I was surprised when a friend of mine rang to say he and a few friends were fishing the following day and would I like to have a day out with them. He is probably one of the best skippers in the area so I jumped at the chance.
We met at the harbour at 8.30 and rounded Hartland to try with feathers for a few mackerel for bait. This first stop yielded a few Poor Cod, but sadly no Mackerel which nobody seems to be catching at the moment. Fortunately he had supplied a box of squid, and I had picked up a few frozen Mackerel, so we went further round the coast just off Welcome. Feathers yielded a succession of Pouting, not my favourite fish, but we managed to return most of them. I decided to switch to Tope fishing using Mackerel heads to stop the Pouting eating them. Jonathan, Aub and Graham switched to baited feathers while Clive lure fished.
From then on the feathers caught a succession of fish. Pollack to 8-9lbs, five Bream up to the 3lb mark in addition to the stream of Pouting. No fish came to the lure although Clive also spent a lot of time managing the boat. I managed a couple of Tope of 16 and 25lbs. The sport was great until the intensity of the tide kept our bait off the bottom.
Clive had an idea to tryan area of sand he hadn't fished for a few years in the hope of a Ray. Sure enough, Graham caught the first Ray, I had two more before Graham had a 10lb Smoothhound.
Once the sport dropped off there, we moved to anothe mark to try and get more Smoothhound and sure enough, this time it was Jonathan's turn for one.
What a fabulous day. I had never seen the sea so flat as the temperature soared into the 30's. It also allowed us to watch a pod of porpoise, a dolphin and seal as we fished. There couldn't be a better way of spending such a hot day, just whiling away a few hours at sea with friends.
