Just because it was forecast to be a bit bumpier than last week didn’t mean we had to stay in…
Steve111 and I, both being close to the sea, have the advantage of being able to check the conditions at the last minute and so make a decision on whether to go out on the kayaks without too much forward planning. Forecasts had pointed to the weekend being a no-go for fishing and it appeared, up until Friday morning, that this warranted. Come lunchtime it looked as though Saturday morning would be good and Friday night would be alright for a paddle, for practice, confidence, fitness and what-have-you. “I’ll get some lug,” says Steve “and if it looks okay we can fish.” A pair of enthusiastic optimists with little common sense it seems…
…I had a quick look at the sea on my way home from work, looked lovely…by the time we sat down for dinner the rods were rigged, the gear was by the door and I was on five-minute readiness. Come eight o’clock and I’m standing outside, Yak loaded for the short walk and dry-suited up when the mobile rings.
“Hiya, it’s Steve. I’m outside your house.”
“So am I, I can’t see you.”
He was in the right road though; don’t know how he snuck up on me like that!
Down to the beach we go and it looked a bit snottier than it was a couple of hours earlier. Fair enough, but the rods were rigged already…might as well got on with it and get out on the water.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Saturday 21 March 2009
Classic Piker’s Dawn…Codding off Hopton...21/03/09
Five hours after I got to bed after the previous evenings escapades on the sea my alarm went off. I got straight out of bed and wondered why. Then I wandered upstairs to find my socks, downstairs to look for them, back into the bedroom to see if I’d left them there, into another room and then gave up and went and found another pair in the laundry room. I then carried on wandering from room to room trying to get my head around the day before downing a coffee, loading the last bits into the car and heading off to Hopton. It was minus two.
The frost covered fields and the morning sun were spectacular and the sea, on arrival, looked lovely to relax on.
Hungryfisherman had slept in his car and I was the fourth to arrive, Steve111 arriving ten minutes after me (he lives in Hopton you see and has to commute to the beach). The others were Onmas and, a new recruit on his first trip out in my Trident 15, Norfolk Boy (saying hello to a passing sailor!):
We got ourselves unloaded, kitted out and headed down to the beach. It looked a beautiful morning. The five yaks on the sand looked an impressive site – considering Pinkfoot and I first started going out together a mere six months or so ago it’s an impressive line-up as the Anglian contingent has effectively tripled over the winter. And we’ve even adopted a city-slicker as out mascot too ;D
New folk bring new ideas too. This new design of kayak-wear, designed by ‘Normal-For-Norfolk Limited’ was sported for the first time on OUR BEACH!!! Consisting of wellies and gaffer tape they’re guaranteed to feel no different to being in a tractor having waded through pig slurry. Makes you proud to be from Norfolk, doesn’t it?
Necessity is, of course, the mother of all invention. Of course, around here it’s often the sister of it as well.
Well, off we went! I nipped out ahead to get Norfolk Boy’s first launch on camera and was in position for Onmas too:
Norfolk Boy following close behind:
We paddled out a bit further than usual into 32ft and once Norfolk Boy had his anchor down and holding I dropped mine, Onmas doing the same. It was slack water and we ended up later on being a lot closer than is usual to fish but it was nice to be able to natter as well. And keep cursing the bugger for not only bringing a banana but eating the d**ned thing when told it was bad luck to take one on a fishing boat. The bloody greengrocer wafted his yellow fumes over to me as well and while all around us were catching we sat there missing bite after bite after bite. It took me an hour and a half and probably a dozen lug before I had anything up:
That’s a personal best Whelk, mind. Must be down to the very good worms from Pownalls in Great Yarmouth – started using them recently and I’ve not had bad worms yet. We also had some of this:
Then, to cap it all off, after we’d both missed tons of bites, bloody Bananaman strikes again!
Now I’m a placid guy really, but I was all set to swim over and scuttle him for that! Still, I decided to drop down to a single worm on a wishbone rig with 1/0’s and eventually managed to drag in my first fish of the day.
