well after life getting in the way of my usuall crew attending the rnli species hunt , i made a couple of phone calls mid week to see if i could smuggle myself onto peter,s skate trip , and as luck would have it there was an opening 
..thanks peter :clap3:
well we met donald at the marina pontoon and set off for our first mark of the day , which was a bit of a miss with only a couple of dogs coming aboard for peter which had a couple of smiles though
so the crew and donald decided on a move so we steamed for another couple of miles to the next mark and got the big baits nailed hard to the bottom , myself and peter had a spare rod set up for the smaller species to try for a black mouth doggie , we did,nt have long to wait ,but alas it was the spotted variety which showed first 
but a fish is a fish !
i saw a little tap on my doggie rod when it absolutely hammered over and this was no doggie !!! 
after a short and bum clenching fight later this little cracker broke the surface
a nice little skate of around 30lbs ,first of the day and caught on a 2/o circle hook to 40lb hook length !!
then things began to heat up mark had a crackin run and hit into a good fish which proceeded to give a crackin account of itself (sorry never got a pic of this fish ) he was a nice male fish of 125lb 
then i had a decent run, and after a short fight i had another 30lb ish fish at the boat (pics not so good )
after this andy was into a very decent fish which proceeded to give him a darn good thrashing and had the air blue with expletitives 
he was also a very good male fish with the scales giving him a bottom weight of 135lb as he was off the scale ....crackin fish !!!!
peter during this time had sneakily hooked up with a fish and had got his fish to the boat a nice wee male fish of 50 or so lbs (had the old dude blowing though )
we then had a wee lull in the fishing which gave a good oppertunity to have a bit of craic, which was great all day (thanks guys 
) next run fell to peter again .. now after his super human efforts on the previous fish this fish really had the auld yin puffin an he was sitting down within 5 mins 
this one was a bit more spirited and once boated turned out to be a respectable male fish of 101lb !!
next fish was on rabs rod
and once boated turned out to be one of the cutest little tykes i,ve seen crackin little fish !!
well that was the end of the fish for the day with a few more tentative bites which never came to anything the weather for the day could not have been any better and at one point i was even down to a tshirt for a little while ! brilliant !!
thanks again to peter for the invite donald and alex for the expert skippering and the rest of the guys for the good craic throughout the day
ps got to give peter a special mention for his exploits on the bmd rod 
(see the lenny urgent id thread )
and a little mention goes out to billy the blanker (you know who you are: 
)
