Ian and I managed a brief foray to Galloway chasing huss and tope at the very start of June. It’s a great time of year to target numbers of pack tope in Luce Bay, with the chance of some larger fish too.
We didn’t get launched until early afternoon and the sea was a little on the energetic side. Not much wind at all, but a quartering short chop that had us rolling constantly.
The huss were obliging but the tope kept their distance and I took the only one – a typical mid-teens specimen. Legered mackerel was the bait, mainly whole specimens.
The chop gave up as the sun sank to the horizon and the boat settled down, much to the relief of her crew!
As the sun set we were treated to a fine moonrise to the south of us, so the cameras were out to capture the moment.
Eventually we were out of sunset and out of fish, so time to haul the anchor after a long day. We scraped back to our tent in the last of the twilight and hit the sack shortly after.
Hotting Up
Saturday dawned calm and sunny and we had a leisurely start as we waited on the tide. Just an excuse for more coffee and toast really 🙂
Finally heading out we found the fish had also had a late lie-in, as the first few hours dragged by with nothing much to show for our efforts.
Things eventually stuttered into life in the early afternoon with the first tope and huss of the day. Whole mackerel, either as live or deadbaits, was doing the trick.
As the tide slackened and then turned, the tope seemed to wake up and we both started catching numbers of fish.
I managed just two tope, but Ian ploughed ahead and picked them up steadily. At least it gave me more practice landing them! I did better with the huss, but I know which species I prefer!
In between his tope Ian did what he’s most useful for – clearing out any stray doggies that appeared. Nothing like as impressive a total as he’s had in previous years, but he kept the plague away from me 🙂
There were also dozens of large jellyfish floating past in the tide. Happily these didn’t have the same stinging power as the Lions Mane jellies we often encounter over the summer.
Pretty much saving the best until last, Ian topped off with a nice 43lb fish, and a PB.
We kept at it until sunset before calling it a day. The fishing dwindled somewhat but it was another very fine evening and just great to be afloat.
More Sunshine
Sunday morning brought more clear blue skies so we quickly packed away the tent and launched onto calm seas.
We quickly started pulling in a variety of small stuff, mainly mackerel and whiting but with a good few gurnard too. The photo below shows a classic 4 hooks 4 species haul – variety is one of Galloway’s attractions.
Sadly, it was mainly small stuff. I picked up a huss and lost a nice tope to a kinked trace, but that was it. It seems that these fish don’t like mornings! This was only a shortish session, so we were ashore and heading home by early afternoon. Until next time!
And finally…
It’s been a while since I dropped a camera down to the seabed, so I took a few shots. Not good enough to be included in the YT video, but I extracted a few stills of interest.
I’m guessing this was a tope, but it’s possibly a smoothound – rather hard to tell as it didn’t hang around.
I’ve never met In, but he’s banned from my boat. Seriously, very well done both of you. YT might benefit from more underwater shots perhaps?
Oh, Ian is much more fanatical about his fishing than I am and reaps the rewards. He very definitely has his uses when it come to clearing out dogfish though 🙂 YT was on my mind when I dropped the camera to the seabed but the footage wasn’t very usable – a mixture of bouncing about and lying very unevenly on the seabed. The camera was just cable tied to a sinker during a quiet spell, so no great surprise really – I’ll sort out a better mount for it next time.
Awesome report and YTvideo and some really big huss and tope! Some really great tips too, like your hooking rig for half/whole mackerel – a lot of people (me too until now!) just head hook them, but I suspect that results in more dropped runs / less hookups. I’d been wondering if you’d managed a Galloway trip this year. I was there rather similar time, mostly in Cree estuary, but also with a couple of fairly successful SIB trips to Auchenmalg, Luce Bay. Loads of those large barrel jellies (Rhizostoma) – wonderful to see, but make a big clonk when accidentally hit while motoring! Do you find you need to fish highly specific marks for the tope or do just head out of PW past the drop-off? Advice gratefully received, whether here or by PM.
Hi Doug – many thanks for another excellent blog and video post I can appreciate the time and effort you must put in to do this from my own much smaller scale surfing blog from many years ago. A few questions if you don’t mind. Were you fishing over clean or broken ground and are you using wire or heavy mono traces? The tide race looks fierce yet you seemed to be holding without grips. Pretty shallow I guess. Kind regards Steve
Hi Steve, the ground here doesn’t hold many snags and is generally a mix of coarse sand, shell and stones in roughly 50 feet. I very rarely lose gear. Traces were wire as I have had tope bite through heavy (200-400lb) mono in the past. If you see my reply to Martyn on this post I explain a bit more about where we were fishing. You can get away with 2oz of lead at slack water but nearer 4-6oz on a typical tiderun – I prefer not to use grips for the tope as the wires become a bit of a menace when lifting angry tope aboard!
Great report and wonderful video as ever Doug! Some big huss and very nice tope… I was wondering whether you had managed to fit in a Galloway trip this year or not. Suspect I was there at a roughly similar time – based mostly Cree estuary, but got a couple of moderately successful SIB trips to Luce Bay (off Auchenmalg), though no tope landed. Some great tips on the video, like the mackerel bait hooking method, which I reckon will increase hookups for me in future. Q: how precisely do you pick your marks off PW, or do you just head well past drop-off – looks like you are too far out for me to safely reach by SIB – any advice welcome by PM or here, as you see fit.
Hi Martyn – I’ve just rescued your comments from the spam queue that WordPress cheerfully popped them into, so sorry if I’m late replying. There’s no real precision to PW, although I do tend to fish similar spots year on year. Mostly I’m fishing about 1200-1500m off Barsalloch Point, just south of PW (very roughly in between the the two range buoys charted either side of the point). If you run out from the Point heading SW and watch your sonar you’ll see a distinct drop of about 10 feet as you run over (presumably) an old submerged shoreline. I tend to fish just on the seaward side of that. Other boats fish a little closer to the DZ5 buoy a little further south. Tides in here tend to be moderate and not as fast flowing as in the Cree, although the water is around 50 feet so there is quite a bit of tidal pressure. We often find a mackerel livebait works better than a deadbait, but the fishing can vary between hectic and non-existant!
Hi Doug – All really helpful, thanks! I’ll try and put that into practice at some time in the future when I get back there.
With the weather set fair (hot!) for a few days in early Sept I made an impromptu weekend SIB trip to Luce Bay. Thanks for your advice Doug, because I had two tope off Barsalloch, out towards DZ5, and another off PW, out towards DZ4. ~1.2-1.4 m (~mid teens to low 20s), unhooked at side of SIB. My first ‘large’ tope. Very strong currents on the big spring tides. Anyway, happy chappy for this learner!
Hi Martyn, It’s always a confidence boost to get the first fish under your belt and tope can be great fun once in a boat, even more so than in the water 🙂 I imagine that trying to control them in a SIB will add an extra layer of excitement! A big spring makes it very hard to get a fish to the boat even in relatively shallow water and the smaller tides make life easier – although it’s been so windy most of the summer that it’s a case of grabbing what chances you can!