Headed out today with six lads for a premier offshore trip. All of the lads had fished with me before on various occasions including billy who was hoping to beat his tope from the other week.  We got away a bit later than planned which set us back a bit as mackerel were our first target for bait. We struggled for an hour or two trying for mackerel but had just the one bass and a mackerel falling off beside the boat. I decided to try a different area in the hope we could find some fresh bait. The next  place produced no mackerel and was a tad too coloured so we moved on again. this area had far better water but no mackerel. We tried another mark as we moved our way out and found 2 mackerel. This wouldn’t go far between 6 lads so we had to move on. The next mark was showing loads of marks which turned out to be bass. These gave us a bit  of sport but to be honest I have never seen a boat so disappointed to be catching bass, including me! We had another drift but ended up moving  on again (there are times when I would have given anything to have fishing like we steamed away from). Tope were our aim though and to get them we wanted fresh mackerel. Time was ticking on now so we tried one last mark before steaming all the way back to our first mark as the tide was at a better state now. We scratched together a few mackerel and scad before calling it enough and heading off to try and get a few hours tope fishing in before the day was over. We finally got the anchor in at just gone two o’clock! We had no chance of moving and had to make the next couple of hours count despite the best part of the tide having gone. The lads were still enthusiastic though and fished hard throughout the remainder of the day. A few dogfish came aboard and they were joined by 4 roker too.  Dean managed a small pup tope so at least ticked a box for us. The weather had been great all day and this afternoon was no different so we had several last casts before home time. I started the engine and the lads reeled in. as they did john was clearly into a decent fish. as it went for a couple of runs in between decent head shakes we could see it was a tope. We got it aboard and it was a nice tope of 21lbs which saved our day.  Well done on persevering lads.