Our last trip from Hartlepool was two weeks ago, between 8 anglers we had well over 100 cod, probably more like 150 nothing big, probably 6 lbs or so being the biggest , most in the 3- 4 lbs bracket.
Taken on a mixture of shads, and baited hokkais or muppets.
I had 30 takers myself , taken on mackerel baited muppets and shads.
On top of that we were lucky and before we really started , we covered a shoal of really big mackies, in ten mins we had enough for bait for the day and also enough to take plenty for the pot. It was a good days fishing .
Biggest cod of the day taken on baited hokkais , bait was pink shell on prawns.
But.
A friend who is a good angler, who was on the above trip went on the same boat 4 days later with his lad, what a different story, same number of anglers aboard , but the catch rate was well, down, he and his lad only had 6 ling, and mackies were hard to find, a few undersize cod taken but that was all, lean pickings really after a red letter day on the previous trip.
Just shows what a difference a few days can make.
Failure is not always down to a lack of skill, it can equally be that the fish just arent feeding.
Dave
