Big old thornie

[South hams hunter 8,922]

Looked at the tides at the start of the week and we decided exactly which tide we'd be fishing. Me, Mills, Tom and Decs headed up; when we left it was -2 but dropping rapidly and by the time we got out the motors it was -6.5⁰c.

First call was the fire; I'm sure decs had it roaring before his rod was set up. As usual because we were targeting thornies it was live prawn on a 2ft pulley; the prawns sit absolutely perfect on the 3/0 Avenjas from Limitless as I've shown already.

I'd love to be able to say it was constant fish but it was far from it, in fact it was awfully slow with prawns even coming back. Decs tried putting a full joey in close and Tom tried a few lug but it was absolutely dead.

Me and Mills discussed what we thought was prime time and it was 2 parts of the tide an hour apart; we made sure all the rods had a nice fresh bait for the first 'prime time' but that came and went without a knock.

It really did look like nothing was going to happen; 'fish on', walked down just as she was brought to the waters edge. 'Looks a good one mills' 'double?'. Whilst the tripod and scales were being sorted I stood holding her in the shallows and she just continously wanted to go; a really thick fish and full of fight. On the scales she went 12lb 7oz and a new pb for mills; a stonking fish by anyone's standard and to top it off just went off beautifully.

A short while later shaun had another small Thorney but that was the last fish to come out before we had to head home.

Of course I'd have loved to have caught such a special fish but when you're fishing with your best mates week in and week out; collecting bait, watching tides/forecasts and putting in alot of miles together it honestly doesn't matter who the fish falls to because we're all just happy to share the special moments with each other time and time again.