THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

The competition would be for the biggest individual fish as opposed to overall weight, and competitors
would be required to broadcast weights immediately over their VHF radio so that everyone else would
know to return all fish under that weight.
Sadly, it still meant that some tope were brought ashore. But no huge pile of dead bodies, and if my
memory serves me well, out of over two hundred tope caught across something like thirty small boats,
no more than half a dozen were brought to the scales, which while still far from ideal, was a vast
improvement on other events I'd witnessed in the past.
The following year I was again persuaded to attend the AGM. Not in a hotel this time, but rather, in the
lounge of someone's house with just four of us present – myself and Dick Elliot of course, some chap
from Birmingham who was more interested in CB radio, and obviously, whoever it was that owned the
house.
In short, not enough people to occupy all the required active posts which saw us all multi-tasking, taking
on two or even three committee roles until it could finally and legally be wound up, which shortly
afterwards it was.
Whether this was due to a lack of interest in tope fishing or simply in large single species clubs generally
we will never know. The Shark Angling Club of Great Britain down at Looe endured a similar down
turn in fortune, whereas the British Conger Club continues to thrive. The SACGB still exists, but its
prestige has long since departed.
Despite this, tope fishing as a pursuit has continued to be popular, and tope as a species have been the
subject of a great deal of conservation effort, finally delivering some formalised protection, more of
which later. So, the angling interest in the species is still very much alive.
Unfortunately, the fish themselves have been a bit up and down at times in terms of availability, despite
their current recreational fishing only status with a forty five kilo's per day commercial by-catch
allowance in England and Wales, which suggests that all may not be well on the wider European scene,
where long-lined fish only have to be retuned with no limits at all on netted fish.
This is something the Scottish Sea Angling
Conservation Network (SSACN) have been
fighting on behalf of all home water anglers
for quite some time now. So there is a
certain irony in the fact that since protective
legislation has finally been won by SSACN,
stocks visiting the south west of Scotland,
and in particular Luce Bay, appear to be
experiencing the greatest pressure, and as
yet nobody has been able to put their finger
on the precise reason why.
Rather than do a systematic sweep of the
whole UK tope potential, some of which, if
Tagged Tope ready for release
I'm honest, I am not really in a position to
comment on anyway, what I propose to do
is offer a round-up of my own experiences, starting as you might expect on my home patch of
Lancashire, where over the years I've had some very good fish and numerically good catches. But never
with any real season on season consistency.
Inshore we see a lot of small bait robbing tope hovering just either side of the double figure mark. But
I've also had them to over fifty pounds within minutes of the beach. However, when you move further
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