Bristol Channel yesterday evening

[nickthenovice]

Fished BC yesterday afternoon/evening. I dropped my kids back to their mums and decided that I'd risk the possibility of a very wet and soggy couple of hours in the lower reaches.
When I got to the venue the tide was well up but still a couple of hours from high water and it looked good. I decided to stick with squid and sandeel wraps which had brought me recent success and fish them on 2/0 1/0 varivas hooks, pennel style.
The baits were cast out and I sat looking at the sky thinking that I couldve easily managed my beach buddy, however 10 mins later the sun had broken through and it turned out to be a wonderful couple of hours in terms of the weather.
The first rod to give action was the right hand one that had been put out at distance approx at the point where clean sand had started to give way to broken ground, it nodded slowly and then rattled like hell and then stopped abruptly. "Bugger!" or something similar was the thought, but then off it went again and I was in to a fish! The fight was short but spirited and I was rather disapointed to see a strap conger writhing in the shallows (was hoping for a bass). A few minutes later I missed a bite on the other rod that was fishing at shorter range,but it wasnt long before I had a couple of dogs on the "short ranger" followed by 3 more throughout the tide on the other.

All went quiet over high and as the tide started to ebb I decided to start packing up and make an early exit but whilst putting rigs back in the wallet I noticed a flicker of movement on the left hand rod, not much, just a hint of a tap really. A minute or so later just as I was convincing myself that I'd probably imagined it the tip vibrated again "could be weed, but what the hell" and so I wound down and struck. "Nothing! But wait a minute, there is something coming in", and there was what I initially thought was a very small lsd spinning toward me through the waves. "Thats no lsd, it's a tope!"

Unless I am mistaken I landed my first ever tope yesterday evening, if its not a tope I'm sure that you guys will put me straight!
After that little bit of excitement I decided to make haste back to the car and homewards where I would dream about catching his much bigger brother!

[nickthenovice]

Just looked at the first picture again and it occured to me that it may be a baby smut.

[Spahill]

Nice report Nick.
Whatever the little fella is he has certainly got a quizical look in his eye

[geejayy]

well done, looking at its tail shape i'd go with tope , but i dunno fer sure without looking in its mouth, it should have def pointy teeth.

[pingu]

cute little fella aint it either way
i blanked at lilstock last night and lost far far too much gear

dave

[fishypaul]

well done nick not a novice any more,eh mate ?

[nickthenovice]

I'm putting in as many hours as poss,if not on the beach then doing research on the net and books/mags to try and improve my game, it's starting to pay off I believe.

[barbelblanker]

Pingu nicked my thunder there, cute little devil . Nice shore conger too the way things are going. Ask charter skipper for the TV pilot show conger recipe, I'm sure Mike will be only too glad to share it.

[Twiddler]

Aww how cute, the little fella looks like a bath toy lol.....wouldn't want that eel in my bath though (yuk), well done to your catch, persistance always pays off

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Great read mate