It actually came home with me for a sushi experiment. I read that Whiting makes quite good sushi. Trust me, the internet is full of many excellent bits of information but this wasn’t one of them. It makes crap sushi, and so does Pouting (but both tasted good filleted and pan fried in seasoned flour, the Pouting being the tastier).
That was one of the biggest I’ve had up here and came just after the plantain-muncher had treated me to this fine displaying of nose-rubbing-in-it:
The frost covered fields and the morning sun were spectacular and the sea, on arrival, looked lovely to relax on.
Hungryfisherman had slept in his car and I was the fourth to arrive, Steve111 arriving ten minutes after me (he lives in Hopton you see and has to commute to the beach). The others were Onmas and, a new recruit on his first trip out in my Trident 15, Norfolk Boy (saying hello to a passing sailor!):
We got ourselves unloaded, kitted out and headed down to the beach. It looked a beautiful morning. The five yaks on the sand looked an impressive site – considering Pinkfoot and I first started going out together a mere six months or so ago it’s an impressive line-up as the Anglian contingent has effectively tripled over the winter. And we’ve even adopted a city-slicker as out mascot too ;D
New folk bring new ideas too. This new design of kayak-wear, designed by ‘Normal-For-Norfolk Limited’ was sported for the first time on OUR BEACH!!! Consisting of wellies and gaffer tape they’re guaranteed to feel no different to being in a tractor having waded through pig slurry. Makes you proud to be from Norfolk, doesn’t it?
Necessity is, of course, the mother of all invention. Of course, around here it’s often the sister of it as well.
Well, off we went! I nipped out ahead to get Norfolk Boy’s first launch on camera and was in position for Onmas too:
Norfolk Boy following close behind:
We paddled out a bit further than usual into 32ft and once Norfolk Boy had his anchor down and holding I dropped mine, Onmas doing the same. It was slack water and we ended up later on being a lot closer than is usual to fish but it was nice to be able to natter as well. And keep cursing the bugger for not only bringing a banana but eating the d**ned thing when told it was bad luck to take one on a fishing boat. The bloody greengrocer wafted his yellow fumes over to me as well and while all around us were catching we sat there missing bite after bite after bite. It took me an hour and a half and probably a dozen lug before I had anything up:
That’s a personal best Whelk, mind. Must be down to the very good worms from Pownalls in Great Yarmouth – started using them recently and I’ve not had bad worms yet. We also had some of this:
Then, to cap it all off, after we’d both missed tons of bites, bloody Bananaman strikes again!
Now I’m a placid guy really, but I was all set to swim over and scuttle him for that! Still, I decided to drop down to a single worm on a wishbone rig with 1/0’s and eventually managed to drag in my first fish of the day.
It actually came home with me for a sushi experiment. I read that Whiting makes quite good sushi. Trust me, the internet is full of many excellent bits of information but this wasn’t one of them. It makes crap sushi, and so does Pouting (but both tasted good filleted and pan fried in seasoned flour, the Pouting being the tastier).
That was one of the biggest I’ve had up here and came just after the plantain-muncher had treated me to this fine displaying of nose-rubbing-in-it:
Friday 20 March 2009
Three Musketeers. Lowestoft...20/03/09
It’s all well and good getting up to fish for a few hours on a weekend morning but there’s not a lot of things better than a good paddle on a Friday evening with a couple of mates to clear the head from another week at work. There are some, of course, including naughtiness with girlies, and a bit of paddling improves fitness and physique thus giving more chance of indulging in this on a regular basis. It also means you have a regular source of salt stored in your eyebrows in case the chippy runs out. This was the reasoning behind the start of the weekend’s yakking up here. With the fishing off Hopton being fairly close in the only real exercise is in dragging the yak back up the slope so it was arranged for Steve111 and Hungryfisherman to join me at 8pm for a paddle and some capsizing practice off Lowestoft before going for a pint.
They arrived and although there were reservations (and questioning of sanity) these were soon overcome and we wandered down to the beach to launch. The sea was pretty flat and the current was not looking to be strong so we set off south to Pakefield, a popular shore mark, about a mile and a half south of the launch point. The swell was long but low but being practically blind to what it was doing meant a few surprise ones coming in beam on that kept us on our toes.
