Sitges

I was about 7 years old when I caught my “most ever fish in a day”. I still recall it quite clearly – it was when Dad took me to The Isle, we fished off the jetty, it was a sunny day and Dad was super happy because he caught his first ever 10lb carp. I beat him pretty comprehensively though with 159 Carp and 9 gudgeon – the fact that my biggest was around 4oz didn´t matter as a kid back then…

History almost repeated itself today and if I´d stayed fishing any longer – and could count with the same mental clarity – I could proubably have beaten my old 168 fish record.

On this mornings trip the sea was packed with small 2-3kg Tuna. Everywhere.

Little Tuna came first, a mile or so from the harbour…

Small Bluefins were next, starting from 3NM onwards,..

I was trolling 4 rods all the time but found lures being hit faster than I could wind the fish in then get them back out again and had double, treble and even quadruple hookups.

I cast small metal lures for then but best of all fished small, walk the dog type surface lures on my Bass tackle and watched hoards of fish smash them on the surface.

Amongst the fish I landed was our first ever Skipjack Tuna – see those horizontal dark bars, quite different than Bonito, Bluefin, Little Tuna etc…

I lost count of the fish tally quite early in the morning and with sore arms wandered back to port at lunchtime feeling pretty happy.

On the way back I pulled a large 8″ lure, 2 medium 6″ lures and a small pink lure – similar to the orange and green one in the pics above. Only a couple of miles from port the smallest one was hit by something much bigger than all those fish above and came back with the hook bent/straightened. I don´t want to think what it was, even though I do have my suspicions… it´s just one of the reasons I´ll head out to the horizon again soon…