My one remaining ambition in angling is to catch a fish in excess of 1000 pounds. Though many anglers around the world most certainly do catch big fish, if they are honest, few will truly be able to lay claim to cracking this magical barrier. In recent times I got to thinking about this much more seriously, worried that eventually either age or physical infirmity might rule the prospect out. A sort of "Grand Finale" if you like. But to have a realistic chance of doing what most anglers around the world will never get to do, you first have to find a venue where such fish are a genuine possibility, which is easier said than done. With probably no more than a handful of potential producing ports worldwide to choose from, I could not believe my luck when I discovered a boat skipper who quietly and confidently takes around 20 fish in excess of a grand every year. Better still, he is based is in Europe. It is even on the mass market cheap package holiday circuit. Could this really be true. Well to cut a long introduction short, a friend of mine discovered the fishing quite by chance last year taking two fish in excess of a 1000 pounds in just a few days. Better still, he had an incredible 1600+ pound fish on the day before I arrived there for my début trip.

The location is the tiny island of El Hierro on the very western fringe of the Canary Islands, and the man in charge of the operation is French skipper Miguel Gamito. You simply arrange yourself a cheap flight to the south airport on Tenerife and leave the rest to him. He will organise a one night stay over at Los Christianos. You then take a taxi to the ferry port to catch the early morning Fred Olsen ferry for the 4 hour trip across to the northern end of the El Hierro. Miguel will have a taxi standing by for the 40 minute drive south to La Restinga where a self catering apartment is available over looking the tiny harbour. Sounds great and it is great. But be aware of two very important facts. The first is that this is a tiny strictly Spanish speaking village with just a couple of restaurants, a few bars, and literally nothing else to do. The second is that the north easterly trade wind quite literally howls all summer long. Fortunately you only have to sail though whatever swell there is for a few hundred metres before rounding the corner to what the locals call the Costa Calma. Suddenly the sea flattens, there is not even a hint of breeze, and you feel like melting in the relentless heat. Such is the shelter from the surrounding mountains.

The fish at the centre of all this is the Six Gilled Shark Hexancus griseus, a very primitive creature which lives in the deepest part of the oceans throughout all temperate and tropical parts of the world. Not a rare fish by any means, but a very rare fish on rod and line due to the fact that it rarely strays into water less than 200 metres deep and has been reported at depths in excess of 1800 metres. What makes El Hierro so special is that you have 1000 metres of water within little more than a mile of the shore. The island is the dry tip of a huge volcanic mountain with near vertical sides all the way down to the floor of the abyss. To illustrate this more vividly, Miguel uses a permanently anchored buoy which he ties the boat to in order to fish. Depending on the direction of the wind and tide, if the rope is angled towards the shore, you can be in as 'little' as 300 metres of water. When it is angled the other way, the depth might be in excess of 600 metres. That is how quickly the bottom plummets away. The average, and probably the best depth to be fishing from a practical point of view is around 450 to 500 metres. That is one hell of a distance even when you are filling an empty reel with new line. Imagine how much harder it is trying to lift something maybe six times your own body weight vertically a quarter of a mile when it doesn't want come.

I have often thought that there must come a time when the effort in getting a big fish to the boat is so great as to cancel out the actual pleasure of having it there. We must all have a point when the anticipation of the catch, and the photographs to show around after the event are the best part of whole affair. The weight of such a fish will differ for each of us. I don't know what my upper threshold weight actually is. What I can say is that I far surpassed it at El Hierro. My biggest fear while setting up the trip was catching a fish of say 900 pounds and feeling the need to do it all again because I was short of my 1000 pound target. The biggest fish I caught did just miss the target, and yes, I fished on. But I have to say I was not disappointed at not hitting the 1000 pound mark. How can you be disappointed with a fish topping 900 pounds for both myself and Dave Devine who was with me on the trip, both caught within an hour of each other. But I have to say, we worked hard for those fish in more ways than simply winching them up to the side of the boat. They were hard earned in every sense of the word.

On rounding the point which marks the start of the calm water, Miguel puts out a spread of surface lures in the hope of picking up a few Bonito en route to the anchored buoy. Unfortunately, it had been a particularly poor year for Bonito. The commercial boats were loosing money hand over fist, and we did not see a single Bonito caught throughout our stay. That meant resorting to frozen baits. But the sharks don't seem to mind. So long as you present a monster sized mouthful oozing lots of blood, having a big Six Gill take it is inevitable. A Bonito on a two hook rig to heavy wire with an 8 ounce lead and a light stick close to the bait forms the basis of the rig. A depth counter on the rod measures the amount of line paid out. When this reaches 450 metres, Miguel clips a big lead on a sliding boom on to the line and lets it drop. This takes out any bow caused by water currents and straightens the line. He then gently feeds out the remaining line feeling for the bottom by hand. Once the lead touches it is wound back several metres so that the bait is just off the bottom to avoid snags in case the boat swings. The reel is then set on ratchet with a bit of drag and you sit back and wait. The first fish could be there in minutes or it could take hours. But with so many big Six Gills in the area, waiting time is usually pretty reasonable.

