I’ve been very fortunate in that, since the birth of my daughter just over a month ago and with the exception of the first two weeks, I’ve had a good few opportunities to fish – certainly not the normal run of things for the father of a newborn, so I’m told! I’ve had six proper trips up to now and a few short mackerel-gathering sessions, whilst my wife has patiently taken the brunt of our baby daughter’s nocturnal wakefulness and frantic impulse to prey on milk-containing objects and appendages. That is not to say that I haven’t been doing my bit as a dad, I have, but I’ve also been able to carry on my fishing too so for me, it’s all been win-win.
Since I’ve been officially ‘back’ after a good while of being a bit restricted in my movements, I’ve managed to lay to rest a couple of ghosts from last year’s intense species hunt. There were three species in particular that I utterly failed to catch despite numerous attempts; tub gurnard, triggerfish and dover sole. I particularly tried hard for the gurnard and the sole and the fact that I didn’t manage to bag them has been quite a sore point since the conclusion of the challenge. Luckily, on my first session after the birth of my daughter, I managed to bag two tub gurnards from a local rock mark and reassure myself that I wasn’t completely hopeless at catching them. This session also produced some decent sport with small bull huss and spotted ray which, after fishing for pretty much nothing but mullet and bass for a month or more, I really enjoyed.
The other species that I have managed to catch recently that I couldn’t last year is the enigmatic triggerfish. I wrote last year about how I’d only ever caught one trigger before and that the experience was so unexpected that I really didn’t learn a great deal from it. It seems, like my first one, a good deal of the triggers caught in Cornwall are incidental captures made by anglers fishing for other species. However, there are Cornish anglers who have managed to figure out how to catch triggers by design and it was reports and rumours of good catches being made that first made me sit up and take notice. After a few tentative enquiries from one or two sources, I was given some snippets of information on how the fish tended to behave and some worthwhile approaches to fishing for them. With my tactics adjusted accordingly, I fished a couple of marks in ‘triggery’ areas hoping to score my own taste of exotic species action. These first two attempts proved fruitless on the trigger front although, as usual, I still enjoyed the fishing as the marks were new to me and there were some other fish to be had. However, the third attempt produced the goods and it’s this session and the things I learnt from it that I’d like to talk about.
Much of the conventional wisdom about triggerfish that you can gather from the internet or from angling magazines is pretty basic. Triggers are known to favour structure such as reefs and rough ground, as well as man-made habitat like piers and docks. They are reputedly not particularly fussy about baits and will accept a wide array of offerings, although fresh mackerel is a popular choice that has the bonus of, for the most part, deterring ballan wrasse. Triggers also enjoy a reputation as hard fighters and many sources are quick to emphasise the potential for bite-offs due to the species’ formidable array of teeth. All of this commonplace info I was already well familiar with and, despite applying it to my previous attempts to catch triggers, so far none of it had helped me catch any.
Fortunately, in preparing to fish for these exotic beasts, there were a few key pieces of info that I was given by people that had caught them in numbers that I could put greater stock in. Triggers are a highly aggressive species although they have a relatively small mouth. Their bites were characterised to me as being quick and pecky, much like you would expect from black bream, with the telltale sign to having missed a bite from a trigger being that (when using fresh mackerel strip) the bait will come back stripped of flesh with only the skin remaining. The fish seem to respond better to a bait with some element of movement, thus some anglers choose to float fish for them, aiming to suspend their baits near features of interest. Oftentimes, the movements of triggers will not be random but part of an established patrol route along a particular piece of structure or range. Coupled to this, triggers tend to move in groups, with the advantage to the angler of competition between individuals, as well as the possibility of multiple fish per cast.
