The waters off Anglesey see a run of smoothhound each year during late May and June. These are not small fish with doubles being average and fish to twenty pound plus a distinct possibility.
I had four days booked on board Gethyn Owen's My Way. Geth advised that the hounds hadn't yet arrived in numbers and sport was a bit patchy. Despite this, one twenty pounder had already been boated. My trip coincided with a spell of settled weather, a mini heatwave in fact.
The plan was simple, do some scratching until the tide was right and then move onto the hounds. This meant that everyone caught a few dogfish, dabs, codling, whiting etc before settling down to the waiting game.
Most of the lads rigged up with uptiders, not having a light uptider I set up a carp rod. In retrospect I think it was a little soft and could have done with some more backbone. I struggled to bring a small balled up hound against a strong tide! Four foot of 50lb line with a 4/0 hook baited was baited with a peeler crab. Interestingly Geth favours not peeling the crab and passing the hook through the abdomen before tying on the crab with some bait elastic. This minimises the number of dogfish (these welsh waters are paved with LSDs).
Geth's usual collection of dodgy music and bad jokes kept the crews entertained whilst we waited for the hounds to oblige.
Over the four days the crew averaged 5-8 hounds per day with the best weighing 18lb plus. I was happy with 5 although I was perhaps a little unlucky with the size as the average was probably around 13lb.
Geth put on the Prodigy who sang "what are you gonna do when the hounds are calling". I just said "lose them".
