A welcome break!

Had another 2 day break from work recently and as you'd expect, I made the most of my time off with a bit.... ok a lot of fishing. Here's what went down

The first day kicked off with a 6am alarm, waking me with just enough time to get to Holyhead for a charter boat trip I'd booked with mate Steve on-board MyWay with Gethyn. Due to the time of year, we didn't deceive ourselves with high expectations, but we were both secretly hopeful of a bit of rod bending action from the spurs out in Holyhead deeps. After a hour or so steaming out to the mark, the first drops saw the majority of us on the boat pick up a doggie or two, that was all of us except the skipper of course, who decided to show us all how it was done with a spurdog of around 7-8lb. After the great start though, it turned out to be a slow day. There were a few more decent fish landed including another spurdog of around 12lbs, a thorny and a decent huss for my mate Steve. My best fish of the day was a nice whiting of over a pound, probably a new PB, but this one was lucky and went free, most likely to be eaten by a huss in the near future lol......you can see from the photo that something had already had a go at it. In all though, it was a great day out on the water and couldn't have asked for nicer weather. If there's one thing I took away from this trip though, its that Geth really knows his stuff when it comes to boat angling, when targeting spurs fish the baits just off the bottom to avoid the doggy plague! Will hopefully be out with Geth again before I head South for 7 months!

As we steamed back, I was still well in the mood to fish and decided that I wanted to challenge myself, in the end coming to the conclusion that I was gonna target a tadpole fish. Having only caught one before, I didn't really have much to go off, but after a quick check of my old blog posts from last year, I saw that I'd had my last one in very similar conditions exactly one year and two days previous, how convenient :)

Fishing with my mate magic, we braved the cold and headed to the ranges with a couple of rods each. My aim for the night was to land a few new species for the year, namely tadpole fish and rockling, although I'd also be using had my heavier duty set up for congers. I chose to use a very simple 1-up, 1-down running ledger rig with rag tipped with macky for bait and a few lumi beads just for that added attraction in the depths. To say the fishing was good would be lying, but after an hour or so, I finally got some action in the form of my first rockling of 2013, a small one of the shore variety. It was a good 2 hours before I'd see any more action but sure enough, almost dead on low tide I noticed a small tap on the rod tip. I lifted my rod off the tripod and felt the line for any more bites. It wasn't long before the tap turned into a decent knock so I lifted into the fish. Knowing it was something small, I immediately got a little excited, but nowhere near as excited as I was when I saw that I had successfully caught the fish I had been targeting, A TADPOLE FISH! My happiness was easy to see and magic was amazed that I had landed one of these, having talked about them none stop since we'd arrived. I think this was the first one he'd seen and he was in agreement that they are cool fish, although another friend of mine, having seen the pics, has funnily referred to it as...... the most miserable looking fish he'd ever seen lol.

On a real high and despite the lack of further action, I decided to pack down my conger rod, leaving just my rockling rig out. It was sods law though that the next fish I'd land (which turned out to be the last) was of course a conger, which luckily had been hooked perfectly in the top lip. Getting magic to steer it onto the rocks for me, I soon had it in my grasp, the first landed conger I'd landed on this particular mark, having hooked and lost a few really good fish previously. With no more action for a further hour we decided enough was enough and off home we went. Not a particularly hectic session but ticked off all three of my nights targets, so definitely can't complain.



The following day, a new target was made, this time to do a little LRF'ing for scorpion fish and blennies. Magic was again keen to come along for a fish and had never tried this method of fishing before, so it was great to see him catch a few fish and a new species. Although the fishing was again hard work, we did pull out a handful of scorpion fish between us, with magic getting the pick of the bunch with this fella taken on red power isome. I am particularly proud of this photo as well, really want one like this myself now.

Anyway, that's all for now,
Thanks for reading and tight lines,
Ross

The end is in sight!

The end of the year is creeping up now and species hunting in particular is getting very difficult. With temperatures starting to plummet, many of the species that have spent the summer around the coastal waters of Britain are now moving off to deeper, more bait rich ground. There are however a few fish I haven't yet landed that are still targetable. To give myself a good chance of bagging a couple of these, I went up to Scotland again, firstly to the Aberdeen area where I would attempt to catch a ling and then to Loch Etive where I'd have a dabble for a spurdog.

