THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

I remember one particular fish that I'd hooked suddenly taking off at right angles to the boat and actually
pulling the stern around with it which had previously been held in the tide on the anchor rope. Then, as
with other similar hook ups, everything went solid again.
Nobody had mentioned to us anything about big skate, besides which, it was so shallow that when the
boat was moved directly over the culprit, we could see the lead well off the bottom above it. So skate
never once entered into our thinking
The gear we were fishing was at best thirty pounds class, and in some cases less, though the traces were
quite substantial. We figured they might be big monkfish that had taken the line under a snag, so we
piled on the pressure looking to break free, which is precisely what happened.
Three hang ups and break outs in succession; how unlucky can you get we thought. But as we were
soon to find out, luck (good or bad) had nothing to do with it. Patience and having an inkling as to what
might be on the end of the line was what we needed, and we got that when Kevin turned up the following
day.
We told him about what had happened, but at that stage he didn't comment much. Only when it
happened again in his presence did he say right, be patient, keep the pressure on, you're into a big skate.
Actually it was Brian who was hooked up that time around, fortunately on the heaviest outfit we could
cobble together between us.
Encouraged by Kevin, he hung on and hung on with the CFB video camera recording the whole thing.
Then suddenly the mighty fishes bottom suction was broken, and almost immediately we could see a
huge grey shape free swimming on the end of the line.
In what seemed like little more than moments later it was up on the top and in went the gaff into the
fleshy part of its wing, which as we had yet to discover was the easy bit. I then had to get it into the
fifteen boat, which with three of us, plus the weight of the fish itself all on the same side was a
combination of dodgy and difficult.
Since those early days, I've racked up a lot of experience of
dealing with huge skate in small boats. On that trip, fish of that
size and shape had never been in our thinking, and with hind sight,
we both could and should have done things differently.
Back then unfortunately we didn't know any better. For starters,
though I somehow managed, one gaff isn't really enough. You
need one in the leading edge of each wing clear of the body cavity
with two people doing the lifting.
More difficult still was getting the thing back out and away
afterwards. Nowadays we work either a piece of trawl netting or
tarpaulin under skate and lift at the corners. Here everything had
to be done by hand. But not before Kevin had identified it as a
white skate and we'd measured its length and width with pieces
of monofilament line.
Jonathan Gannon & Mary
Gavin Hughes at Westport
Back at Godley's bar that evening, Kevin ran the dimensions
through a measurement to weight conversion table, where it
came out at around one hundred and forty pounds.
The following day we had to go back out towing a tiny rowing boat for Kevin to sit in a few yards away,
hang several pounds of lead on the line, then simulate the boat to boat footage he needed to complete
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