Having called in to the Coastguard before leaving we paddled off into the night and after a while decided that it was such a nice evening with absolutely no boat traffic and shallow water on our route that the nav lights didn’t need to be switched on all the time and the difference was pronounced – it was easier to see the swell, visibility was increased and the night seemed more peaceful somehow. Drifting off the CEFAS building I discovered that the flint of my lighter was worn out and thus on arrival off Pakefield itself (devoid of lamps from beach anglers, a bad sign) we decided to switch the lights on and head offshore a bit to cadge a light off what appeared to be an inshore fishing boat. As it happened it was a yacht and we decided not to bother when we were about 2/3rds of the way there. I’m glad that we did because as we turned north we were treated to the biggest and most impressive meteorite I have ever seen. It wasn’t huge, but it seemed fairly close and was large enough that the flash we saw streak across the sky seemed to me to have a shape at the front of it. Stunning. Steve saw another a bit later that I missed that was even bigger too.
Now, I’d decided earlier that it would be a good idea for us to practice capsize drills and re-entries, in the dark and cold water and although not super keen on the idea it was agreed that we’d do it. No longer concerned about taking a dunking we decided to have a play first and started trying to catch some waves and surf them in…what a grin!
We played for ten minutes just south of the pier with our navlights inside Steve’s rod pod, all getting a ride or two. It was a lot easier to wait in position and have someone tell you to paddle rather than try and spot the slightly bigger waves yourself but an eye had to be kept out for collisions too! We then paddled through the pier supports onto the north side and started playing there – it drops to around three feet deep here, with a bank about a third of that halfway between where we’d catch them and the shore, interesting paddling ;D The waves seemed slightly better here with some tripping over themselves into a bit of foam. I spotted one coming in bigger than the rest (must have been all of two feet!) and grabbed it. I rode it in quite nicely for a while and then watched as my nose dipped – I’d been waiting for it – and I was tipped ungraciously off the side of the yak, disappearing up to my shins in the cold water. I heard laughter from the other two that became one laughing twice as loud as my hilarious demise took the concentration from Hungryfisherman and a sneak eighteen-incher put him in the water ;D they do say that revenge is best served cold…
They arrived and although there were reservations (and questioning of sanity) these were soon overcome and we wandered down to the beach to launch. The sea was pretty flat and the current was not looking to be strong so we set off south to Pakefield, a popular shore mark, about a mile and a half south of the launch point. The swell was long but low but being practically blind to what it was doing meant a few surprise ones coming in beam on that kept us on our toes.
Having called in to the Coastguard before leaving we paddled off into the night and after a while decided that it was such a nice evening with absolutely no boat traffic and shallow water on our route that the nav lights didn’t need to be switched on all the time and the difference was pronounced – it was easier to see the swell, visibility was increased and the night seemed more peaceful somehow. Drifting off the CEFAS building I discovered that the flint of my lighter was worn out and thus on arrival off Pakefield itself (devoid of lamps from beach anglers, a bad sign) we decided to switch the lights on and head offshore a bit to cadge a light off what appeared to be an inshore fishing boat. As it happened it was a yacht and we decided not to bother when we were about 2/3rds of the way there. I’m glad that we did because as we turned north we were treated to the biggest and most impressive meteorite I have ever seen. It wasn’t huge, but it seemed fairly close and was large enough that the flash we saw streak across the sky seemed to me to have a shape at the front of it. Stunning. Steve saw another a bit later that I missed that was even bigger too.
Now, I’d decided earlier that it would be a good idea for us to practice capsize drills and re-entries, in the dark and cold water and although not super keen on the idea it was agreed that we’d do it. No longer concerned about taking a dunking we decided to have a play first and started trying to catch some waves and surf them in…what a grin!
