My first ever thornback!

nickthenovice · #1 04-04-2008, 11:30 PM

Fished upper Bristol Channel friday pm tide. No bites at all on the flood and I had to wait until an hour into the ebb before my rod tip finally pulled round and started to nod. Gently pulled into what I what I was hoping would be a thornie, a species that had eluded me since I started sea angling, initially It felt like I was hauling an inanimate object from the depths and then suddenly it started to kite in the tide and then I knew I was in to something. After a couple of minutes it was flapping on the surface 20 feet below me and as I was on my jack jones I had to very carefully steer the fish to the left whilst avoiding severing my leader on the rocks in order to find a suitable way down to the waters edge. This done I was able to carefully grasp a wing and the ray was mine! Oh lordy, thank you.
I uncliped my rig from the leader, left my Channel Special against the rocks and fish in one hand very cautiously made my way back up to the top of the ledge.
Weighed my prize and it went 6lb 13oz, well chuffed! The bait was a cocktail of rag, sand eel and sardine the latter was featured in a post here recently which promted me to try it and I will be using it again. The rig was a very long pennel paternoster (48 inch snood) with 3/0 mustad vikings.
When I figure out how to upload an image I'll do just that!