decent night? Unfortunately the reality is there’s little more for me to write about as what followed was a pretty much fruitless 4 hours save for a barely sized codling for me to keep me from nodding off completely!
Only on the “last cast” of the evening does Tony finally beat the blank with a fish of around 2lb. “Be rude not to have another cast” he says and sure enough he manages another about the same size to level the score and we decide to call it a night before the tide begins to push us back.
So not the night we were hoping for but at least we did not blank – and another decent fish supper for me! Hopefully things don’t tail off early this year and we still get a couple more sessions in before the fish move off to spawn.
Not much interesting to write about the latest session sadly. I attempted to repeat the success of last week and hit the rocks in search of cod. Sadly a solitary Coalfish and a well lit sky were about the only interesting events of the evening. Next time!
