Jake's First Ray

A small weather window and a big tide this morning didn't leave us with a lot of options. It was a very early start but despite this, Jake still wanted in. The plan was to feather up some bait first light then sit inshore and have a go at some bass and rays on a shallow bank.

We met up at the club around 05:30, Dave patiently waiting with the boat ready to go! A quick launch, followed by a 5 minute run and we were soon lowering the feathers over the side for a bit of bait. The mackerel were fairly thick on the ground and giving Jake the run around on his little spinning rod!

After 10 minutes of this we had plenty of bait to get us started and to Jake's disgust, we left the mackerel and headed off to an inshore bank for a bit of bottom fishing. I did explain to him that he could catch mackerel there too so there was no need to stick that bottom lip out!
Weed was a real problem coupled with the big tide today, only made worse by the fact that our first mark seemed to be snaggy as hell. Jake carried on with the mackerel, while Dave and I proceeded to lose most of our gear. Dave lost a good fish as it hung him up in the bottom but followed with one shortly after with a 9lb 8oz undulate.

After a few more lost sets of gear we decided on a move to some cleaner ground but weed here was still a big problem. Jake carried on banging out mackerel but kept hinting about wanting to catch a 'Mr Ray'. I was kept busy removing weed, unhooking mackerel and baiting up when my downtider jumped in to life. Setting the hook, I then asked Jake if he wanted to reel it in......no brainer really!!

So sat on my lap, 'fighting chair style' he spent the next 15 minutes cranking it in. I pumped up the fish while he wound down on the reel. With the amount of weed and tide running through it would have been impossible for him without some form of help! Eventually though, his ray made it to the boat.....one happy little man with a nice spotted ray.

With the weed getting worse and the wind forecast to get up we gave it another 20 minutes before heading back ashore at 9.45am. Nothing else showed apart from the ever present mackerel and a mini undulate ray that came in on my uptider......Jake had to pose with this one - great to see them making a come back though and it bodes well for the future.

Nice to get out for a couple of hours even if the fishing was a bit poor but a first for Jake so not all bad ;-)