So armed with a box of squid and some frozen mackerel we headed out to a hole a couple of miles south-east of the Nab. With a lot of the charter skippers seeming to be East Nab we questioned our thoughts. Did they know something we didn’t ? Well, obviously yes – they are the professionals after all. But hey ho – out we went to the deeper water, 100ft in the hole, was hopefully our saviour.

The first hour produced a few dogs, a couple of whiting and a 10lb smoothie caught uptide at the top of the hole, not in it. Then a strap conger – and it was small – couple of pounds at most and a 5lb Thornie. Still nothing to write home about. As the flood tide picked up the fishing got better. A couple of bigger Thornies getting close to double figures and a few bigger straps. Also up towards the 10lb mark.

In between the odd pouting, I suddenly had the feel of the Nod. Having had a few conger, which although not large gave great sport on 12-20lb rods, I did get a shock when it hit the surface. Up came a codling – yes – first of the season for us. Not double figures, but enough for a fresh fish tea and some to freeze.

Unfortunately for me Roland took the largest fish prize with a 20lb+ conger, released at the boat side so only an estimate. Still way bigger than my cod or thornie so he won the pint for the largest fish and wiped out my first fish pint. I now owe him 7 pints for the year – not a good year.

All in all, we had about a dozen conger, 3 thornies, 10 whiting, a smoothhound, and quite a few dogs and pout – oh and the cod. The bigger fish all took whole squid (not convinced on the boilies as I read earlier) and a lot of the whiting on mackerel strip on a flyer. If we tried mackerel on the bottom – we got dogs. Something to note. Still all in all, not bad for two of us.

Roland and THornback Oct17