I incorporated all these details into my thinking and approach and decided that, as well as my usual tactic of legering with floating rig components, I would also use float fishing as a primary tactic. The idea of letting the float and suspended bait drift around and seek out the fish, with the added bonus of the extra movement stimulating the bite, made a lot of sense to me. In my mind’s eye I could imagine how triggers patrolling around structure would find it hard to ignore a juicy cut of mackerel wafting about in the current above their heads. The night before I was due to go, I packed the bag with a few float options as well as my customary rough ground gear. I also decided to bring along some lighter legering kit and a fixed spool filled with 30lb braid in case the opportunity came up to fish on the bottom at short range. As I took to doing last year when trying for triggers, I adorned my paternoster bottom rigs with large red rig floats that would keep the whole assembly more or less vertical in the water column. On the hooklengths themselves, I also added little sugar cube foam pop-ups to maximise the waft of the bait and hopefully make them seem more appealing to the marauding trigger. These rigs used the twisted boom idea that I detailed in a post last year, with the added refinement of a swivel trapped in the loop of the boom. I make this particular rig design in one and two hook variations and, with the addition of the rig float above the top boom, the presentation is not dissimilar to a float, although obviously the rig is anchored and isn’t intended to drift far from where it touches down.
I was very aware that my hook choice might prove critical to success, so I took along a good range of options and resolved to go with whatever the fishing revealed to be the optimum choice. My frontrunners were Kamasan B940s in size 2 and Kamasan B983s in size 4. In my head, I reasoned that the B940 would be most likely to prick and hook up because of the very sharp point, but the B983 had the strength to bully a sizable fish and could not be bitten through or badly mangled by the jaws of the triggers. For hooklengths, I went with 20lb fluorocarbon; a bit light for some people’s tastes maybe but I reasoned it was hard enough to resist a dink from the trigger’s teeth yet still light enough that it wouldn’t hinder bait presentation too much. I was prepared to be flexible on this though and I had stronger fluorocarbon and a few mono choices with me too.
The day of my trigger trip, I was up before first light and on my way as the dawn began to break. After a fair drive, I arrived at my destination and loaded up to begin the trek out to the mark. The sun was far from up, but the morning was already warm and showing all the signs of a scorching day ahead. After a slightly tricky descent and a minute or two to get myself oriented on a new mark, I set up my float gear, set the depth to around 18 feet and cast out about 20 yards to where I could see the depth change. On the first cast I had a rattling, pecky bite which I missed, but it seemed to bear all the hallmarks of a trigger showing interest and I rebaited and cast out again with anticipation running high. The following few casts did not show a repeat of that interest and the float was drifting quite quickly to the left with the current as the tide flooded. I decided then to concentrate on another part of the mark and, after toying with the fishing depth a little, I began searching the area in front at a range of about 15 yards. I quickly began to receive a good deal more attention here and the float bobbed and disappeared numerous times until finally, a bob and a slow draw under produced substantial resistance on the strike and I was in. The fish bolted and pulled away hard, the violent lunges feeling quite different to the typical hard ground inhabitants like pollack and wrasse, before swimming up to the surface and splashing. I managed to get the upper hand and bring the fish close to the rock I was standing on. This rock had a slight undercut, which the by-now-visible fish made a determined beeline for. I managed to check the dive and bring the fish back to the surface, from where it was a simple matter to land it on a gently-sloping rock. Lying before me was my first triggerfish in five years; although not the largest example, it was definitely one of the more satisfying fish I have caught in a while and I took a few seconds to admire its unusual form and the turquoise touches on the fins, pleasing highlights on an otherwise quite bland colour scheme.
Subsequent casts with the float yielded nothing but mackerel, as a sizable shoal had corralled some whitebait into the bay and was mercilessly slaughtering them. It was at this point that I decided to set up my other light rod with the fixed spool and braid, to see if I could get a presentation at a depth under the mackerel but still off the bottom enough for the triggers. The rig was perhaps six feet long with the hooklength set about 4’ off the bottom. The assembly would be held in place by a 3oz lead on a weak link, whilst the rig itself would be held upright in the water column by the highly buoyant foam rig float. From the first few casts, it became obvious that I had hit on the right solution as I soon had another trigger about the same size as the first, then a little flurry of two or three more, including a better sized one. My initial impression about the performance of these fish on light tackle was only improved as I battled more of them; triggers possess power not dissimilar to a gilthead, although the fight is much more erratic with quicker changes of direction and short bursts of speed rather than sustained runs. Also, triggers do not seem to use their surface area as much to produce heavy resistance as giltheads do.
