18 Hour Monster Session!!

Where to start?!?

We had an early start planned, 3am wake and get to the mark asap to bash some rays for the morning low tide. Gav (Captain Tangle) kipped at mine, so the evening was spent watching tv, making sausage sandwichs for the next day, and making ray pulleys and conger rigs (Rigs to be put up shortly in the rig section!)

A quick stop at 'late stop' in bangor for a panini and more doritos and energy drinks, and we were off!  RossiJ was joining us with Ed (Polish, as in Krakov... crack-off.....) and we thought we had set off before them to get the best side of the ledge that we were all planning to be on, but it was a nervous drive on the dark A55 thinking Ross was about to whizz past us and get there first.

We arrived to great relief to an empty car park (Woop!) and started to unpack the car, as the grinning faces of the remaining fish hunters arrived next to us, and with a quick greeting of 'what the f*** are you doing here?' we all made our way down.

We got onto our planned ledge, with Ross on the far left, then Ed, me and Gav to the right, all were planning on 2 rods, so it was to be a bit of a squeeze, especially with Eds dangerous swings and snap-offs.. but luckily gav struggled to put a bait past 50 yards all day, so there was plenty room!

First into the fish was Ross, of course, and he had 2 rays, both nice fish, but nothing monstrous...yet! I was gagging for my first ray of the year, and my second ever, and then my rod bent over slowly, and kept going!

Not much of a fighter, a bit of a pecker at 2 lb 10oz.

 My next came in at exactly the same weight just as day was breaking at low tide, and in the photo I have a massive grin as Ed had just had about his 4th crack off as the photo was being taken.

Quite soon after, Gav managed to get something other than a doggie!  and had taken over my reign of the invertebrate snarer to my delight. All I got that was interesting for the rest of the morning was a lunker of a doggy at 2lb 6oz.   

The baits myself and gav were using were snake launce, squid and mackerel, and various wraps of the three. Inside the squid iv been getting from Gaz at Menai Angling theres been interesting things inside them, almost as fun as fishing!! weve had a few of the red snapper type things pictured in the middle, and a few sprats and a weever type thing, but today, a laterally flattened fish appeared, like a jon dory, but iv no idea what it was, but all very interesting.

The rays of the sun seemed to scare away the rays of the deep, and we retreated back up to the top of the cliff away from the incoming tide. Ross went home for a sleep, but we stuck it out, me doing a bit of uni work, and Ed and Gav trying for wrasse. Ed managed his first ballan, and then a nice 3lb ballan, and then his first corkwing.

 During the day there wasnt too much action to be had, but Gav and Ed did quite a bit of much needed casting practise for them both to get some rays in the evening. After a good few crack offs later, Ross returned with cracking pasties and tea cakes with powdery stuff on, went down a right treat- Thanks!

About 2 hours before low, the rays started coming onto the feed, and I managed my third ray at 4lbs, and then a double hookup for me and Ross resulted in a nice one for Ross at 5lb 13oz and my 4th at 5lb 3oz, not my pb, but a nice size :)

 Ed finally got his first ray at this point, shortly follwed by another of roughly the same size.

As it was pretty crowded, I was just pinging both my casts aiming at the same light on the horizon each time, and putting my rods in order appropriately, but I buggered it up at one point as I forgot which rod Id just cast, so they were tangled, but I thought I may as well wait for a bite before reeling in to untangle.

However, I got a bite on one rod, and you could tell the tangle was showing a bite on the other rod, but then the other was doing the same with whiting rattles??   so I made the decision to strike the right rod and asked Gav to help me out and reel in the other rod. as it got closer, we were both struggling to reel in quickly, and i was getting some massive headbangs, and thought it was a decent codling or something as it was on a squid bait, but as it got to our feet and our headtorches shined down, it was the biggest fish Iv ever caught from our shores!  My p.b. huss at 11lb dead.

Happy as pie, I then looked at the resulting tangle, as gav to the right of me had managed to get his line over mine too, and also managed to snag one of Eds cracked off rigs in the process, so i had a tangle of 4 lines and rigs, one of which was braid. About 40 minutes later I got rods in the water to try and get myself the Ty Croes Treble, a ray, huss and conger int he same night, but after an hour and a half, it wasnt to be despite runs on both rods, and we packed up to head home for a swift pint before closing time.

As I was up congering, Ross hammered through a few more rays, equaling his p.b., but he's still gagging for his double, and Im pretty sure hes back there as Im typing this.

On a bit of a downer though- whilst at the pub, we heard from our mates Ben (Ihatewhiting) and Ste (YorkshireCodling), that when they returned to their car at Mackerel rock, someone had tipped it upside down.. an odd thing to come back to, so Ross went to pick them up, and the car will have to be scrapped. So thats a warning to people going near that area, but hopefully it wont happen again. similar to when I had my car done in at Traeth Ora. no idea why it happened, probably bored chavs, as mackerel rock is a popular area for people to fish, and I cant see why people would tip a fishermans car for fishing his spot at mackerel rock?! if so, theyre gonna have a busy summer.

All in all, Ross had a steady stream of 11 rays,the biggest at 8 lb13oz to equal his p.b., Ed had 2, a dab, few wrasse and doggies, Gav let us all down by not getting a ray, but had a ridiculous amount of doggies, and an octopus.  A session very hard to beat!!