TBT#4 “ Well I’ve beaten you today”

For this #TBT post I’m going back to July 2nd 1994.

For anyone who got into shore fishing as a young kid in the Channel Islands they will most likely of grown up fishing for Wrasse. The ever obliging Wrasse that are in abundance right under your feet on almost every rockmark are the perfect fish for a kid, non stop action and no need to cast any distance.

I was no different and my love for Wrasse fishing has continued right through until today.

Back in the early 90’s Jersey was very much the poor relation of the Channel Islands when it came to big Wrasse, with Alderney, Guernsey and even Sark producing numerous 7lb + fish as well as a few 8’s whereas the Jersey record of 7lb and a few drams was huge and fish of 6lb plus were genuinely a fish of a lifetime. I can remember catching my first Wrasse over 5lb out Elizabeth Castle, a fish I was so excited about at 5lb 3ozs I took it to be officially weighed as you did back then, and then the late great Pete Double picked me up from school and took me to take photographs which made it into his weekly column in the JEP.

This fish remained a PB for me for several years before I eventually upped it to 5lb 10ozs.

On the day in question neither myself or dad who at his peak is the best Wrasse angler I have ever seen had caught a Jersey 6 pounder. Dad’s PB sat at 5-14.

The plan was for a full day on the Wrasse, fishing the morning high and moving for the afternoon low. We were fishing about 50 yards apart on the high water mark and we hadn’t been there long when I could hear dad shouting a waving his arm. No mobile phones back then! I made my way over too see an enormous Wrasse in his net and a very excited angler. This one had to be over that magic 6lb barrier and sure enough on the scales it went a massive 6lb 7ozs, just 9ozs off the Jersey record. It was a special moment for someone who had spent there whole life trying to break that barrier and despite having had a Wrasse in Alderney of 8lb 3ozs just 3ozs off the British record at the time I think this one meant almost as much.

The day carried on without anything else too exciting happening and at about 7:30pm the tide was starting to cut us off and it was time to go. Now dad and I have fishing together for a lifetime and it’s never really been competitive between us so what happened next was really out of character. We made the call to pack up and as I walked over to pick my rod up and wind in dad said “ Well I’ve beaten you today”. At that point I was just reaching down to pick up my rod and it arched over, I grab it almost in surprise and hung on as a big Wrasse dived for cover. As always with the Wrasse the fight was short and brutal and pretty quickly a big Wrasse was on the surface and in the net. Time was tight now with the tide cutting us off so out came the scales and around they went to 6lb 10ozs. You couldn’t make it up, at the time that was probably 2 Wrasse that would have been in the top 10 Wrasse caught in Jersey both caught in the same session.

Little did we know on that day that it was just the start of something special and we went on to have some phenomenal Wrasse fishing over the next few years including the previous British record of 8lb. 13ozs 2drms just a week later. Another trip later that summer in August dad had Wrasse of 6-11,6-7 & 5-11 and I had 6-14,6-0 & 5-9.

It’s a mystery as to where all these huge Wrasse suddenly came from but it’s my belief that they had all been living where the current reclamation is before it was there and when they started blasting it scared them all out and they could be caught all along the south coast for several years afterwards until they eventually died of old age. Before the reclamation was built we used to fish for Wrasse off the Cobbs which is the back of the tanker birth and we used to regularly hook big Wrasse but you could never get them out.

Some special fishing.