TBT#1 – My biggest shore fish

I thought for my first TBT post I should start with the biggest shore fish I’ve caught to date. For that event I have to go way back to September 1993. In the early 90’s for a few years I went to Sark on holiday with my good mate Michael Conroy and my grandad. Back in those days inter island travel was thankfully a lot easier than it is today and there was a reliable daily boat between Jersey and Sark. There was hardly any shore fishing done in Sark and we experienced some great Wrasse and Conger fishing. On this particular day we were travelling so we were able to take bait with us as getting bait locally was really difficult. We got to the island about 10am, chucked our gear in the back of the tractor that drops it at your accommodation and got the tractor up the hill to go and get our bikes. If you’ve never been to Sark before there are no cars so as well as a climb down to your mark you also have to either walk or cycle to the mark first. Once we had bikes and some supplies from the local shop we headed to our accommodation to sort our gear out. Plan for day 1 was to go to a mark called Guillois Caves and fish for wrasse and bream during daylight hours and fish on into the night for an eel. That meant a lot of gear on the bike so a proper workout. We got there about 2pm, chucked a couple of bream rods out and started wrasse fishing. The bream rods were fairly slow but I did pick up a bonus Triggerfish. The Wrasse fishing was a bit better and I had a nice fish of 5-2 to start the trip. We had never fished this mark at night before so I was really keen to get the Conger rods out. This mark consists of a lovely big flat ledge you can fish off over the high casting to the edge of the tide that pushes through between Sark and the island of Brecqou with another flat ledge that uncovers as the tide drops about 15 feet below you. As expected it didn’t take long to get bites as these marks were just not fished with big baits. 2nd cast on a whole mackerel I had a decent bite and hooked into what was clearly a good fish. The right hand side of the lower ledge was just uncovered so Michael climbed down with the gaff while I worked the fish to the surface on the other side to try and avoid catching the lower ledge. When it hit the surface I couldn’t see it very clearly from where I was so gradually worked it towards where Michael was waiting with the gaff. Luckily it played ball and Michael did a great job of gaffing it first time. I remember him shouting up its fu**ing massive. We then had to figure out a way of getting it from the bottom ledge to the top. Somehow he managed to climb partly up and pass the gaff and for the first time I could feel how heavy the fish felt. Once he had climbed back up and we had the eel on the top ledge we could see it properly and it looked massive. Back in those days we all had Avon dial scales that topped out at 40lb. We put it in a sack but the scales bottomed out before we could get it off the ground. Luckily our accommodation was part of a farm so they had some big scales but that was the other side of the island and we were on pushbikes with all our gear! We packed up straight away and made our way back, me with a big rucksack on, a bundle of rods over my shoulder on an old titan rod strap and a big eel in the basket on the front of my bike. When we got back to the farm we headed to the barn where the scales were and it settled at 44lb 4ozs, my biggest eel and agonising short of my dream fish of 45lb for a conger club shore gold. I’ve caught a lot of big eels since that one with plenty of 30’s and another couple of 40’s but the 45 never happened for me and sadly now the big fish are gone. What a first day of the trip and one of the many great memories I have from those trips to Sark where we had some brilliant fishing.