THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

local tackle shop owner Tony Triay, who in turn approached the tourist authorities to see if we might
set up a promotional visit.
Later, having got the green light, four of us then went over to try out a mix of shore and boat fishing.
The shore in the mornings and the boat in the afternoons on into the evening with Tony after he had
shut up shop, which as it would turn out was a very nice balance.
The one potential drawback with this was that age old problem faced by all boat anglers in hot climates;
sea breezes. As the land heats up over the day getting considerably warmer than the sea causing the air
above it to rise, it pulls in brisk onshore breezes, which by late afternoon can throw up quite a nasty
chop. Not every day. But we had our share, which can make for troublesome complications around 'The
Rock'.
The geography of this very British 'outpost' is such that most private boats tie up in the marina on the
western side quite close to the border with Spain. If you want to fish the eastern side, which we did, you
then have to motor all the way round, which means that once you've passed Rosia Bay, there is no
shelter as such to tuck into if you need to.
Nowhere at all to land, which as I was to find out later can have its safety implications. But we did it,
and on some days it was quite choppy. Not so much once you got around to the eastern side. But you
always knew that it was there waiting for you on the return leg.
Much of the fishing there is for breams, which come in quite a wide range of colours, shapes and sizes.
The one's we had most dealings with were white bream, couches bream, soldiers bream, and two banded
bream, which we took on quite a wide range of baits.
The most interesting of these baits and approaches was the use of live shell-fish opened up sufficiently
to nick the hook into the flesh, then allowed to flutter down once the tide had slackened with the shells
still in place and no lead on the line. You can't get a more natural presentation than that.
I mentioned earlier the deep water close in. It also runs very hard, so even with braid and loads of lead,
keeping bottom contact at times can be very difficult. But we must have managed it while trying to
catch scabbards one day, as we came up with of all things, black mouthed dogfish and some small velvet
sharks out off the western side, and on another occasion down off the southern tip, again in deep very
water, you could catch as many bluemouth as you could ever wish to see.
I'm told there are also big six gilled
sharks in the area, though we didn't get
to try for those. Our experience of the
really deep water fishing actually was
little more than a brief diversion, then
it was back to the real job at hand of
searching out quality bream.
With that in mind, one day we motored
around to the eastern side to fish some
fairly deep lying heavy ground close to
where a number of very large cargo
ships were anchored up. Tony assured
us this mark held some absolutely
enormous hurta whose mouths are
filled with fearsome teeth and have a
love of live fish.
Brace of Mullet
444