Sussex Tope
Our Pro Team member Alan Brown shares his love-hate relationship with the Sussex Tope.
Over the years ive from time to time targeted a Sussex tope, with little to no success. But over the last two years ive been working harder and harder to get one off the shallow beaches along here, with things starting to come together last year, hooking 3 and beaching one. I slowly started to get things sorted for this year with a summer long look at them, picking the tides I knew they should show each month and hoping for the right weather on those tides.
My biggest change was with my rigs… years gone by, i was fishing a running up and over, but found I lost a lot of distance due to the whole joey mackerel flapping around in flight. To overcome this, I went for a pulley system with stiffer rig body and hook link with a 12-inch AFW in 90lbs with a 10-inch twisted section to help grip the bait and keep it stiff. I then changed my swivels for smaller but stronger, so opted for the size 3 Cox&Rawle stainless steel barrel swivel, that helped keep my rig streamlined. On the business end it was armed with the Cox&Rawle 6/0 Mutsu, I love this hook the moment I 1st got shown it, because its pre offset and found the 6/0 sits well behind the lead compared to bigger hooks that don’t help with bait wobble. So, after a total rethink was time to put it into practice.
Plan of action
Game plan was to try beach a tope each month for four months from my local beaches. End of May came on my chosen tides and weather was spot on. Putting my new taylored rigs to use with whole joey as bait. Couple of hours in the reel screamed into action and what was a poor short fight, where a 42lb tope as good as beached itself and the Mutsu hook was set perfect in corner of her mouth.
End of June was my 2nd trip, again weather was perfect and again few hours in, and the reel melted off, this time I was using fresh joey mackerel that I had caught from Selsey east beach the night before. After what was a good fight this time a 34lber was on the sling, the 6/0 was again in the corner of her mouth. A few hours went past when the reel screamed at me again and was sadly dropped on the 1st run, only to find the fish had folded the bait in half with the hook points being covered by the bait.
Two months in and all was going to plan and at the end of July again the weather was perfect, but this time I was using the joeys I had caught myself back in June and frozen down. Much the same as other trips a few hours in and the reel sprang into life. My friend Carl was with me and we watched this 33lber, twice tail walked about 100 meters out and at one point was clean out the water, what an experience to see and hope one day I will see this again.
Shortly after had another screaming run resulting in a dropped bait due to again the fish folding it, dont think to much can be done to stop them folding the bait in half, masking the hook points. we are now in the 4th and final month chasing the tope came and this time the weather was all wrong and they never showed.
Also on every session I caught bass to nearly 7lbs and at times were a pain. Roll on the 2021 season where I have a few more tweaks to try to improve on missed fish.
Hi
Can you give me a rough Idea tope stay in area.
I’ve been fishing a west sussex beach and been catching several smoothhounds..but also had several big takes and bitten off traces .. thinking there tope I’m planning wire traces at this spot hardback crabs and bluey n squid wraps have had this take connect and bitten off snoods
Kind regards