Sea Fishing in Cornwall

When I go on holiday I like to get a bit of fishing in. These days I prefer to do something different to what I usually do. Back home I have been fishing the lakes of Essex for their Carp Bream and Tench. If I do go out sea fishing it is to the waters of the Thames Estuary where shallower water and strong tides mean casting up the tide and using gripper leads to hold bottom on the sandy sea bed.  While on Holiday in Cornwall I decided to try something different. I decided to have a couple of sea trips in the deep water not far off coast.

The first was trip was a reef fishing trip on Mystique which is a nice big catamaran http://mystiquefishing.com/ we went out fast from Looe and went looking for the Mackerel. Took a little while but soon we had enough Mackerel for bait.  Most of the fellow anglers dropped down with slivers of fish for bait but I and one other chap went for Conger rods. Whole Mackerel flappers for bait dropped down into the depths. I hooked into a Conger and it felt like I had hooked a submarine. I managed to bring it up but unfortunately it got off. My fellow angler managed to bring a couple to the boat and they were good size fish. In hindsight I wished I had tried the general reel fishing as some pretty cuckoo wrasse were caught by those doing this style of fishing. I did manage to see an enormous Basking Shark while out which made the trip for me.

I felt like I had some unfinished business so the next day I went into the shark fishing club offices,  http://www.sharkanglingclubofgreatbritain.org.uk/ to see what they had as I wanted another trip. They were able to book an evening Conger fishing trip on the boat the Typhoon http://typhoonfishingtrips.com/ . On a beautiful evening the boat left the quay into the open sea. I was the first to get a bite and while I knew I had a fish on I knew it was not a big conger and a ubiquitous common dog fish came to the boat. Only one Conger came to the boat in this short session and not for me I am sorry to say. On the trip back I sat in the wheel house and chatted to the skipper about his life and attitude to fishing and life in general while I told him about carp fishing. The lights of Looe twinkled as the boat moved towards habitation.

Not successful in terms of catching fish but can fishing experiences like this be thought of in terms of success or failure? I loved this style of deep water fishing and can recommend it to anyone and can’t wait to return to the waters of Cornwall.