So first stop was visiting my mate Ad in
Aberdeen for a long weekend. The promise of good sized cod and a reasonable chance of ling was to good to refuse, so off I went on a 5 hour car drive north, arriving just in time for an evening session. After a quick stretch of the legs and some of Ad's home cooked cod green curry, we were off to the mark. Baiting up with large combinations of macky, black lug, squid and crab it wasn't too long before we had a few taps, whatever it was though was not large enough to inhale the 6/0 hooks we were using. It was a good while before I had my first proper bite which resulted in my first Scottish cod of the trip, unfortunately only a small one at around 1.5lb. The next cast produced another small codling and Ad got off the mark as well. The session came to an end shortly after though when the swell picked up and we had to get off the mark quickly to avoid getting cut off. Over the following few days we tried for the bigger cod again and also ventured up to Peterhead South breakwater, the mark where I'd be targeting a ling. The highlight of these few sessions was a very big tadpole fish for Ad weighing 15.5oz, a species he'd never caught before and only the second one I have seen. The ling proved to be elusive for the duration but I won't give up on catching one just yet.

The long weekend was over before i knew it and a trip down to Edinburgh ensued where I'd be meeting up with good friend and mini-species legend, Scott Hutchison. After a night of rig making and research, the 5am alarm bells rang and we were both up and on our journey to Loch Etive, where we had booked a boat for the day through http://www.sea-fishing-loch-etive.co.uk/. The aim of the trip was for us both to tick off a new species for the year, myself desperate to get a spurdog and Scott wanting a thornback ray. We arrived in Taynuillt for first light with this scene to greet us and after a chat with the boat owner Doug Bannatyne, we were on our way to our first mark. As expected, the depth in Etive is incredible, even within casting distance from the shore we were in over 100ft of water. We tied up to a buoy and dropped down, as line kept peeling off the spool we were both wondering when we would find bottom but at 185ft we were down there. For 30 minutes the bigger baited hokkai's remained actionless so a change of plan was needed. I tackled up my plugging rod with a one-up one-down rig blinged up with plenty of lumi-beads. A 4oz bomb was all that was needed to hold bottom and in no time at all I had my first fish on. After pumping it up from the depths up came a small thorny, a good way to get off the mark. Next drop
and it was species number 2 for the day,  a lovely grey gurnard and probably the biggest one I've caught to date. Scott had now joined me with the lighter rod and it became a quite productive few hours, the majority of fish being pouting, poor cod or whiting. After a quick spot at another spot during which  I boated another 3 thornies, we decided to go and try a drift by the quarry, it was fruitless. Time was flying by and we were starting to get a little agitated by the constant hoards of manky parasite ridden whiting and poor cod. With just an hour left we headed back to the slipway where we launched just to try and see if Scott could get his thornback. After 20 minutes of nothing I suggested steaming out to the middle of Airds Bay just to see how deep it was. At over 200ft it was the deepest spot we'd fished on the day and I decided to drop down my bigger hokkai baited rig again and leave it. With a

Spurdog : Species 68

 few minutes left Scott landed a bigger whiting and began preparing the engine for motoring back to shore. Whilst he was though, I noticed a few knocks on my rod..... I left it to develop before striking and setting the hooks, fish on. After playing it up for what seemed like forever, we eventually caught sight of it and it was the species i'd come for, a spurdog. Scott quickly grabbed the net and slipped it under my fish, I'd done it, scraped one at the last possible chance and I cannot describe how happy as well as relieved I was. With that came the end of our trip and it was back to Edinburgh.

The morning of my last day in Scotland dawned and due to a drop in the wind, it gave us a chance to get down to Torness once more to try for one of the 2-spot gobies. Both Scott and Jake have had plenty of these little beauties on there previous visits so confidence was high even though it was bloody freezing. Scott kindly donated me one of his mini-fish special hooks, a size 26 tied on 0.5lb fluoro and it was go time. We both scanned the pools for the mini's and within a few seconds I had my first fish, a common goby. Then I noticed a small flounder so informed Scott and left him to try and catch it. Sure enough he did and it brought with it the first sign of a 2-spot. Out from underneath a boulder shot two of them, very interested in my power isome but not willing to take it properly. After trying for ages I nearly gave up but Scott decided to see if he could find me some bait. How he found a ragworm I'll never know but he did within minutes and so on went a slither of fresh worm. Straight away the mini's went for it and in seconds I had what we'd come for, a two-spot goby and my 69th species of the year.

The session and my trip was over, 2 new species and a cracking week in Scotland once again. Both Ad and Scott had been great hosts and I look forward to fishing with them again soon, maybe sooner than they think.  So that leaves me with just 1 species left to catch, but what will it be? Thoughts at the moment are that Ling would probably be the best to target but if your reading this and can see a species I've yet to catch that you can advise me on then please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading,
Tight Lines,
Ross