From Steve Holt:

I was going to go out on Saturday, but the forecast changed so went out today instead and what a superb day it was, almost tropical.

I decided to head for a mark I liked the look of on the Utopia but I first stopped off at Deans Tail to try for some Mackerel and was lucky enough to find 4 on my first drop, so I didn’t hang around for long before heading out to the Utopia where I dropped anchor into about 86ft of water, it was about a couple of hours after low water and the tide was already pushing through resulting in needing 1lb of lead.

The lead has barely hit the bottom when the clutch on one of my lever drags screamed away and I was in to my first Tope of the season, not a big one but still around the 20lb mark, then two minutes later the other lever drag screamed off and this felt like a decent fish and at times it was taking more line than I could wind in aided by the strong tide, after 15 minutes I eventually had it alongside the boat and realised I would have to net it tail first and let it drift in to the net  and upon lifting it in to the boat I could feel it was quite heavy, so I got it into the weigh sling as quickly as possible and it tipped the scales at just over 35lb, so well chuffed.

I had a couple more smaller Tope of around 15lbs. But that was pretty much it with the tide now screaming past the boat to the point that the anchor was dragging, the Utopia curse had struck again as with my last boat I could never get a Bruce anchor to hold on the Utopia until a local skipper suggested I try a traditional Fishermans Anchor which solved the problem, so tomorrow I will be out to buy a 10kg anchor.

I tries a few places on the way back for Mackerel, but nothing doing, probably because the tide was too strong, but next weekend the small tides are perfect for my new mark, let’s hope the weather plays ball.