Skaterboy
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2021
- Messages
- 947
- Reaction score
- 7,120
- Points
- 93
- Location
- Yorkshire
- Favourite Fishing
- Shore
I was on the rocks on West Skye just after sunrise this morning to avoid traffic on the single track roads. It was a bright morning with a light NNE breeze, just enough to keep the early morning midges off. I started deep spinning with frozen sand eel and started catching straight away with a few mackerel and a steady stream of small pollack to just over 3lbs. Hoping that some bigger fish would come on the feed later I changed over to bottom fishing with big frozen mackerel baits and on the first cast I had a few taps on the rod tip but it didn't develop into anything. When I reeled in for a bait change though there was a bit of weight on the line and I pulled up a nice 2lb 4oz lobster, a nice bonus. The next hour or so produced four spurdogs of 7, 9, 10 and 11 pounds. I like to catch spurdogs every now and then as they are a strong hard fighting fish in deep water but I soon get tired of wrestling with them so it was back to pollack fishing this time with deep spun jellyworm baited with a long strip of the fresh mackerel. Final tally for the day was 13 pollack, 3 mackerel, 4 spurdog and a lobster. It was fresh pollack for dinner tonight and there's a lobster salad for tomorrow.
I'm not one for "the one that got away " stories usually but I'm going to tell this one and you can make of it what you will. When I was fishing the baited jellyworm I was reeling in what felt like a good 5lb'ish fish when everything went solid and then started to move powerfully again. I've had pollack taken on this mark by big grey seals and occasionally by tope so I was thinking it was going to be one of these two. The fish continued to come up through the deep clear water and I eventually saw a light coloured shape deep down which I thought was going to be a big tope but it kept circling and coming up and getting bigger and bigger and eventually there was a big shark swimming around just under the surface with my pollack clamped in its jaws. I called my wife over and she saw it clearly as well. We were directly above the fish and both agreed it was 8 - 9 feet long and had a very broad back and was pale grey in colour. The fish soon got tired of showing off and headed off for the horizon at a steady pace. I was still attached to the pollack but I managed to get a leather glove on and clamped down on the spool before all my line was stripped and I only lost the trace. My wife said that if she hadn't seen the shark herself she probably wouldn't have believed my description of how big it was which is why I don't usually bother with these stories. Before the shark appeared I had been getting plenty of bites but afterwards it was a good 2 hours before I got another fish. As the title said, It was a very strange day indeed.
I'm not one for "the one that got away " stories usually but I'm going to tell this one and you can make of it what you will. When I was fishing the baited jellyworm I was reeling in what felt like a good 5lb'ish fish when everything went solid and then started to move powerfully again. I've had pollack taken on this mark by big grey seals and occasionally by tope so I was thinking it was going to be one of these two. The fish continued to come up through the deep clear water and I eventually saw a light coloured shape deep down which I thought was going to be a big tope but it kept circling and coming up and getting bigger and bigger and eventually there was a big shark swimming around just under the surface with my pollack clamped in its jaws. I called my wife over and she saw it clearly as well. We were directly above the fish and both agreed it was 8 - 9 feet long and had a very broad back and was pale grey in colour. The fish soon got tired of showing off and headed off for the horizon at a steady pace. I was still attached to the pollack but I managed to get a leather glove on and clamped down on the spool before all my line was stripped and I only lost the trace. My wife said that if she hadn't seen the shark herself she probably wouldn't have believed my description of how big it was which is why I don't usually bother with these stories. Before the shark appeared I had been getting plenty of bites but afterwards it was a good 2 hours before I got another fish. As the title said, It was a very strange day indeed.