20/07/2023
Wee trip down to the harbour the day for a scoot on Fathom Marine Charters with Andy Logan and after a booking letting us down, we decided to scoot on ourselves as we had the bait sorted, rigs sorted and big plans....REALLLL big plans as evidenced by some of the broomsticks protruding out of the rod holders upon my arrival! Stopping off on the way for a few more baits to ooze fresh blood into the depths, we soon had maybe 50 more Mack's inside 20 mins, the Lough is absolutely alive with the stripey guys at the min!! So off we headed with a change from our normal plans of anchoring in the deep and instead to drift along parallel to a huge contour that produces fish the entire length of the feature. Engines were cut, boat turned side on to current and it lined up perfectly with the wind, wind against tide would slow out drift perfectly for a nice slow, almost static bit of drifting 😍 the kind of drift that makes a fisherman's w***y move! Current pulling the floats nicely away from the boat and the boat being pushed along at 0.1 - 0.4knots the stuff dreams are made off and the chum trail was working perfectly flowing lumps, chunks, blood and guts directly over our float baits! Now any fisherman will know, you don't fish in 380 feet of water with floats....UNLESS.... you have heard several stories from unrelated sources of some strange type of shark, jumping several feet clear of the water 😁🦈 THRESHER TIMEEEEE!! (Hopefully) several reports have also indicated skate coming up with hugeeee chomps out of them and 400lb mono being cut clean 😱 wonder what could do that?? 🤔answers on a postcard please 😂
Anyway, baits were dropped down and it didn't take long for the rods to start rattling with me lifting 1st fish, small by Belfast Lough standards but different gravy altogether on the 1lb leads which drifting allows for, I could get used to this I'm thinking (how wrong was I?) After taking a "several" fish to 1 lead over Andy I was already starting to feel the effects of dragging these sharks up from the depths and I got a bit of a laughing at, that fu**er Andy wasn't catching enough to get a bad back 😒😂 even though I offered to strike his fish for him as witnessed in the video (can't say I didn't offer) 😂. For some strange reason I decided I was going big or going home and lifted the custom built fathom marine rod, coupled up with the Shimano tld 50, these aren't the big guns, these fu**ers are the artillery!! After dropping down a cocktail of baits that is the fish version of a fat doner when your pi**ed and just wanna garlic facemask, I didn't have long to wait before I regretted every life decision I had made, up until that point 😭😭 the rod bouncing out of the gimbal it was time to get the harness on and prepare to do battle, hopefully with the skate eater 😈 sadly it wasn't to be and the rod completely out gunned the double figure spur that got dragged up faster than the poor fu**er could swim, complete with a 13/0 heavy gauge hook jammed into its jaw, there was such a great chum trail and variety of baits in the water that we actually dragged at least 1 spur up from 380 feet to check out the floats that were bobbing about in the chum trail 🤦😂 (see video, watch closely) Then came the peach of the day, Andy lifts into a real nice, mid-double fish that gives him a spirited resistance at times looking very tope like, I'm laughing at his squeals of joy as my rod buckle's, about 10 seconds into this fight and I'm convinced I've a big and angry tope!! Again, a spirited attempt to drag me over the gunnels failed on the fishes behalf and we soon both had smashing specimen spurs on deck! A new personal best spur for me with the tail breaking the 108cm mark and a real fat and well stuffed out fish! At this stage I'd have been happy enough calling it a day as Id won all the fights so far but had a feeling that I was losing the war 🤕 soon after the tide changed direction and winds changed and ended up pushing us at the same speed some small boats motor at and light gear was refusing to stay nailed down to the bottom, even in the shallower water we had now reached, which seem devoid of any fish life, so the gannets got a bit of a feeding while we were bored, was like watching something from David Attenborough as they plummet out of the sky and torpedo their way through the water to lift the mackerel and swallow them whole, unfortunately we didn't get either of the 2 target species we went out hunting but we got our fill of some real nice spurs, to the point we got fed up with photos 🤦 flat calm conditions, great company, plenty of craic and ribbing and tons of fish, what more could you want before going back to work 😭😂
Tight lines folks!
