Conger after dark and a re visit

Conger . You either love them or you hate them ? Well I like them . A proper fish to catch that really is a majestic sight in the water,  and when you get one to the side of the boat , I am always faced with the thought that I might not want to share a small piece of deck with 5 to 6 feet of slimy muscle packed eel , with a sharp set of teeth at one end ! Circle hooks rule !

Back in my regular boat fishing days , I used to run a boat fishing club at work . We went out every month and used a skipper at Littlehampton called Mike Pratt , who fished from a boat called " Blue Badger ". Mike was a really great chap and helped us catch some really nice fish , amoungst which were a few nice Conger . Mike insisted that the best Conger fishing was to be had in darkness and he was proved correct a few times when we booked night and evening trips . I managed a personal best 70lb Conger on one of these trips .

I happened to mention to Jeff that the location I caught my Conger from was a small inshore wreck . Jeff then started to make local enquiries to track down the mark . It seems it is no longer in favour with the locals . Good news !

So off we went to track down the wreck and hopefully some nice sized Conger . The Mackeral again proved elusive so it was down to frozen bait to do the magic.

I had recently bought a new 30lb Ugly Stik so it was a good opportunity to try it out .

After locating the wreck we fished our baits close to the structure and sure enough the Conger soon found our baits . We managed 6 Conger with fish to about 50lb . I always like to judge the size of the Conger by the size of its head . If it is as big as a Labrador dogs head its a big fish ! And this one was !

One of the smaller ones !

Getting bigger !

One issue was lost fish . I had a couple of what felt like large fish take me into some sort of structure and then after a battle out they would come only for the braid to be chaffed and the fish lost . I hate losing fish so maybe a heavier rubbing trace next time ?

Well the next time came round quicker than I thought ! Jeff phoned up the day after  for another trip , so off we went again . this time we fished a short distance away from the spot from the previous day but on the same wreck. Again we were quickly into fish but I managed to lose all three of mine to the broken line syndrome . Jeff landed two and lost one .

I am going to up the gear next time to a 50lb rod and TLD 25 plus 80lb braid and 100lb rubbing leader . Rest assured I will be" hanging on"  if I am lucky enough to catch another one !