When I referred to days 1 – 4 in Portugal in my last blog post as being calm it’s safe to say days 5 and 6 were anything but… and I don’t mean from a weather and conditions perspective – this was two days of fishing that gave us, metaphorically speaking, an emotional storm full of calamity and ecstasy. In fact, it was all in the space of little under twenty four hours when I think about it. It’s fair to say it will be two days that will live long in the memory. Personally, it was a rollercoaster, that as I type, really is still too crazy to comprehend! Anyhow, here goes with Day 5…
Buoyed by seeing more plentiful signs of life on the south coast on day four, Nobby and I decided to start there on day five… flogging the west and it’s challenging conditions as we had for a majority of the time on previous days was bearing little fruit. You can’t ignore the signs, and that coupled with the lures spending more time working properly in the south coast waters it seemed a more logical approach. We returned to a similar area of the coast I’d picked up a nice 5lb fish the previous day and by the time we got there the tide had just about turned with the first of the flood. We began fishing a bit earlier in the coastline compared to where we had started the previous day and steadily worked ourselves along the water. It was rougher than the previous day but eminently fishable… I was fishing a small boulder ridden bay and about 100 yards away Nobby had perched himself up on a higher rock in an elevated position above the water surface.
We hadn’t been fishing long when the morning erupted…It started with a shout from Nobby saying “I’ve got one!”, and looking across the small bouldery bay I could see his rod with a nice flex in it but there was nothing in his voice at this point to suggest anything more than he was in control… but his next holler across the bay took things up a notch.
“I’m gonna need help, quick!” he cried.
I dropped everything and went. Now, you’ll recall I’m fishing in the bouldery bay about 100 yards away and these were those nasty, greened up slippery ones – ankle breakers – so there was no way of rushing over as quickly as I would love to have done – it seemed to take an age by the time I’d navigated the boulder field and then climbed up the first bit of higher rock to drop down the other side. I need to set the scene at this point, Nobby was, you remember, perched at an elevated position probably 2 metres or so above the water surface, and at this point, my good self. What I was greeted with was a huge bass partially beached on a rock below in a ‘L’ shaped gully that went back out to sea but which was constantly being washed through with some decent surges of water and waves. To make matters worse I could see the Savage Gear Sandeel Nobby had just clipped on for that cast was barely hooked in the fish and he had no room for manoeuvring his line as this lovely bass had gone almost underneath where he was standing. I had to try and time this right and get in there to retrieve the fish if I could without being engulfed by waves and surges of water. Adrenaline was pumping for both of us at this point and your mind is racing but in I went directly below Nobby, was able to grab the leader and grab the bass by the tail…. This was the point I really got to see how big this fish was for the first time and it was a beauty – dark and bronze, close on 80cm and my instinct said around the 12lb mark – this ratcheted the adrenaline levels up to another level but I managed to get my hand inside it’s huge mouth, grab the bottom lip and move it up a level in the gully onto a slightly higher level.
Nobby was shouting down to “Get your grips in it!”
However, at that moment I was hit by a big surge of water and accompanying wave, with those slippery boulders underfoot and before I could steady myself disaster struck – the hook popped out of the fish’s mouth into my finger briefly before in the next moment I was hit by another goffer of a wave which promptly removed the hook from said finger… excruciatingly, with the power of that water I just couldn’t hold on to that stunner of a bass and she slipped into a lower part of the gully towards the open sea. There was a lull in the waves and I made a last desperate, but ultimately fruitless attempt to grab her tail.
Nobby hollered “Dive on it!”
I wish I could have but I just couldn’t get there and so slowly and agonisingly she slipped back out to sea while I continued to be hit by waves of water – there was nothing I could do. My instant reaction on climbing out of that gully beyond the immediate cursing was to feel sick to the core, I felt I had let my mate down with a fish the size of which neither of us had caught before. I sat on a rock, battered, drenched to the bone, head in hands, pretty much unable to move or speak – Nobby was pretty much the same. I wanted him to have the moment I had a few years before in Ireland with a lovely fish that we were able to measure, picture and joyfully release but it just wasn’t to be – an unfortunate, error strewn largely on my part, and somewhat calamitous, set of events denied us that opportunity… if only the hook had held, if only we’d been more calm and measured in our actions we might have got a better result but we’ll simply never know now.
After that initial disappointment of us not getting to do the proper measure and pictures and so on, we had a stern word with ourselves… we’d grabbed the leader, we literally had the fish in our hands, and out of the water albeit all too briefly… that counts as a catch in most people’s book! We realised there was no reason to be too disappointed and should really be celebrating catching such an amazing fish – she was beaten and she really was an absolute beauty that I am very confident was around that 12lb mark given subsequent events. She swam off perfectly well which was something very positive to reflect on. Above all we had yet another cracking bass fishing story to tell and have a whole lot of banter about – mostly at my expense but I’ll willingly take that on the chin just to be a part of this calamitous fishy tale!
Lessons learned? You bet…
- The big one for me was try and have a clear head on what needs to be done without getting over excited around big bass.
- Having decent fish grips close to hand are a must when you’re dealing with big fish at the shore with waves and surges of water.
- You have to really think about where you’re fishing to give yourself the very best chance of landing a big one.
As the saying goes, “you live and learn” and we managed to dust ourselves down after all that chaos, regain composure and began throwing the lures out again. I’m pleased to say Nobby did then catch three much smaller fish soon after and I picked up one much the same – all on Savage Gear Sandeels. What a day it had been, a proper storm of emotions, and importantly those lessons learned… we’re laughing about it now and I’m taking my medicine as “old butter-fingers” and there are words like “sabotage” being thrown around readily in jest but there will always be a bit of me that feels sick about it for my mate.
Little did we know what was to come on day 6, our very last day’s fishing in Portugal.
Until next time…
Hooks, Lines & Sinkers 