A few weeks back Gerry and I had finally decided to take our boys a day trip to the sunny south west for a crack at the hounds. We had spoken about this over the past couple of years but I felt my oldest boy was just a bit too young for a trip of this nature. For the days leading up to the trip the excitement had almost reached fever pitch with the ‘how long till we go fishing?’ question being rolled out every morning and night from my oldest son.
We left early afternoon to catch low water and fish the tide up to as close to high as we could manage. As the tides were building towards the springs we knew that we would have to get off the mark just about dusk to be extra safe. This gave us a window of 4 or 5 hours, more than enough time to get the boys a fish or two.
The mark we had chosen was the same as the one that we had fished the previous weekend without much success. With the tides, weather and water temperatures looking good we hoped that a week would make all the difference. Thankfully we managed to source a bucket of fresh Crab and some Ragworm which we hoped would give us a better chance of finding a wider variety of species.
Gerry and I usually travel light as the walk out to the mark is a fair old trek when loaded up like a Himalayan Sherpa, today it was unavoidable. We tried to share the load as much as possible and to be fair the boys they coped very well with the trek.
Arriving shortly after low water, rod rests were erected, rods were assembled and rigs were clipped on against the backdrop of shrieks of excitement. Rory the youngest was using a 3.5lb tc pike rod and a Shimano 6000 bait runner spooled with 50lb braid straight through. Ross has his own set-up that he won from his fish of the week competition following the capture of his massive Bass last spring. Scott, the oldest of the threesome, is more used to fly-fishing so he had borrowed his dads AFAW T Bass rod and a Shimano Ultegra 5500. Crabs bound on and Ragworm needled onto the hooks and we were off…….
30 seconds after the baits hitting the water Rory’s rod buckled over, the combination of the light rod and braid giving us all a heart attack as we expected something a bit bigger than a dog to appear. To him his mission had been accomplished with his first ‘shark’ hitting the deck.
For the next 4 hours we caught 32 fish including Dogs, Whiting and Common and Starry Smoothound. Most baits were finding fish which in turn led to quite a competition between the boys. 25 of the 32 fish caught were by the boys, quite an achievement.
As the tide had reached our feet and darkness fell it was time for the trek back to the Jeep. A quick stop for a bag of chips then the journey home could begin, not that any of the young team would be awake to witness it.
Until the next fish….
Scotland Sea Angling 