THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

said, as I'm not one for aimlessly dragging skirted lumps of plastic all over the ocean for hours on end,
this suited me.
Don't get me wrong. I want to catch marlin and the other big pelagic predators as much as the next man.
But bottom fishing is what I've been brought up with, and winter can be a very good time to visit
Madeira in that regard.
With that in mind, Dave Devine and I teamed up with another Brit holiday maker Brian Wilkinson who
was also looking to make up a trip, and between us we booked Ron Cowlings boat 'Our Mary' which
he had sailed over from his mid channel wreck fishing base on the south coast in 1988 and had never
gone back.
A bit long in the tooth by that stage for working the deck, Ron now employed a local full time skipper
and was more of a figure head. Even so, they had won the fourth of July Marlin World Cup that year
with a fish in excess of eleven hundred pounds.
This actually was the boats first season of winter bottom fishing, so something of a learning curve for
all concerned. In previous years it had been left tied up in the marina between trolling seasons. But
that's a long time without fish, which for an old sea dog who simply loves to be out there as much as
looking to earn a crust, it was a no brainer.
So it was off we went following the coast until we reached the designated spot. A patch of clean ground
butted up to the edge of a reef in around two hundred and twenty feet of water within half a mile of the
shore.
I'd taken along a thirty pound class shimano exage travel rod paired up to a TLD25 loaded with braid,
which on the face of things seemed like the perfect choice, and in many ways it probably was.
Ron unfortunately wasn't impressed with the line choice,
preferring monofilament for the stretch cushion it offers,
which, with hardly any tide to contend with, he felt was best.
By coincidence, 'Our Mary' was a shimano sponsored boat. In
fact, the shimano UK management team had been out there
fishing with him just a few weeks earlier, and had left all sorts
of goodies behind. So he insisted I use his TLD15 loaded with
mono, and to keep the peace, I agreed. He also provided the
end gear, which was a simple heavy mono flowing trace.
Big stingrays, eagle rays, and the odd butterfly ray had been
the main stay of the shimano trip. That sounded good to me,
particularly the butterfly ray. I'd seen them once or twice in
the past, but had never actually caught one myself, so I was
up for that.
Disgorging Butterfly Ray
Fortunately, mixed in amongst some quite sizeable stingers,
plus more than enough horrible moray eels, that's precisely
what I ended up with. Like a wide winged vulcan bomber with
a short stubby tail and beautiful spotted markings gliding
around just under the surface. I couldn't believe my good
luck.
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