It is on small'ish tides like this that the netters have a lot of wrecks "boxed" with nets and with a bit of searching inside the box, wreck positions can be pinpointed so that you can go back and fish them on the big tides when the nets are not there. Very often in the Autumn there is a transitory shoal of big pollack and coalfish in residence as they begin to move up channel in search of sprats, herring or mackerel….. now that can be a good day when it all comes together….. I wish!

But today we were just looking, pinpointing wrecks on the Lowrance so that later in the year we could confidently move from wreck to wreck without wasting time looking for them.

It seems that all my life I have been looking for wrecks, often the same ones. I started putting my wreck list together in the days of swinging needle Mk.6 Decca sets and went right through the whole issue of Decca sets until it all changed to GPS. Then we had to go looking again. Then with the "selective availability" switched on the positions were not that reliable. Along comes "differential" and we go looking again, nowadays with straight GPS without the need for differential, most days the wreck positions are totally repeatable the best positioning system we have ever had….. brilliant!!!

But there are wrecks that have never been found again, I have about 20 of them, stretching from Start Point down to Penzance. Wrecks that years ago we fished with Decca and have never found them since, we know they are there, but finding them is a "needle in a haystack" job. They are not marked on any charts, electronic or paper, the Navy does not have them and evidently the netters have not got them either, because they would be boxed on days like this. One of them was simply called "The Cod Wreck". I last fished it with Ray Parsons just after he bought the "Sunlit Waters" some years ago, a day when we came in with a rare dollop of summer cod, that has been the most elusive of wrecks to find with just the old Decca numbers to indicate it’s position.

Inside us we could see a charter boat which I suspect was Dave Harrison’s "Gemini" because the word was that he had been finding a few Cod for his customers, that had made us even more determined to spend an hour or so scouting for the fabled "Cod Wreck". An hour later we had found some low level scrimmage on the bottom and had come to the conclusion that like many of the first World War wrecks, the Cod Wreck had disintegrated, rusted away and merged with the bottom. I had crossed it off my list and I have to say, was just a little sad to have done so. Pointing the boat at the next wreck about five miles down to the West, we had just lifted onto the plane when up she comes, marking up thirty five feet from the bottom. I nearly broke my finger stabbing the "man overboard button".

The wreck had broken up quite a lot from the last time I had been there, but she was still a big one with a lot of broken wreckage scattered for maybe a hundred yards downtide. Some fish showing, but low level stuff, no great clouds of fish over the top but come the Autumn I reckon the pollack are going to be there big style.

Whenever we are out "looking" and find wrecks that are marking up with some fish, one of us will fish a bait, shad, scad or Eddystone eel, and the other will put down a pirk with one eel or big feather on a short paternoster as a prospecting rig, just to find out what is down there. Finesse is something to worry about when there is some fish in the box!!

In the past few years there seems to be a resurgence of pirk fishing or "Deep Jigging" as it is known throughout the rest of the world. The Americans and the Japanese anglers jig fish at tremendous depths to catch Tuna, reef and wreck dwelling fish. I read a story last week where some Japanese anglers were using heavy scrap iron weights to take their jigs down to 600 feet, where upon some slack line would clear the jig from the weight and they would fish the jig at those depths… and no they did not use electric reels!!

Perhaps it is not difficult to see why this resurgence has taken place. Wreck anglers of my generation who fished the 2lb silver bananas using the high speed Penn Senator reels, Hardy Sidewinder, ABU Pacific and I think it was the Modern Arms Fastnet rods with forty or fifty pound breaking strain monofilament lines might well remember the crippling exertion necessary to fish this gear to its capacity. Nowadays, the introduction of super braid has seen the deep jigging or pirking technique come back into favour because the weight of the pirk can be reduced to nearly a quarter of what was necessary to fish the same depths.

Tackle has been slow to catch up with this new technology, but small narrow spool reels with 5 or 6 to 1 retrieve speeds are now available from Shimano and Accurate which will hold over four hundred yards of 30 to 50 pound super braid line and mono backing. Fast action rods from Shimano, Snowbee and Japanese makers that you will have to get over the internet can handle this hi-tech style of fishing which is long removed from the solid lead Cod rippers of yesteryear.

Does this hi-tech deep jigging work in our waters??? Does daylight follow dark, of course it does. The French have been using 100 gram sandeel pirks for years to catch Bass, there is a select group of anglers on this side of the channel who have been using 150 and 200 gram pirks for several years to fish the deepwater wrecks for pollack, coalfish and cod…. there is no secret to it, they just do not broadcast the method… I wonder if I am still a member of the gang after this article???

Sushi tracked back to the start of the drift, we did not have to be that accurate there was scrimmage all over the bottom, ideal ground for bottom feeding fish. I watched for a minute or so to see which way the drift was going to go, then cast my pirk fifty feet  uptide with an underhand swing so that by the time the lump came up on the sounder my pirk would be more or less straight up and down. With superbraid the moment your pirk taps bottom there is a distinct tap feeling, two or three quick turns to clear the slack and you are fishing.

I had slack line without the tap, reel like hell, it might be a net I thought. The rod went over and for a moment it was one of those "sod it" moments. But then line started to peel from the reel and the stent in my heart gave a distinct lurch to starboard. Reel and pump, get it clear. I was using a 20lb outfit with 5lb of drag set on the strike stop, full drag was over 7 pounds and the fish was taking line against that amount of drag… I really did not want to lose this one because I had felt the bump-bump of a yellow skinned headbanger!!

I had taken a lot of time over my knots, spent good money to get the tackle I wanted and it all paid off. A Cod of 28 and a bit slid over the rim of the net and totally trashed it, fingers through the mesh of the net and it was inboard.

"We needed an new net anyway, you’ve buggerd that one". Well what do you expect to be said!!

Any questions to russ@reelfoto.com