Normally Miguel catches one big shark then moves the boat inshore to a second anchored buoy in shallower water to fish for Stingrays. To maximise our chances, Dave and I booked an extra couple of hours onto each trip to give time for both of us to have a fish during the same day. Dave was on for the first fish. He didn't have to wait long. But for some reason it wasn't properly hooked and let go of the bait which made its long journey back to the surface cut to shreds. Shortly afterwards, the same thing happened again. A third fish then took the bait only to drop it minutes later. Frustrated, he handed things over to me. The problem seemed to be that the breeze had taken the buoy and the boat inshore to the shallowest part of its range. Miguel suspected these were small fish needing lots of time to get such a big bait down. We really needed to get the boat back over the deeper water, but that was not possible while we were at anchor. He then suggested we try a bit of experimentation. The plan was to try fishing over the deeper water without being tied to the buoy. Not exactly drift fishing. What Miguel wanted to do was use the engine to keep the boat directly over the bait in around 400 metres of water. It had never been tried before. But sure enough, it produced a take within the hour. A small fish of around 200 pounds managed to get the hook inside its mouth. But it was better than nothing.

Day two saw Dave back in the fighting chair. We had previously agreed that when one of us had caught a fish, the other person would stay on the rod until they had one too. We had only been there 20 minutes when line started creeping off the reel. Miguel fired up the engine, slipped the buoy, and eased the boat away from the rope putting a nice angle in the line. This fish was on and it was a good one. Unfortunately, some 20 minutes later, the line touched the sharp head of a screw in a diving platform on the back of the boat causing it to part just beneath the rod tip. Back to the anchored buoy. Another good fish is hooked and on its way up, then suddenly the line goes slack again. This one had somehow rolled in the wire trace and managed to reach the super heavy monofilament section of the trace which it apparently sliced clean through with its teeth. Three more fish were subsequently lost having simply let go of the baits, and all before noon. As we sat in the cabin eating our lunch, we discussed whether to carry on fishing for sharks or try for something else. But Six Gills were what we had come for, so we decided to carry on. That afternoon we each had a fish in excess of 900 pounds tagged and released. Interestingly though, Dave is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 17 stone while I am 5 feet 8 inches tall and 11 stone, yet I was able to beat my fish in around half the time it took a man who is physically stronger to get the same size fish to the boat.

Angler size and weight, while they can be an asset, are not as important as angling technique. In a nutshell, Dave was too big for the fighting chair and was unable to get his feet comfortably on the step to apply back leverage to the fish to keep it moving. Instead, he had to work his fish using his arms unlike me who could use the step and work the fish with my back. The secret is to keep line constantly going onto the reel, however small an amount that might be. The fish has to be kept under pressure and moving towards the boat. But the pressure works both ways. The pressure of the harness across your upper back can make it difficult to take good breaths and fully re-oxygenate your blood. And there were times when I thought my kidneys were going to explode due to pressure on the lower back from the bottom edge of the harness. Sweat was penetrating through the band of my thick leather hat. Then the first depth marker on the line hits surface. Miguel shouts encouragingly that there is 'only' 90 metres to go. The next marker showed at 50 metres, then 15 metres, by which time a shape was starting to show in the clear deep water. All the fish we caught broke surface well to the stern of the boat and they looked huge. I cannot tell you the feeling of sheer relief as Miguel takes the weight of the fish by handling the trace. At last you can take a real lung full of air, wipe the sweat from your eyelids, and marvel at the sheer size of the fish rolling around at the side of the boat.

Dave was scheduled to leave for home a day earlier than me. I had this particular day booked to myself as a fall back in case the 1000 pound target had not been met, which it hadn't. I had rather hoped to use it for other things such as bottom fishing small baits in the deeper water on a reel I had brought along loaded with 1000 metres of braid. A few attempts on previous days had caught Beryx and Bluemouth, but every time I touched bottom (which took around 10 minutes) a shark would take the big bait and I had to wind in again. My dilemma was that I still wanted, or should I say I still needed a 1000 pound Six Gill, so it was back to the anchored buoy and the 130 pound class animal tackle, but this time with a difference. The boat had swung out in the tide to its deepest extremity, and when the bait was on the bottom, you could see the line fixing nipple on the spindle of the reel. There couldn't have been more than a couple of dozen turns of line left on the spool. Consequently, when a fish took, we could not let it run far enough with the bait to get the hook inside its mouth before we had to strike. Five very heavy fish were lost to this forced "premature" striking. Earlier, Miguel had suggested using an 80 pound outfit which would have more line left on the reel after touching bottom. Reluctantly I agreed and within half an hour we were back in business with another heavy fish which incredibly managed to straighten the huge forged hook without parting the line. After that we headed back to port.

So, my objective still remains to be achieved. Thinking back and looking at the video, I have to say I am over the moon with the fish we caught. With a bit more luck things could have been so much different. If you had asked me at the time would I liked to have kept on going until the 1000 pounder was at the side of the boat I probably would have said no. But now I would most certainly give it another go. In fact I fully intend to. For despite the language barrier, we made a lot of friends, particularly in the El Anchra restaurant (I hope that is the right spelling) where we had a lot of fun and some great food using our Spanish phrase book. On top of this, there was the other fishing. I would have liked to have tried more with the smaller baits on the bottom, and there were lots of Dorado to be caught at the surface hanging around Miguel's anchor buoy. We also did a spot of night fishing with some amazingly interesting results. But that as they say is another story.

SEE THE VIDEO VAULT - Grande Finale