First off the rudder; installation and general pics will go up later in the week:
(I know, I don't like, want or use cup hodlers but to be fair it didn't have any coffee in it, I just couldn't be bothered to put it back on the flask and that seemd an ideal place for it)
The rudder pedals and track aren’t too big and don’t take up a lot of space, but you do notice the cockpit being narrower – perhaps psychologically – and when stopping to fish I slackened the straps off and pushed the pedals forward as I was concerned I might damage them. This week though I didn’t need the rudder to correct anything so couldn’t give them a proper testing. I tried the raising and lowering and…it worked! Did what it should so the installation wasn’t a balls-up. Just goes to show that it doesn’t take the brains of an archbishop – just a half a day and a methodical approach with plenty of reference to the instructions. I tried it out for paddling a couple of times and I reckon once I’m used to it it should become a natural movement. It also weighs down the stern a tad which isn’t bad at all on the Trident!
I’ll let Laurie and Martyn add the detail to their reports on their fishing adventures and just give the general gen.
Launching at around 9am we paddled out for a while, about 2 miles I’d say but about a mile out from shore and anchored off on the edge of some spoil ground where it fell from 9 to 11 metres or so. This had looked promising on the charts and Lozz had spotted it on the Eastern Meet and today the currents made it an easy paddle. We found it with no trouble and dropped anchor. The swell was around 3ft and the current was quite strong but it was comfortable enough, mild weather and little wind and the water has dropped again to around 11 degrees.
After a while the bloody immigrant from down south was in
They come here, catch our fish and knock them on the head! Scandalous!
Not that we were jealous or anything. Especially as he was getting constant bites and we weren’t. Mind you he did deserve it he’d had a long drive up here. Martyn agreed (but you can’t see the hand signals in this pic!).
After too long listening to whoops of delight, and having snapped my weak link and started to drift slowly I up-anchored and headed for some deeper water, the other side of Laurie. Dropped the anchor down into 10 metres and dropped down my first rod, a pennel with lug and squid and set about on the second.
Rod went nuts!
Strike!
Fish on!
BIG FISH ON!
Slack!
Similar words to those spoken on the Nene!
Reeled in: my hooklength and snapped.
I ate a sausage sandwich and watched Lozz reeling in a few dozen more times and missed a bite.
Then BANG!
Hey, I was in again, fish on again and it was actually giving a good account of itself. I was quite surprised at this as I’d never really had much of a scrap from sea fish in the UK before.
Up he came, banging away
and in
it was facing Ijmuiden I think
beautifully marked it was, nice, dark spots and a big fat belly – a couple of pound, maybe slightly more. I wish I’d taken my scales as it was both my first yak codling and my PB codling! He’d fallen for lug and squid and had the hook down a good way.
I watched Lozz for a while longer, quite a while longer in fact, as he kept getting bites and the odd fish, missing the occasional one myself when the rod banged down again and
Fish on!
Same kind of fight as the last one, mouth open and coming up and against the current…it felt like a d**ned good fish and although of similar size to the last one I was chuffed to bits. A brace.
I got him right in the chops:
Sorry, I have to bring this down to my level: not that I find cod sexy or anything but wouldn’t you fancy the human version?
Thankfully soon after Martyn got his first so none of us had blanked. It were a monster of the deep it were. The tide slackened and the yaks started kind of floating about (you know what I mean) and after turning myself around and fishing the other way fro a while the rod tip went again
a little whiting. Sizeable and I like whiting but as I had a couple of cod already I decided to let the little fella back.
We sat a while longer and then after being buzzed by the lifeboat (out training)
We headed back in after a quick attempt at drifting that was just not working.
Back onshore, formation landing going well until I got picked up and shot ahead (and across a bit, sorry Laurie) and we were back on dry land. We got trolleyed up, gutted the catch and then did a bit of posing for pics:
Me, in my natty Extrasport gear:
Lozz with his haul:
and Martyn with his leviathan
Cracking, the weather and sea were good to us, we had some nice fish and in my opinion the company and craic were spot on. Thanks for coming you two.
Now, I mentioned the Extrasport clothing. Here’s a pic showing it a bit more:
Granted, blues and light grey-blues don’t quite suit my complexion (I’m more of a yellow fellow as you know!) but that’s by the by – and my drysuit has yellow on it anyway. My wife thinks it looks good by the way. First impressions are that the waistband of the trousers was quite narrow (compared to some Nookie Extremes I tried a few weeks back) but this was not a problem over the course of the day. The material seemed quite thick (ie substantial) and sealed well at the bottom (neoprene). The waterproof pockets were a decent size and a positive closure and the chart I had in them stayed dry all day. As did I. The top, same again, decent thickness and a slight stretch to it. Windproof and waterproof as well as breathable I was quite comfortable all day long in just a T-shirt (fleece in the rod pod) and never felt clammy where bare skin met the material. Two waterproof chest pockets as well, which was a bonus, and a neoprene neck that I left open as I cannot stand anything clamped tightly around my neck (apart from a woman). Drawcord and neoprene seals at the bottom. Okay, if you jump in the water you will get wet through the waist on both but they aren’t designed for immersion – what they are designed for is keeping you dry and comfortable sitting in/on a yak and this is exactly what they did. Now, something that occurred to me was the design of the para smocks issued to the red berets. These have a flap that comes from behind your back down and up over your crotch. I’m wondering if this kind of idea could be transported across onto cags thus helping the seal for both cag and trousers? Clearly it wouldn’t be a full seal – you’d need a step through kind of affair for that – but it might give an extra level of dryness if you did go in and had to struggle out again. Anyway, it was the driest I’ve been on my yak so far so no complaints there.
