Possibly the best fight I've ever had on my plugging rod :D

As promised here is the report from yesterdays fantastic wrasse bashing session. The day started when I picked Stevie G up at 1ish to go get some crabs. We had an hour routing round and got enough peeler for our session, so we headed up to the North coast expecting big things. Arriving on the mark shortly after mid-water, we both set up with a 1-up rotten bottom rig with a size 1/0 sakuma hook and crab for bait. Steve wandered over to some ledges on our right, whilst I climbed down to sea level to drop straight down into the deeper gully. Almost as soon as I'd hit bottom on my first drop I had a typical wrasse bite, one tap and then a slow arching of the rod. Striking into the fish it took off on a small run and unfortunately managed to throw the hook. Promising signs though! Second cast was to produce a shock though. Again I dropped down into the gully fishing as tight to the side as possible. Another bite came fairly soon and at first I presumed it was another wrasse. I waited until the right moment and hit it.........fish on. There was a considerable force on the other end though and it was going mental. My plugging rod was arched over double and I could do nothing but be patient and take my opportunities to gain line when they came. Thinking I was into a possibly PB breaking wrasse I got extremely excited. The fish was not tiring and even in mid-water it continued to surge back down to the snags. At this point I started realising that it may not be a wrasse, as from experience the big wrasse tend to almost give up once you've got them up in the water. As the fish neared the surface, I caught a first sight of it and I must admit I thought I'd got a ling. One last dive confirmed its true identity though, it was a conger of all things on half a peeler. I always take a net with me wrassing, so landing the fish was not to bad once it was on the surface. I shouted over to Steve to come and see the fish, not telling him what it was until he caught sight of it for himself. Steve's words were as follows 'You are a spawny t**t' lol. Took a few pics and released the fish asap. That was probably the best fight of my life, what an epic battle. 6 minutes tug-of war with 10lb leader and size 1/0 hook took it's toll though and I soon replaced the rig with some heavier line just incase of a repeat hook up. Shortly after, I was back into some of the big ballans that frequent this area as well as a couple of nice pollock which couldn't
resist half a juicy peeler. This fish on the left  my biggest of the day at a tad under 4lb. It was one of around a dozen 3lb+ fish landed between myself and Steve in around a 4 hour period. I just love the colour variations between wrasse, no two fish are ever the same and the belly on this fish although sagging, had a lovely bright orange spotted pattern on it. Stevie G's best fish of the day came around mid-way though the session. After he had hooked and lost a few monsters that had taken him to ground he started getting the hang of it and was
 pulling in a steady flow of 2-3lbers with this fish on the left being his best

 of the day at a tad over 3lb. He was getting some interesting little taps though and eventually got a hook up to this corkwing (right) which we had to inspect for a while due to some odd markings on the tail and the belly. We thought for a second he may have had a rarer species of wrasse but after a short discussion we decided it was just a corkwing lol.    Steve then had a short period of fluff chucking which resulted in a dozen or so macky, plenty for his next few breakfasts atleast :) We left at around 7.30ish in hope of catching the second half of the Spain v Portugal game which wasn't worth getting back for in the end.
Another enjoyable day with my knots taking a real testing from the savage beasts below. Thanks for reading

Tight Lines,
Ross