Another alien? A catch and cook story.

So Owen has talked about fishing for squid for ages. Constantly reminding me that I said we would try for them one day (In my head, I meant from a boat).

Then on my way to Devon (Plymouth), I put a message on a Facebook group asking if there were anything showing in numbers such as garfish or squid having seen catch reports of both over the previous weekends I’d not been able to get to the coast.

To my surprise I was told both. So at 5pm on the Friday as I was finishing work I headed to a local tackle shop with my vouchers I had received from my brother for a birthday last month.

The shop isn’t the best in the world for lure fisherman but they had some cool stuff just inside the door and the prices were fair so I quickly grabbed up some jig heads a few new soft plastic lrf lures and 3 squid jigs on the chance we might find some.

I picked Owen up and showed him my purchases and his face lit up when he saw the squid jigs.

We went to our most common spot down at Mountwise and set up a light hanging from the railing down over the water in hope it might attract baitfish/prawns and inturn predators or squid.

It was a mute tactic on the night and we saw very little action at all in the light.

We span jig heads in hope of a gar or anything else that might hit us and as expected I was quickly pulling a string of pollock of varied sizes.

Owen also managed 2 for himself. We switched up methods and tried Gulp and Isome along the bottom and around features in hope of another species but the bites were few and hookups non existent.

We left the rods made up and slid them into the car from the back and were starting to drive home when I suggested to Owen we could have a look down at Millbay Docks to see if anyone was fishing for squid.

When we arrived there was 1 guy (John) who we started chatting to. He was targeting squid but hadn’t had any that eve but said he had several that week from this spot.

I fished beside him and continued to talk and caught another 2 pollock and then hooked a fairly decent sized herring which was a bit of a shock for me. Unfortunately it managed to unhook itself but tailwalked across the surface in doing so creating a cool spectacle for the 3 of us to see.

After this John started to get follows from squid and almost hooked one so I switched to one of my new squid jigs. It was a 3.5 inch profile which was probably rather heavy for my 0.5-7g HTO rockfish T lrf rod but it seemed to be handling okay and was casting like a bullet.

I had a few follows and then was experimenting with fishing on the drop and pause and retrieve techniques when I hooked one. It was only little but still felt heavy on such a light rod. As is pulled it up the side of the wall it was squirting ink everywhere but I got it up and over the railing as quickly as possible as really didn’t want it to come off the jig.

A new species for the year for me and my fist ever squid from the shore. Great result.

I passed Owen my rod to have a go whilst I bagged my catch for dinner and before I knew it the rod had a proper bend in it. Owen thought he had a pile of weed as it’s a really peculiar kind of fight where it feels like dead weight and then a fish as the squid pulses a bit like weed caught in the tide. But very quickly we saw it was a decent sized squid. John said it was the biggest he had seen from there this year at least.

With 4lb fluro line I had my concerns about Owen getting it up the wall but he did okay and landed what was a cracking squid.