When I got back to the b&b Dave (who we were staying with) said that spike who owns ‘go west’ a local charter boat was back from a short break and he’d take me to meet him after dinner if I wanted. I was keen to meet him as I know several people who have fished with him over the years. After dinner we headed off to spikes house and ended up spending a fair while yarning with him that evening. He made me feel a little better that I hadn’t been to completely the wrong areas over the last couple of days. It was more so that the fish weren’t there. He kindly offered to launch the boat for us the next morning and we arranged to meet at drumore.
Today was our last day up fishing as we had to head back tomorrow. It was another belter of a day and we had a leasurly start before meeting spike with our boat on drumore beach just a few hundred yards from driftwood b&b where we were staying. Spike kindly put our boat in and advised us on where to try for bait. He also gave us a few pointers on where to head for tope. The bait fishing was nice and local, we didn’t find any mackerel but had a few launce and a coalfish. We then had a fair steam off to the tope mark. On the way we saw a few gannets going in. they weren’t in any particular area but there were enough going in for us to alter coarse and have a drift through. we didnt have anything but there was something showing on the sounder. I reckon it may have been the sandeels that we had seen flashing in the water which would be too small to take our feathers. As we continued on our way to the tope mark spike rang us and said that another boat was already there and had a tope first cast! We were soon approaching the mark and saw him playing another tope as we arrived. We got the anchor down as the last trickle of tide came through. Stacey had a run on her first cast. She reeled into it and there was nothing there. As her bait came up there was a good tope of around 20lbs following it. She stopped winding and it turned and took her bait. It was on for a good 30 seconds to 1 minute before it came off. This was the only rod without a circle hook on which we soon rectified. We had a few dogfish and several more follows to the boat before Stacey had a small tope. I had heard of the lads catching tope on floats up here and could now see the reason why. The fish seemed to like a moving bait here or were up in the water so I set a float up and had a fish instantly! Soon after the tide began to run which signalled the end of float fishing. This wasn’t the end of the fishing altogether though as I had another tope soon after. Spike had joined us now and we had high hopes for the next tide. The dogfish were now well on the chew and getting through the bait quickly. It was a numbers game though as the dogs were stopping the tope getting the bait so I kept reeling them in, unhooking them and putting fresh bait out. I lost count of how many tope followed to the boat throughout the day. Just as the dogfish hit the surface a big grey shadow would appear underneath before perhaps breaking the surface and shooting back to the depths. The hard work paid off though and I had several more tope along with a couple of bull huss between the endless stream of dogfish. All to soon the others were heading in and I felt we should follow as we were a fair way from home and had lots to do. We had 6 tope all together to 32lbs which wasn’t bad for an afternoons fishing. I cant help but feel we were just getting into the swing of things. I would have loved another day at it as we were now a bit better set up for it. I cant thank spike enough for his help and I would recommend him as a skipper if your in the area. he has seen tope in excess of 80lbs and they sometimes get over 60 in a day! He and the other boats get well booked throughout the summer loosing few days due to the shelter of the mull of Galloway peninsular. His website is http://www.gowestfishing.com/ where you can find more details.
