David Edwards, Skipper of the Silver Dawn, is back again with a final report from his Dutch anglers who were visiting last week…
Friday was the last day on Silver Dawn for the lads from Holland and our target was Skate. They’ve been very thin on the ground so far this year, so the three lads also used a lighter set up to target smaller species.
They had a good mix of Dogfish, Bull Huss, Conger, Pollack, Mackerel and Gurnard but nothing on the heavy Skate gear.
As high water approached, Robin felt the unmistakable take of a Skate, unfortunately it was on his light set up.
An absolute classic of a tussle followed where Robin was always going to be second best. Constant pressure eventually saw the fish lift, everything was at its limit and only for the fact we were almost at high water, did Robin have any chance at all of getting the fish back from downtide.
An age seemed to pass before we were able to use two Tuna lip grips on it’s wings and were able to slide him onboard for measuring and tagging.
At 187cm long, it is an Irish Specimen fish and particularly large for a male.
We released him using our specialist Skate handling mat and sat back to ask ourselves, “How the feck did we manage to land that fish?”. A brilliant end to a great week of fishing.
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Silver Dawn
