Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle. Gorleston…30/10/08

Pinkfoot and I had hatched this plan earlier in the week to go and fish together again on either Wednesday or Thursday, weather dependant. As Wednesday was absolutely gorgeous and we’d missed it we planned to head out early on Thursday morning from Gorleston for a session. A good plan that, as its half term so a mid-week session n is a possibility. I’d loaded the yaks and my gear up the night before and had bought myself some Ragworm to go with the frozen squid and mackerel in the freezer. All left to do was set my alarm…

05:15…alarm goes off. I daren’t ignore it and hit snooze like I usually do as I was meeting Carl at 6 in Gorleston. To say I leapt out of bed would be a gross overstatement though as I don’t do mornings. A quick coffee down my neck and I pulled myself into my thermal top and leggings, my two Typhoon underfleeces and a fleece top and headed out to the van.

05:58…I got to Gorleston and listened to the news, losing the radio when the weather came on. Never mind, Carl phoned the coastguard and got the weather report; force 3-4 rising to 5. Well, it was onshore and apart from a small amount of surf by the shoreline things looked okay and so we headed down to the beach.



SOLAS tape…love it. Just don’t always appreciate the fact that it messes up the photographs so often. We carried the yaks down and got the final preparations done…



…then we launched.



It looks like nothing here but although the waves were quite small and foamy here they had a lot of power and breaking out wasn’t as straightforward as the photographs might suggest.



The reason became clear when we did get past the breakers into the 3-4ft swell that we’d have for most of the morning. We set course for a spot that Carl had fished previously and had a good amount of fish, about half a mile out and a mile south of where we launched. The wind was reasonably strong and the current was running a bit. We had to go by dead reckoning as it turned out because I had no battery for my finders with me.



We were soon out to where we wanted to be and dropped anchor. It was starting to get a bit bumpier now, maybe 3-4ft swell as average and on occasion the wind picked up. I reeled in a couple of Whiting that fell off at the surface and then…



Nice…they were here then. Another Codling came along soon after, again about a couple of pounds or so and again deeply hooked – neither time did I see the bite on whole squid. Another Whiting dropped off after a while and then…



A pouting, on the Scarborough ;D At this point I had four rods out with fairly big baits – whole or double squid or mackerel fillet on running leger pennel rigs as well as the Scarborough on the short spinning rod with a 2-hook paternoster, ragworm on the hooks. Sadly this Pouting swallowed the hook down and I ended up cutting off and tying on a wishbone rig as the hook was buggered. Just a quick note – I kept the Pouting. I had this happen last week with a decent pouting. Knocked on the head, gutted straight away and rinsed…I fried up a Pouting fillet and a Whiting fillet yesterday and actually preferred the latter – the Pouting had more flavour and firmer flesh (well, Whiting are known for being soft and delicate). Worth a try if you deep hook one big enough to fillet. I digress – I had a rattle…



First Whiting of the day to make it into the kayak. There are loads of them about right now and I’m only taking deep-hooked or large ones but still ended up with half a dozen or so today. The wind had varied between strong, very strong and calmer as we’d gone through the odd squall and at one point it had dragged my anchor sufficiently inshore that I ended up in the start of the surf zone. I fished it for a while and then paddled back out and reset my anchor. Best I add some chain for here.

It started to rain. Cold rain. Then a hell of a crash behind me -we were on the water and a storm was raging out behind us. We had a good 3 or 4 crashes of thunder before it calmed again and we got some settled weather. Then it started raining again…



I had to pull my hat over my ears I did, it was cold!



Calm again, I dropped down the Scarborough and waited for a while…

…up came a tiny Dogfish and a Whiting, both dropping off at the surface.

Then, on the Scarborough again…a small Pouting and my first (landed) east coast Doggie!!! Beauty – the right size and everything!!



Wriggly bugger it was



It took a good look about…



Then had a nap…



Such a lovely little fish (the above pictures are of that one and a second that followed soon after by the way); I really do find them fantastic. Doggies are great ;d

I carried on bringing in Whiting regularly and following slack tide when the current started running again we fished for a while until it was time to head in – I had to be elsewhere. So we up-anchored and set off.



It wasn’t too bad out here…



…but were we were going was a different story…



…quite a different story indeed. Around 4-5ft swells here…



We went in…and it got worse. Passing some messy breaking waves that went to 8ft plus, rebounding from the harbour and becoming all confused, we wondered if we’d get in okay but had actually both resigned ourselves to a dunking…



…and that’s what we both got. I was timing things between peaks and short waves and then picked up a good wave (it started to break so I couldn’t slow to go on its back) and surfed it in really nicely – and then got to the point where the prowler 15 turned side-on. Bracing wasn’t going to help at all as I still had 2-3ft pushing against me and as I slid off the yak flipped over…with five rods exposed, 2 in flushmounts…in about 3ft of water. Then I turned to watch Carl going over as well as the nose dug in and twisted him off...

I was lucky – none of my rods were damaged when I righted the yak. I’d damaged a flushmount and I think I lost some weights that I had left loose in the tankwell but no real harm was done – other than losing half of my kept fish. The only one that remained in the bag was the Pouting…I fished out 3 of the Whiting and Carl found one of my Codling…Davy Jones has got the others back



Well, it rocked until I rolled and then I felt swindled. (The punks amongst you will get it ;) ) All in all a Cracking session, I had two Codling, two Pouting, thirteen Whiting and best of all two baby Dogfish; I faced a heavy bit of water on the return and know that my Masterline rods can take the abuse and I enjoyed fishing with Carl again. Good choice mate.