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| My 3rd octopus in 2 Ty Croes Sessions! |
An early rise at 6am to catch the calm weather and low tide at Ty Croes saw a beautiful sunrise and an empty car park when we got to the mark. Rays were the target species, and Ross and myself blasted out 2 rods each with mackerel, squid and sandeel and all combinations. Unfortunately my 2 beachcasters were in for re-ringing, so I was on society gear, and so my casts were about 10 yards short of ross's all morning. It was a slow start, with the first bite to me and after striking I knew exactly what the culprit was- an octopus. My last session at ty croes bringing 4 between us and 2 whiting had learnt me to know exactly what it felt like! shortly after Ross was into his first ray. He ended up with 4, the biggest being 7lb 11oz (Edit: 7lb 13oz, Sorry!), and was a nice fish indeed. I also got a starfish and a whiting. This is to be expected when fishing with Ross though, but he promised to give me a good session on the pollock that night after stealing all my thornbacks!!
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| How could a ray resist such a beautiful looking bait?! only Ross will know.. |
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| Ross with one of his rays |
Made it back to base at half 1, and a quick nip into the labs to finish my disertation work and a bite to eat, then off again to South Stack to Ross's top secret pollock mark. After the most lairy climb to any mark iv been to, we got down to the rocks just before high tide. As it was such a beautifully hot day (15 degrees!!) I took off most of my layers and sat cooling down while Ross set up.
As I finally chucked in a shrimp rig with bits of rag on, I could see him grinning away at my face of astonishment at how deep this place actually was. He'd mentioned it was deep, but line just kept peeling off the reel until finally touching the bottom, and then arching over again with a cracking bite, literally no more than a second after touching the bottom. After a nice little scrap a good size pollock surfaced.Not massive at about 40cm long, but that was tomorrows dinner sorted, and made the climb down more than worth it. My next cast brought a Scorpion fish and a corkwing wrasse as a double header, making that 3 new 2012 species in 2 casts!
Next cast brought up another corkwing, and another couple of smaller pollock were brought to the surface to be returned to grow up. It turned out that I was stealing all the fish this time as Ross had only managed a scorpion fish at this point, it wasnt to last much longer of course!
As the sun set, we moved round to a slightly shallower bit, but I was promised this is where the bigger pollock hang around at low water. Before Id set up again, Ross had a nicer pollock at about 1.5lbs. Over the next few hours I had a few more pollock, but all of a similar size of my first, so all went back to fight another day. Ross was into a couple more big uns amongst 5/6 smaller, the biggest at 2lb 11oz at 2 hours before low tide, Not anywhere near the monster at nearly 7lbs he had at the same spot a couple weeks before, but a promising fish..
Amongst the pollock, I had two of species number 4 of the day for me and another for the 2012 hunt which was shore rockling, so I was chuffed after a slow start to the day, as my species hunt for the year was starting to tke some serious form!
Ross however played his golden touch card and pulled out a tadpole fish, weird looking things, the mouth looking like a cods mouth at the time made me think it was related to the gadidae, and after a quick google now, it turns out I was right!!
Karma had its way as we were packing up tho, as whilst Ross was filleting his biggest pollock, the tiredness and fading headtorches caused him to throw the fillet of pollock back into the water instead of the carcass, much to my amusement!
Overall it was a cracking day out and good to get out again after a couple months being cooped up. Cant wait to get my rods out of Gareths shop in menai bridge and go after the rays again!
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