Lots of interesting fishy activity going on, lots of fish hunting fish. I didn't have scales and gutted the fish while at sea but I had packed a tape measure as I was planning to change my rubbers.
Of note: a 64 cm bass ("that's over 2 foot" my son helpfully translated for me using the tape measure
) - big enough to feed 6 or 7 hungry adults. I only saw one other bass of comparable size perhaps even bigger - he was hunting in a remote area of coast and saw me first! Another smaller bass, 2 big grey mullet (unmeasured), 2 medium grey mullet, several pollock of various sizes, one large wrasse for the annual bouillabaisse (there were huge numbers of wrasse of all sizes and many different colors and patterns - far more than the last time I visited). It would have been nice to spear more but we had enough fish to keep us fed with a few to take home, so took a couple of days off spearing mid-week although we did some recreational snorkelling. And I took one of the rods out for a few casts each day before breakfast (nill caught by rod
).
Almost got a shot at a plaice - the first I have seen while spearing - but my 90cm speargun was much too long for the shallow water I saw it in (very close to the beach), it saw me as I struggled to bring my barrel down. I later met a spearo at the same location who got 2 plaice, his first in 40 years! He'd fished mainly to the left of the bay, over sand and a shore reef, while I had hunted rockier and weedier structure out to the right of the bay and beyond the bay. I had encountered various fishes, inc.
bass & mullet. while he had encountered only
plaice (with their distinctive orange spots). I think we'd have both been happiest with the plaice!
Also saw a small flat fish, probably a tiny turbot or similar; saw one in almost the same spot several years ago.
Gar fish - mainly small, a couple medium size but no big ones. Tiny, tiny mackerel - none of the bigger ones usually found at the same spot at this time of year
My small (Dr. Mike Ladle recommended) 12cm Japanese Maria Angel Mackerel lure had a shoaling effect on the
tiny mackerel, they followed it in and swam alongside it as it approached me - so it seemed realistic enough to them at least!
We also caught
2 edible/brown crabs in our lobster pots but they were a tad too small to eat (about 4" and 3.5", about 10cm "in new money" across the carapace), so I released them. I dived to look at a professional's lobster pot further out and saw a decent size (probably 1.75lb-2lb)
bright blue lobster, very feisty/agitated looking. Read in a newspaper article recently that blue lobsters are rare, they reckon only about one in a million is bright blue - yet most of the lobsters I have seen at sea (in Devon & Cornwall) are blue, seems more like 50% to me! Perhaps they change colour when agitated? Unfortunately none showed interest in my pots (I forgot to try the special "secret" lobster baits: limpets/wrasse).