Sunday 18th June - pack tope off Selsey

Lookfar · #1 06-20-2006, 11:34 AM

Hi folks,
Courtesy of everyone in the house revising for exams, including the wife, I was ordered to shove off fishing on Father's Day. I'm an easygoing guy, so I didn't argue

Crew were Malcolm and Graham and we were all up and out in good time, rolling onto Hayling Island around 08.15. Mark had been there for a while with the Lady Christine, they were launched and waiting for us with a bucket of hardbacks so we threw SeaMouse down the slip as quick as possible. Utterly glorious conditions, an oily sea with just a hint of an underlying swell, a light breeze to cool us and a bit of haze to keep the sun from frying us. I just love summer. Mark set a fairly blistering pace out, which gave me chance to discover that I'm either over-propped or need to dump my trim tabs since the boat was flat out at 4000rpm. That small worry aside, we had a clean run to a mark inshore of Utopia where Dreamcatcher was already drifting and feathering while they waited. The others went to anchor as soon as they'd enough bait but I opted to drift the feature with a mix of baited feathers and tope rods. Things were quiet for a couple of drifts but in the end we found a couple of small bream on the feathers. The tope baits were a different matter. Malcolm had a doggie and I had a couple of small tope, good fun on just 2oz of lead and a light rod. Once the charter nearby had turned into the flood I decided we'd better get the lines up and the anchor down. I hauled in my tope rod, watching over the stern as the line was coming up under the boat and the lead was likely to foul either the trim tabs or the steps. Sure enough, just after the leader knot appeared everything locked up. I leant forward to see where the problem was and to my astonishment, the rod kicked and then slammed over as 'something' on the end of the line crash-dived. The first spirited run had me briefly wondering if we'd hooked up a thresher but it was really too slow and too short. It had to be a tope, and after a really enjoyable battle on 12/20 gear it came in. It was far smaller at almost 13lb than the fight had me believing. It went straight back after tagging and asserted its upper water credentials by circling round the boat on the surface rather than diving.
After that, the start of the flood at anchor was an anti-climax. The hounds didn't show, apart from a wee starry pup, and the doggies steadily muched away on the tope baits. When it got to the point of needing 12oz leads to hold bottom, we all agreed that bream sounded like a better option and followed the Lady Christine down to Boulder. The tide there was just nicely pushing through and the weed was not particularly intrusive. We had bites right from the off and I was kept very busy unhooking fish, preparing baits and sending down groundbait blocks to the extent that I never did manage to get an uptider out in search of something extra. In all we had 39 bream between us, a couple of small ballans and a shanny. The bream were largely small, with just one fish at 2lb 2oz and a couple around 1lb making it as far as the fishbox. By the time the tide was easing we'd run out of rag and started on the last of the squid, so when Mark came on the VHF to suggest we go out to Utopia my crew jumped at the idea.
There was still a bit of the flood running out there and shed loads of mackerel plus a couple of small bream for Graham. The tope were on the feed as well and it wasn't long before the first mackerel fillet was getting savaged. Malcolm landed his first ever at 6lb, proudly posed for a quick picture and promptly needed another as his next fish went to 10lb 8oz. He added another around 4lb, I got a couple in the 5-6lb range but poor Graham was going through hell. His only two runs were dropped and every fish Malcolm and I hooked made a beeline for his trace and either knitted it or bit clean through it. After the second bite-off, I surrendered him my rod and Malcolms last fish bit that one off as well! For the last ten minutes, we tidied up and left Graham with three rods out. When I finally had to call time on him, we hauled them in to find two had been fishing a bare hook and the third had no hook after something bit through the armoured braid. Definitely not his day

There's a special pleasure about running home in the sunshine after a good day's fishing, so I was happy as Larry as we rounded the Winner buoy and turned in towards Langstone. The smile didn't last, I'd forgotten it was a sunny sunday. Jetski hell. No point ranting, but I was completely unimpressed to see the Harbourmaster's rib cruise right through the middle of an entire pack of wake-hopping jetskis 600 yards inside the 10 knot limit sign. I wonder what he'd have said if SeaMouse had jumped a wave at 20 knots right under his nose????

Steve