With a beautiful summer day on the cards, I arrived at Hartlepool 7.30ish to a boat full of lads anticipating a good days fishing ahead. My first “summer” trip of the year with mostly new faces on board along with a few regulars, amongst them NESA members; soap dodger, Stevie-r and of course Jim at the helm.
I applied my sun-tan lotion and off we went steaming east, hitting a few ground marks on the way.
I decided to take a break from my usual ripper/trace combo and gave shading a go.A few mackerel came aboard – big ones too and some small whiting with a brace of pouting for me.
After a slow start, soap dodger Chris started to steadily pull in some nice cod between 4-6lb on his usual unbaited rippers – be the majority of them foul hooked everywhere from the gut, head, dorsal and tail fin…they all still count.
After Chris pulled in about his 4th ripper cod I’d had enough and swapped the shad for DustyBin ripper…and pretty much the whole boat followed suit.
I was right into a fish which turned out to be a haddock (yumm) – chuffed. I bagged a few more cod steadily on the ripper with my best a respectable 5lb.
By 14:00 Chris had scored enough cod to beat the entire boat put together and showed no mercy with his trusty ripper. His best and the boats best cod of the day about 6 1/2lbs. A decent ling was also brought in.
Chris had grown bored of reeling in cod and so swapped his ripper for macky feathers…..and yet he still caught cod while everyone else watched on.
The weather got progressively worse as the day went on but by the end of the trip I think everyone had managed at least a cod and a few mackerel to take home, well apart from Stevie who had a shocker…which in his defense is uncharacteristic!
Despite finishing the day 2nd best on the boat with 6 decent cod and a bonus haddock…the top fisherman by some way was soap dodger with a sports direct bag full of cod – well done mate, truly the ripper king.
Big thanks to the skipper Jim as always for being there to land the fish, sort the tangles and find the fish. Stevie helped out a lot today aswell with the more inexperienced lads and credit to him for that.
Thanks Jim, really enjoyed today aboard the North Star – well worth a day off work.
Until next time!
I applied my sun-tan lotion and off we went steaming east, hitting a few ground marks on the way.
I decided to take a break from my usual ripper/trace combo and gave shading a go.A few mackerel came aboard – big ones too and some small whiting with a brace of pouting for me.
After a slow start, soap dodger Chris started to steadily pull in some nice cod between 4-6lb on his usual unbaited rippers – be the majority of them foul hooked everywhere from the gut, head, dorsal and tail fin…they all still count.
After Chris pulled in about his 4th ripper cod I’d had enough and swapped the shad for DustyBin ripper…and pretty much the whole boat followed suit.
I was right into a fish which turned out to be a haddock (yumm) – chuffed. I bagged a few more cod steadily on the ripper with my best a respectable 5lb.
By 14:00 Chris had scored enough cod to beat the entire boat put together and showed no mercy with his trusty ripper. His best and the boats best cod of the day about 6 1/2lbs. A decent ling was also brought in.
Chris had grown bored of reeling in cod and so swapped his ripper for macky feathers…..and yet he still caught cod while everyone else watched on.
The weather got progressively worse as the day went on but by the end of the trip I think everyone had managed at least a cod and a few mackerel to take home, well apart from Stevie who had a shocker…which in his defense is uncharacteristic!
Despite finishing the day 2nd best on the boat with 6 decent cod and a bonus haddock…the top fisherman by some way was soap dodger with a sports direct bag full of cod – well done mate, truly the ripper king.
Big thanks to the skipper Jim as always for being there to land the fish, sort the tangles and find the fish. Stevie helped out a lot today aswell with the more inexperienced lads and credit to him for that.
Thanks Jim, really enjoyed today aboard the North Star – well worth a day off work.
Until next time!
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