old report - third time's a charm?

an old post from the summer just gone - i thought i had put it in here but must have forgotten to do so..

headed back to the usual stomping ground again, nice flat sea and a few hours to spare - things could be worse. so i headed for the horizon and jigged hokkais all the way. once again the lack of mackerel really got me down. i have little or no faith in frozen mackerel for picking out the bigger predators. frozen will fool the smaller ones alright but for the bigger smarter fish i always reach for the fresh when it's there. after paddling and jigging for near on an hour i got bored and decided to drop anchor. i had one frozen mack and a few launce so at least i might get a bit of sport from the obligatory doggies. i wasn't wrong......



i started to get annoyed though. it's always bloody dogfish at this mark and there seems to be no sign of macks about. i haven't got one on the east coast yet this year. as these thoughts were running through my mind a small group of gannets started diving and rising with fish only a couple of hundred metres from me. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were at so i lifted the anchor and headed that way. once there i dropped hokkais and the jag jag of a mackerel has never felt so good!!



this was followed by two more. not a huge haul by any standards but enough to give me a couple of hour's worth of fresh bait and perhaps it may just tempt a tope? the frozen rubbish was reeled in and it hadn't even been looked at. down to the deck went a fresh one and the frozen was diced and pitched in uptide to create some sort of a scent trail. i continued to catch doggies on the smaller rod for a half hour or so boating maybe five or six of them and then i realised that they had gone quiet. something bigger in the vicinity? then the tope rod screamed and i let it run and struck into nothing. the bait was shredded and replaced and back down to the bottom it went again. within minutes the exact thing happened again.

down to my last mack i lowered it in and hoped to myself "third time lucky". and was it lucky? have a look for yourselves;







was i happy with my few hours work? was i *%&^£

great report n pictures and a beast of a tope, the second picture down of the tope is really good 10/10 ty

cheers mate, here's hoping for more this summer