The Skipper's Blog

July started with some rough weather and a couple of days were lost early in the month but it soon settled to tolerable conditions and we had some notable fish.

The lads from Silloth had a good outing with a total of 13 species. The heaviest fish sweepstake looked in the bag for the angler with the 11 lb huss but he was pipped by this 11.5 lb spurdog


On the 14th of July we, along with Willie Kennedy of Ayr SAC and SSACN on his boat Reel Deal, played host to some serving and ex-servicemen. The event was organised by the Not Forgotten Association and the Royal Marines SAC. The weather was not kind and there was a bit of ground baiting. That's probably what atracted this superb tope to the bait of organiser Andy Bridson of the Royal Marines.


The following week, this angler was dismayed to lose what would have been a nice codling of about 4 lb. According to him, "A big black shark came up and grabbed it." I was busy at the other side of the boat at the time and didn't see it but there are some very big tope around at present.


At the end of the month, Meltham and District SAC had a 4-day species hunt competition. This huss of 12 lb 12 oz by organiser David Bateman was the second biggest fish, but my only photo of Tony's 13 lb 5 oz huss is not very good.


They had a total of 20 species over the four days. The last species caught was tis beautiful little spotted ray (I think, but I'll be very pleased to be corrected if I've misidentified it.)