Headed out with fred and the lads today. just the 5 lads had booked the boat for their annual tope trip. Last year we saw none and the year before just a few pups and a couple of big uns getting away. with signs of a few fish about surely today would be their day.  We started off in search of some fresh mackerel. We knew they were about but I also knew how hit and miss they had been. We spent 3hrs working hard to get 15 or so mackerel together along with a few scad and a few bass (obviously returned) the lads did well to keep going that long with so few mackerel about. Dibby was top mackerel angler. We eventually headed off in search of tope and got anchored. We took a while to get off the mark but the first tope was hooked soon enough. Fred played it well and soon had a new pb tope of 36lbs. we fished on and before too long fred was into another decent fish. this one gave him the run around before snapping him off. He had a change of tackle and started again. a while later fred was into another decent fish. this one  was a bit smaller than his first and went just shy of 30lbs. as the tide turned we had several  dogfish and a few pup tope along with a roker. We headed off home with 5 tope, a few mackerel, a few bass, a pouting, some scad, several dogfish and a roker for our efforts today.