The morning passed on into the afternoon and it seemed like I would add another trigger every so often as the groups of fish passed through. I kept the first three to eat but released the rest, including the day’s best fish of just shy of 3lbs. I finished the day having caught nine triggers and a good few mackerel; certainly one of my better days this year and a real confidence booster for me as a ‘species-orientated’ angler. In the future I will be better able to recognise when I have a chance of catching triggers and, most importantly, how to go about it. The three triggers that I kept for the pot were eaten the same evening and, whilst certainly not unpalatable, I wouldn’t say that they were particularly worth the effort in preparing, although it was nice to try some as a novelty.
As a general comment, the popped-up rig idea is one that I’ve been using for a while now and have complete confidence in as an option for fish that like to feed just off the bottom, particularly over rough/mixed ground. By elevating the whole rig, you have a completely different presentation to more common pop-up tactics like floating rig beads on the snood, which are typically more effective at giving subtle movement rather than outright lift. I still tend to use the rig float in combination with foam pop-ups on the hooklengths to give extra life; the idea for me is to have the baits as reactive to water movement as possible whilst still being tethered to one place. I can’t remember seeing any other pleasure anglers actually using rig floats before, although I’ve seen the idea in magazines, and match anglers have been using all manner of rig flotation devices for ages to target pelagic species like mackerel and gars. However, the rig does bear some resemblance to a ploy that I’ve seen some Cornish anglers using to target pollack; employing a float to push the hooklength up to the shockleader knot and fish a bait high off the bottom.
The actual rig floats I have are ones that I bought on a whim back along and have yet to use up. They are basically balls of red foam, pierced through the middle and held on white plastic hollow spindles that slide on the line. I can’t remember how much they cost and I threw the packet away years ago so I’ve no idea who they were made by. For me, it is questionable whether there is any need to buy these sort of things anyway, as you could easily substitute these purpose-made components with things like corks or pieces of broken foam floats. I quite often break the polystyrene type floats in the course of my travels and using them for making suspending bottom rigs would be a great way of getting some use out of something that would otherwise be thrown away.
Since I’ve been officially ‘back’ after a good while of being a bit restricted in my movements, I’ve managed to lay to rest a couple of ghosts from last year’s intense species hunt. There were three species in particular that I utterly failed to catch despite numerous attempts; tub gurnard, triggerfish and dover sole. I particularly tried hard for the gurnard and the sole and the fact that I didn’t manage to bag them has been quite a sore point since the conclusion of the challenge. Luckily, on my first session after the birth of my daughter, I managed to bag two tub gurnards from a local rock mark and reassure myself that I wasn’t completely hopeless at catching them. This session also produced some decent sport with small bull huss and spotted ray which, after fishing for pretty much nothing but mullet and bass for a month or more, I really enjoyed.
The other species that I have managed to catch recently that I couldn’t last year is the enigmatic triggerfish. I wrote last year about how I’d only ever caught one trigger before and that the experience was so unexpected that I really didn’t learn a great deal from it. It seems, like my first one, a good deal of the triggers caught in Cornwall are incidental captures made by anglers fishing for other species. However, there are Cornish anglers who have managed to figure out how to catch triggers by design and it was reports and rumours of good catches being made that first made me sit up and take notice. After a few tentative enquiries from one or two sources, I was given some snippets of information on how the fish tended to behave and some worthwhile approaches to fishing for them. With my tactics adjusted accordingly, I fished a couple of marks in ‘triggery’ areas hoping to score my own taste of exotic species action. These first two attempts proved fruitless on the trigger front although, as usual, I still enjoyed the fishing as the marks were new to me and there were some other fish to be had. However, the third attempt produced the goods and it’s this session and the things I learnt from it that I’d like to talk about.
