THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

He in turn blamed the local lads on the boat working for him,
but none of it was down to them. As a result, when we got
back in they came over to us concerned and apologised, but
there was nothing to apologise for.
I felt sorry for them. It wasn't their fault. It was all down to
faulty traces, trying to boat big fish while they were still way
too fresh, and giving bad instructions to the lads. Needless to
say we never fished on that boat again.
When we fished from the smaller boats, a couple of the same
lads took us out in the orkney's fishing further around the
coast off Bakau where we had a great time. No big sharks,
but plenty of fish. We even organised a competition across
the two boats we were fishing from, each with two of the
local crew looking after two of us.
The Gambian lads were given a fishing rod apiece for an
international match between Gambia and the UK. I can't
remember who won. It doesn't matter. It was a fun couple of
days afloat with loads of stringrays, kasava and kajele taken
on uptide tactics.
Gordon Thornes, Red Snapper
Those kajele certainly fight well. One fish however which
didn't fight well but we found particularly troublesome to
catch was the butter fish. A fish which reminded me of a large blue-brown garden slug with white spots,
armed with four guillotine like teeth with which it could bite through the shanks of the hooks.
We also did a bit of rapala trolling through the mangrove
creek back to base in the evenings, adding barracuda, red
snappers and crevalle jacks to the list.
My next visit was all fished from the smaller boats.
Gordon Thornes and I, plus our wives, had gone over to
team up with Graeme and his wife who were already over
there.
By that stage, little if any thought was given over to
sharks. They were a thing of the past. This time we put in
a lot more effort trolling the rapalas, which took quite a
few barracuda, red snapper, and crevalle jacks, the latter
sometimes being encountered in huge boiling shoals at
the surface crashing through the bait fish concentrations.
One particular day when around mid afternoon when we
hadn't done a great deal, the skipper who I mentioned
previously, came over to us in one of the other boats to
say he had an airport pick up to make, and asked us to
keep an eye on the local lads at the helm.
Within minutes of him vanishing, we suddenly started
piling into the barracuda and red snapper, which would
have been kept by him and sold on. So as we made our
Gordon with a ‘Sea Snake’
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