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

From dusk till dawn.

Jake and I headed down to Torness Power Station midweek to have a go for bass during dusk and dawn and to fish around at the inlet during darkness to see what might be around. When we arrived the tide was on its way out and there were a couple of other people fishing. There was a fair swell running and the waves were coming up over the reef. We setup, waded out a bit onto the reef and started fishing just as light started to fade, although due to heavy cloud cover and mist it was already pretty dim anyway. I opted for a bombarda and tiny Slug-Go whilst Jake went with a baby Slug-Go on a jighead. After a few casts I had a knock and then Jake hooked a bass. We both thought that this would signal the start of a period of action but it didn't. After Jake lost some end gear in the gulley he was working which was begining to empty a bit we moved for a while to another spot on the reef. This didn't produce anything after a while so we decided to head around to the inlet area.

Upon arrival we started fishing from the helicopter platform. I set up a two hook flapper rig, put on a couple of Gulp! Sandworms and lobbed it out in the hope that something maybe be moving around on the bottom under the cover of darkness. Jake meanwhile did a spot of LRF and soon caught a small pollock. We then heard splashing in the shadows directly below us and Jake was soon catching the culprits, small coalfish.

More active at night, coalfish are good fun on ultra light gear.

Whilst Jake continued having fun with the coalfish, with the odd pollock taking his green Power Isome too, I was getting a few taps on my rod and decided to reel in to check the lures. Both were bitten off up to the hook so I knew there were a few crabs around at least! I switched over to some larger red Gulp! 6" Nightcrawlers to put a bit more scent into the water and hopefully prevent the crabs from eating them so quickly. Once those were out on the bottom I decided to have a go for a coalfish with my 2' Ron Thompson Ice Fishing rod for a laugh. After a bit of perseverance I finally hooked one but it didn't really put that much of a bend into the little rod. It's obviously tougher than I thought! After a decent rattle on my rod I reeled in only to find the lures half destroyed by the crabs again so we decided to have a quick go in the rockpools where I'd caught a few long spined sea scorpions and the leopard spotted gobies earlier in the week. There was very little activity though but we did spot a few fish darting around and Jake managed to catch one sea scorpion. We then headed back around to the outflow for dawn.

With the tide almost fully out and nobody else around we were in his spirits. The sky was still overcast though and it was still pretty misty. We both started off fishing baby Slug-Gos on jigheads, casting up the current and working them back close to the bottom but neither of us had any luck. I decided to try a few hard lures and after trying a Maria Chase BW in Holo and a I decided to try a cheap lure I picked up for £5 at the North Wales bumble. I'd never used it before so was pleasantly surprised when on the third cast a small bass took it.

My first bass on a hard lure for quite some time!

I called Jake over and he quickly switched over to his favourite Yo-Zuri Pins Minnow. A few casts later and he was in too. Jake caught another two bass in fairly quick succession on it and I had a couple of knocks too but after that the action stopped again. By this point it was fairly light, although we didn't get to enjoy a nice sunrise due to all the clouds and mist! We fished on for another hour or so but by this point we were both pretty tired so we headed back up the road.

Tight lines, Hutch.