Luce Bay Tope

I had endured a busy week at work, and arrived at the bar just in time to meet everyone before closing time. I was sharing a caravan with Adam, Mike and Ian (Millser), and we decided to head back to have a mess about with some fishing gear for the next day.

Adam was perhaps the most prepared angler amongst us. I had literally finished work, grabbed my bag and rods and ran! We had some test rigs to play about with, and I was hoping to borrow some for fishing the next day. First out the bag was an interesting ‘pully’ rig which had us all baffled to say the least. The hooks bend, the clips bend, the rig doesn’t actually pull, and well, that more or less summed the rig up.

Second test was a ‘tope rig’. Adam put the hook on a clip attached to the caravan door, grabbed the swivel and pulled - the crimp slid off the wire with very little pressure, putting Adam on his arse. Since I was very unprepared, a quick word with Adam sorted my tope rigs for the next day.

The wind was strong on the first day, and Ian decided that we would spend some time on the reefs in search of pollack. First stop was a mark about half a mile from the shore. On Ian’s advice we all used sliding floats and live launce, which the pollack loved. I was unhappy with the amount of fish though, so decided to retrieve a small ragworm bait as close to the bottom as I dared. I was hooking pollack on every single drop, though they were all sub-3lbs.

Adam hooked into a much better fish on the launce, but unfortunately it managed to find the kelp and snapped him. The fishing died off, so we moved underneath the cliffs for a shot at the wrasse. Everyone landed a steady stream of ballan, corkwing and cuckoo wrasse, and Millser and I both managed to winkle out a tompot blenny each. Mike also managed to find a colourful tub gurnard to end the day.

Back at the digs we sat down for one of the most enormous grills I have ever seen. These were washed down with alcohol until around 2am of course, before we went to bed in anticipation for the next days toping.

Thankfully the weather cleared for our last days fishing, and Ian whisked us towards the upper reaches of Luce Bay, where we anchored up in shallow water. We were using live mackerel, which caused countless tangles from the start, and even contributed to a dropped run for Adam.

As there was a fish in the area, I made sure to keep my bait well away from the tangles below, and had a run just a few moments later. I called Ian for assistance, who led me through the procedures involved in landing my first tope. After some blistering runs that almost emptied my 525 mag of 18lb line, she was finally on the boat. At around 32lbs, I was one happy bunny. Next up was Adam, and another tangle caused by the swimming live mackerel almost resulted in another lost fish, although thankfully Ian managed to grab it before disaster. Adams fish was estimated at around 20lbs, and was tagged and returned like all of Ian’s fish. After a sporting scrap, Mike landed a stunning starry smoothhound on his MTI 20-40 braid rod, which had fallen for a fillet of ‘bluey’.

The day was closing in, and we decided to go and have a few drifts next to ‘Alien One’ skippered by forum member Norrie Southam. Here, we bagged up on pollack, bream and a few small codling before a shoal of tireless mackerel forced a move offshore.

Our last few hours fishing were interesting in the rolling swell. Mike and I were plagued by dogfish, whilst Millser and Adam scratched away for Gurnards. Millser had a trio of rays to close the day; two gorgeous spotted rays and a thornback of around 4lbs. We thanked Ian for what had been a fantastic species hunt, and met the whole team in the bar for a night of alcohol and fishy stories…

Species Spotlight

Between the group, we had managed 23 species despite the wind.

Mackerel – Launce – Scad – Ballan wrasse - Cuckoo wrasse - Corckwing wrasse - Tompot blenny - Grey gurnard - Red Gurnard -Tub Gurnard - Thornback ray - Spotted ray - Coalfish - Cod – Pollack - Whiting - Starry smoothhound - Tope – Bream – Dogfish – Bass – Pouting - Conger