THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

To give some appreciation of water
depth around the island, the first clue is
the anchoring procedure. Miguel
Gamito who was our skipper, had two
permanent buoyed anchors to tie up to.
The inner mark, which we didn't fish,
was around half a mile off and was
used for stingrays.
angle in the rope.
El Hierro – constantly windy and choppy
The outer mark, which we fished every
time at about a mile off, was his six gill
spot. The boat would be tied to this,
and depending on the direction of the
tide and wind taking it either inshore or
off, you could be fishing in two
hundred fathoms or closer to four
hundred fathoms just because of the
I remember asking Miguel what depth he had on the sounder when Dave hooked up a big six gill, and
he came back with 1,750 feet (approx. three hundred fathoms). As Dave put it, that's three Blackpool
Towers stacked on top of each other. And when we went a little further off as we did for one particular
night session, our starting depth was in excess of a thousand fathoms.
By any standards then it's deep, with most of the fish, certainly the ones we were interested in, preferring
to feed on the bottom. But not all of them.
During the short run down the coast from La Restinga harbour where Miguel was based, to the 'Costa
Calma' as the locals call it, which is the calm water around the bottom tip of the island sheltered from
the persistently howling north easterly wind where the
permanent anchors were situated, we would troll small lures
in the hope of picking up a few bonito for bait. This
unfortunately never produced a fish. Commercial pressure it
seems in not unique to the British Isles.
We did however catch quite a few small dorado on spinners,
attracted as the species so often is by anything floating on
the surface, which in this case was the anchor mooring buoy.
But that was it. We neither saw nor caught anything else up
top.
That said, keen to add more names to my species list, I had
taken along an outfit loaded with six hundred yards of braid
which I was determined to use to send down some small
baits on a sort of multi task scratching rig.
Small Six Gill at the boat
I think I tied on something like half a dozen hooks of
different sizes due to the depth and time involved in getting
the gear down and back up. It took forever before the lead
touched bottom, though that was as nothing compared to
how long it took getting the fish back up. Nothing to do with
size. I didn't catch a fish bigger than around a pound. It was
all down to the depth.
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