Much of the conventional wisdom about triggerfish that you can gather from the internet or from angling magazines is pretty basic. Triggers are known to favour structure such as reefs and rough ground, as well as man-made habitat like piers and docks. They are reputedly not particularly fussy about baits and will accept a wide array of offerings, although fresh mackerel is a popular choice that has the bonus of, for the most part, deterring ballan wrasse. Triggers also enjoy a reputation as hard fighters and many sources are quick to emphasise the potential for bite-offs due to the species’ formidable array of teeth. All of this commonplace info I was already well familiar with and, despite applying it to my previous attempts to catch triggers, so far none of it had helped me catch any.
Fortunately, in preparing to fish for these exotic beasts, there were a few key pieces of info that I was given by people that had caught them in numbers that I could put greater stock in. Triggers are a highly aggressive species although they have a relatively small mouth. Their bites were characterised to me as being quick and pecky, much like you would expect from black bream, with the telltale sign to having missed a bite from a trigger being that (when using fresh mackerel strip) the bait will come back stripped of flesh with only the skin remaining. The fish seem to respond better to a bait with some element of movement, thus some anglers choose to float fish for them, aiming to suspend their baits near features of interest. Oftentimes, the movements of triggers will not be random but part of an established patrol route along a particular piece of structure or range. Coupled to this, triggers tend to move in groups, with the advantage to the angler of competition between individuals, as well as the possibility of multiple fish per cast.
I incorporated all these details into my thinking and approach and decided that, as well as my usual tactic of legering with floating rig components, I would also use float fishing as a primary tactic. The idea of letting the float and suspended bait drift around and seek out the fish, with the added bonus of the extra movement stimulating the bite, made a lot of sense to me. In my mind’s eye I could imagine how triggers patrolling around structure would find it hard to ignore a juicy cut of mackerel wafting about in the current above their heads. The night before I was due to go, I packed the bag with a few float options as well as my customary rough ground gear. I also decided to bring along some lighter legering kit and a fixed spool filled with 30lb braid in case the opportunity came up to fish on the bottom at short range. As I took to doing last year when trying for triggers, I adorned my paternoster bottom rigs with large red rig floats that would keep the whole assembly more or less vertical in the water column. On the hooklengths themselves, I also added little sugar cube foam pop-ups to maximise the waft of the bait and hopefully make them seem more appealing to the marauding trigger. These rigs used the twisted boom idea that I detailed in a post last year, with the added refinement of a swivel trapped in the loop of the boom. I make this particular rig design in one and two hook variations and, with the addition of the rig float above the top boom, the presentation is not dissimilar to a float, although obviously the rig is anchored and isn’t intended to drift far from where it touches down.
I was very aware that my hook choice might prove critical to success, so I took along a good range of options and resolved to go with whatever the fishing revealed to be the optimum choice. My frontrunners were Kamasan B940s in size 2 and Kamasan B983s in size 4. In my head, I reasoned that the B940 would be most likely to prick and hook up because of the very sharp point, but the B983 had the strength to bully a sizable fish and could not be bitten through or badly mangled by the jaws of the triggers. For hooklengths, I went with 20lb fluorocarbon; a bit light for some people’s tastes maybe but I reasoned it was hard enough to resist a dink from the trigger’s teeth yet still light enough that it wouldn’t hinder bait presentation too much. I was prepared to be flexible on this though and I had stronger fluorocarbon and a few mono choices with me too.
