Fiiish UK - Seriola Sportfishing Trip 24/05/24
Last Friday was the end of a mentally exhausting week for me after my wife having her back operation on Monday and returning home on Tuesday. That’s not to say it was easy, with my alarm set for 02.45 and on the road at 3.15 for my rendezvous with Dave.
Although very early it is so nice to be driving at this time of the morning and still such a novelty compared to the life I once lived to be doing this sort of thing. It’s still unbelievable I get to drive down a road called the Atlantic Highway and the county next door is Cornwall.
Making it in time to meet Dave, transfer my gear to his van we were on the road putting the world to rights, as usual.
We made it in good time to Falmouth with a stop off at Tesco for him to pick up his lunch and made our way to the quayside where we met up the rest of the crew.
Obviously Gary Thomas was already there, the rest of the crew were two of the Fiiish UK ambassador team Dave Taylor and Oban Jones along with Sam and David Kiddy who we can thank for the amazing job they have been doing with the distribution of Fiiish products for the last couple of years.
With the weather being a bit overcast and the sea flat calm it looked quite stunning with us all full of enthusiasm.
After getting on board and Gary explaining his plans and expectations for the day as he always does we set off onto some stunning looking scenery in all directions.
On arrival at the first mark it didn’t take long for some fish to start being bought up despite the lack of wind and the tide making the drift very slow.
The day started with mainly pollock and wrasse coming to the boat including quite a nice looking cuckoo wrasse for myself, although I would have preferred it to be an 80cm bass!
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As he always does Gary was keeping a watchful eye on both the fish finder and what was actually being caught and made the decision to change location.
With the second mark some bass started to show and we stayed for quite some time with whole boat seeing some action.
As has been happening for some time the most productive lures were always the smaller ones such as the Fiiish Crazy Paddletail 120 https://www.highstreettackle.co.uk/soft-lures-3-c.asp?_=&f-MODEL=f-Crazy+Paddletail closely followed by the size 2.5 Black Minnow. https://www.highstreettackle.co.uk/soft-lures-3-c.asp?_=&f-MODEL=f-Black+Minnow The favoured colours being Kaki and Electric Blue for the paddletails and Electric Blue for the Black Minnow.
By lunchtime the wind was still calm and there had been the odd burst of sunshine and we found ourselves on another mark due to the fishing dropping off with the change in tide. As I have mentioned before and countless other customers Gary is always watching and moving the boat on to ensure that the catching keeps happening for his crews. Before the day was up we found ourselves close to the marina in the river as on his last few trips this has paid dividends at the right state of tide, we did see several fish on the surface but there was not the usual bird activity that he was hoping for and after a few more fish it was decided to call it a day….
To sum up we all had another excellent day thanks to Gary’s hard work. There were plenty of bass, wrasse and pollock to the boat. I think Oban must be judged the top performer, working hard and catching well for the whole day. It was an absolute pleasure for us to have Sam and David with us for the opportunity to mix a little bit of business with pleasure, special thanks are also due to them for bringing a nice selection of lures for us to use as well as a special little preview.
Finally it is always a pleasure for me to fish and learn alongside David Taylor, so highly regarded by so many people with a well deserved reputation for both his knowledge and being so willing to always help other people.
After mooring up there was only one thing left to complete a day such as this and that was to get the gear loaded up and get a good meal in us all - needless to say the banter and some serious discussion continued until it was decided that we should all head home….arriving home at around 10pm made it quite a long day for me but definitely made such a pleasant end to my exceptionally stressful week.