An extraordinary week of fishing. Part 7 : A bit of perspective.

After heading up to the caravan on Sat at about 6pm, meeting our mate Martin Allison and catching up with him whilst grabbing something to eat we headed out again for a few hours. We decided to go down to West Tarbet and began exploring the rocks to the south of the bay. We were hoping for more wrasse but as light faded so did our chances of catching any and with a distinct lack of bites close in we switched our attention and tactics to pollock instead. Jake was first catch one.

Lunker City Ribster proving very effective as Jake lands the target species.

Ross and I were not getting any takes though and I decided to fish a 6" red Gulp! Nightcrawler on the bottom and after a bit of patience and a few little twitches I had a rattle from something but I missed it. Repeated casts back to the same area failed to produce any further bites.With action grinding to a halt we decided to move and I went and had a look for a new spot that was accessible. I found one nearby and after a bit of clambering around on the rocks we were soon fishing again. With very little action from pollock again Ross did his mountain goat impersonation and started exploring and I decided to try fishing close to the bottom again with the Gulp! Nightcrawler. I was just saying to Jake that I'd not had much success with them when I felt a couple of taps as I twitched it over a rocky patch. On the third tap I struck and felt the weight of a decent fish. Jake thought I was joking and had maybe picked up a few blades of kelp until I got the fish about half way in and it decided it didn't want to be caught. My Power Pro started screaming off the spool and I raised the rod up to try and keep it away from the shelf below us. As soon as it stopped taking line I cranked it hard and bullied it up to the surface. Landing it would be tricky from our elevated position but there was a platform lower down to our right that the occasional wave was washing over so I steered the fish around to that and on the second attempt we had it on the rocks next to us. A nice fish and we both had a guess at its weight. To see who got closest we got the scales and a bag ready and whilst we did this the fish flapped a few times and managed to get into a very deep kelp filled rockpool behind us! I thought it was lost but luckily it was still a bit tired and Jake managed to quickly reach in and lift it out again. Much to my surprise I managed to guess its weight exactly right. Normally I'm not so good at estimating weights but I guess I'm improving. For a laugh we decided to do an "arms length = huge fish" shot which I personally think look pretty ridiculous. Mind you not as ridiculous as some of the claims people make about the weight of the fish in them!

Looks massive. Can you guess the correct weight! Correct answer is at the bottom.

By this point the light was fading and we wanted to get to the pub for a well earned pint. It turned out to be a few as when we arrived we met a few fellow The Lure Forum and World Sea Fishing members and had a good chat about what everyone had been up to and also about fishing ultra light and species hunting. Rather drunk we headed back to the caravan and had a few more drinks before Martin returned from bassing in the early hours of the morning. After another drink and finding out how he'd fared we went to bed as we had an early start in the morning with a boat trip booked to do even more species hunting.

Tight lines, Hutch.

Highlight below to reveal the weight of my pollock:
4lb 8oz