Catching up with old friends on Gugh.

Sorry its been such a ridiculously long time since I posted anything, it has been the worst year for fishing that I have ever witnessed here in the Isles of Scilly. If if wasnt a gale blowing then we had the dreaded may bloom and algae the like I have never seen before!!!! I wrote this a couple of weeks a go but was just waiting for a couple of photos from Simon so that I could finish it off. Not the best post thats for sure but at least Iam trying!!!

Sunday saw myself and Neil heading up to St Agnes to meet up with Jim and Simon from the Irreverent Angler. They have been camping and fishing their socks off for the last few days and with the weather being like summer (dare I say it) we were optimistic to say the least. We had drawn up a plan to fish the tiny island of Gugh, only accessible by a sand bar that covers at high water. Looking at google earth it looked incredible!!!!

Boulders, gulleys, headlands out into the tide, shallow weedy bays all looked like perfect wrasse and pollack haunts and with the likelihood of very little previous lure fishing action!! I remember fishing some of the marks around the southern tip at Hoe point 12 years ago with Henry Gilbey and his mate Kevin where we had several pollack but hadnt been out there since. It was Neils first time to Gugh in his eleven years of living on the islands.

We started at the southern tip, casting various soft plastics but apart from a couple of wrasse for myself it was pretty quiet, although it was the ebb tide so not exactly unexpected. 

We did see several shoals of mullet cruising past, moving very quickly with some of them being 6-7lb fish!! The water is definitely starting to show signs of warming up as I lost count of the jellyfish I saw which bodes well. 

We moved from rock to rock catching the odd wrasse and Jim had four 3lb pollack in four casts when Neil decided to change tactics and rig up a larger homemade paddletail with a 40g jig head and blasted it between two pinnacles in the hope of finding a pollack. Third cast and his rod slammed over, he was clearly into a much bigger fish. Judging by his language it was a seriously powerful fish that he was fighting when disaster struck! The huge pollack dived and got tangled on a trailing lobster pot rope and was snagged!!!! He tried everything from giving it slack to eventually pulling for a break. Gutted doesnt even come close!!!!!!! As to how big it actually was we will never know, but I am sure Neil will be reliving that fight in his dreams many many times!!!!!!

It was approaching low water now and the tide had eased so we moved again to target the wrasse with the slack water. We found a lovely looking bay, really shallow but it screamed wrasse! After several small pollack to 3lbs on the drop we managed to find the wrasse with all four of us hooking up at the same time, awesome fishing and a great laugh. They werent the biggest wrasse with the biggest going 4lbs to myself.

 

Even the pollack were getting bigger with both Jim and Neil landing them to 4 lbs.

We lost count of the numbers of wrasse and pollack we had out of the bay but it was decided that we would head back out to the ledges where Neil lost the big pollack as soon as the tide started to flood.

Neil was soon into the pollack again with several small fish caught to a couple of pounds before he shouted for me to stop taking photos and get the net! 

  

A cracking pollack that put up a spirited scrap but nothing like the one that got away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seemed that as quick as the pollack had appeared they disappeared. Another lesson learnt for this new mark, its only a really short window for the pollack as they move through with the tide!!! 

It was back to target the wrasse from the shallow marks and as with the pollack they were strangely hard to locate! Maybe with such a huge spring tide they were holed up and not feeding as we thought they would?

We all agreed it was time to move to the Turks Head Pub for a much deserved pint! It had been a good day, great to catch up with Jim and Simon and have a laugh catching silly numbers of fish. Sadly the real monsters had evaded us this time but theres always the next time. I think that we will be back out on Gugh again soon!!!!