The day of my trigger trip, I was up before first light and on my way as the dawn began to break. After a fair drive, I arrived at my destination and loaded up to begin the trek out to the mark. The sun was far from up, but the morning was already warm and showing all the signs of a scorching day ahead. After a slightly tricky descent and a minute or two to get myself oriented on a new mark, I set up my float gear, set the depth to around 18 feet and cast out about 20 yards to where I could see the depth change. On the first cast I had a rattling, pecky bite which I missed, but it seemed to bear all the hallmarks of a trigger showing interest and I rebaited and cast out again with anticipation running high. The following few casts did not show a repeat of that interest and the float was drifting quite quickly to the left with the current as the tide flooded. I decided then to concentrate on another part of the mark and, after toying with the fishing depth a little, I began searching the area in front at a range of about 15 yards. I quickly began to receive a good deal more attention here and the float bobbed and disappeared numerous times until finally, a bob and a slow draw under produced substantial resistance on the strike and I was in. The fish bolted and pulled away hard, the violent lunges feeling quite different to the typical hard ground inhabitants like pollack and wrasse, before swimming up to the surface and splashing. I managed to get the upper hand and bring the fish close to the rock I was standing on. This rock had a slight undercut, which the by-now-visible fish made a determined beeline for. I managed to check the dive and bring the fish back to the surface, from where it was a simple matter to land it on a gently-sloping rock. Lying before me was my first triggerfish in five years; although not the largest example, it was definitely one of the more satisfying fish I have caught in a while and I took a few seconds to admire its unusual form and the turquoise touches on the fins, pleasing highlights on an otherwise quite bland colour scheme.
Subsequent casts with the float yielded nothing but mackerel, as a sizable shoal had corralled some whitebait into the bay and was mercilessly slaughtering them. It was at this point that I decided to set up my other light rod with the fixed spool and braid, to see if I could get a presentation at a depth under the mackerel but still off the bottom enough for the triggers. The rig was perhaps six feet long with the hooklength set about 4’ off the bottom. The assembly would be held in place by a 3oz lead on a weak link, whilst the rig itself would be held upright in the water column by the highly buoyant foam rig float. From the first few casts, it became obvious that I had hit on the right solution as I soon had another trigger about the same size as the first, then a little flurry of two or three more, including a better sized one. My initial impression about the performance of these fish on light tackle was only improved as I battled more of them; triggers possess power not dissimilar to a gilthead, although the fight is much more erratic with quicker changes of direction and short bursts of speed rather than sustained runs. Also, triggers do not seem to use their surface area as much to produce heavy resistance as giltheads do.
The morning passed on into the afternoon and it seemed like I would add another trigger every so often as the groups of fish passed through. I kept the first three to eat but released the rest, including the day’s best fish of just shy of 3lbs. I finished the day having caught nine triggers and a good few mackerel; certainly one of my better days this year and a real confidence booster for me as a ‘species-orientated’ angler. In the future I will be better able to recognise when I have a chance of catching triggers and, most importantly, how to go about it. The three triggers that I kept for the pot were eaten the same evening and, whilst certainly not unpalatable, I wouldn’t say that they were particularly worth the effort in preparing, although it was nice to try some as a novelty.
As a general comment, the popped-up rig idea is one that I’ve been using for a while now and have complete confidence in as an option for fish that like to feed just off the bottom, particularly over rough/mixed ground. By elevating the whole rig, you have a completely different presentation to more common pop-up tactics like floating rig beads on the snood, which are typically more effective at giving subtle movement rather than outright lift. I still tend to use the rig float in combination with foam pop-ups on the hooklengths to give extra life; the idea for me is to have the baits as reactive to water movement as possible whilst still being tethered to one place. I can’t remember seeing any other pleasure anglers actually using rig floats before, although I’ve seen the idea in magazines, and match anglers have been using all manner of rig flotation devices for ages to target pelagic species like mackerel and gars. However, the rig does bear some resemblance to a ploy that I’ve seen some Cornish anglers using to target pollack; employing a float to push the hooklength up to the shockleader knot and fish a bait high off the bottom.
The actual rig floats I have are ones that I bought on a whim back along and have yet to use up. They are basically balls of red foam, pierced through the middle and held on white plastic hollow spindles that slide on the line. I can’t remember how much they cost and I threw the packet away years ago so I’ve no idea who they were made by. For me, it is questionable whether there is any need to buy these sort of things anyway, as you could easily substitute these purpose-made components with things like corks or pieces of broken foam floats. I quite often break the polystyrene type floats in the course of my travels and using them for making suspending bottom rigs would be a great way of getting some use out of something that would otherwise be thrown away.