We played for ten minutes just south of the pier with our navlights inside Steve’s rod pod, all getting a ride or two. It was a lot easier to wait in position and have someone tell you to paddle rather than try and spot the slightly bigger waves yourself but an eye had to be kept out for collisions too! We then paddled through the pier supports onto the north side and started playing there – it drops to around three feet deep here, with a bank about a third of that halfway between where we’d catch them and the shore, interesting paddling ;D The waves seemed slightly better here with some tripping over themselves into a bit of foam. I spotted one coming in bigger than the rest (must have been all of two feet!) and grabbed it. I rode it in quite nicely for a while and then watched as my nose dipped – I’d been waiting for it – and I was tipped ungraciously off the side of the yak, disappearing up to my shins in the cold water. I heard laughter from the other two that became one laughing twice as loud as my hilarious demise took the concentration from Hungryfisherman and a sneak eighteen-incher put him in the water ;D they do say that revenge is best served cold…
Saturday 14 March 2009
A Bit of Ruffe...14/03/09
I decided on a break from the sea after many sessions off Hopton, the last resulting in two starfish and nothing else, inspired for a large part by Saturday being the last day of the coarse fishing season. This time last year I’d spent many hours fishing the Waveney at Beccles for various silver fish and pike and so decided that I was about due for another session. I’d only been on fresh water twice so far since the start of the year, piking once on Oulton Broad and silver fishing the other time at Beccles. Neither had produced much sport with a solitary Pike at the former and with heavy rainfall for a few days prior I was lucky to catch a Roach and a Gudgeon in the fast-flowing and muddy conditions of the latter. Hopefully this would be a better session and I was hopeful of Ruffe and Bream, two species I’d be less likely to cross off in the summer. And with luck I could beat last year.
I was on the water with my Prowler 15 at 06:30 after another early start. Initially I decided I’d troll a mile downriver to the bridge and back then grab my match rods, head downriver again and get the swimfeeders out. I was trying some new purchases again, this time Rapala Magnum CD18’s brought back from South Africa in Blue Mackerel and a very shiny silver/red/black one. Big lures, at 18cm, I was hopeful that they might tempt one of the big girls due to spawn as they’re more likely to move for something worth eating. A 45lb’er came out of Norfolk last week and although I wasn’t heading for the circus bound to be up that way there was still the possibility of a good fish. Like all anglers I retain the ludicrous optimism that one day it could be me.
I set out, keeping my lines reasonably close in so as to not snag the bottom and started to wake up. The water looked okay, not too murky and not too fast so I was hopeful that I might get a run. Down to the quay and I’d had nothing so turned and headed back. Back past the bridge I changed over to a pair of Super Shad Raps in Redhead and Nordic Perch patterns…fingers crossed.
Still crossed, I got back to my launch point, grabbed the match rods, bait and tackle out of the car and set off back to the boatyards to start fishing. Three red maggots on a size 16 hook and a feeder full of crumb and maggots on each rod and I cast in.
A few small taps saw me reeling in nothing so I took one maggot off and tried again.
BANG! An almighty take, the rod tip arched over and I struck into a Dace that tore off with the speed of a thousand gazelles! I was ready for it though and after battling tuna and sharks abroad I was more than prepared – so fishing-fit now that I didn’t even need a gaff to drag it aboard!
On the livebait rod it went and I cast out to the side while continuing after my silvers. Again the rod plunged downwards and I fought a Ruffe to a standstill, releasing it for another day. One of my targets down.
It was the third capture, however, that got me all nostalgic. It reminded me of a conversation I’d had on my mobile in the same spot exactly a year ago…a conversation which I’d hung up on when a Gudgeon had taken my bait…when I came off the water that afternoon the subsequent call-back had resulted in my driving to Great Yarmouth where I found that my concerns were over and I’d got the hoped-for job as teaboy for Andrew ;D I considered calling him to hang up on a Gudgeon for old times’ sake but thought better of it.
Still nothing doing on the livebait I had a visitor come around the side of the boat I was tucked in next to and observe me from a metre away for a minute or so, completely unflustered.
The bites slackening off I went for a paddle to try my luck for Chub in a favoured spot. Things slow down here but the bites and fish are usually better. I had a couple of dropped ones then cast into a tree and lost a complete set-up. Worse things happen at sea but at least casting into trees isn’t one of them ;D I waited a while longer and then got a thumping bite, struck into it, felt the fish on then swore as It dragged the gear straight into a snag. There was no getting it out and I snapped the line trying. I decided to try with my livebait and a flat set up at the mouth of the dyke (!) in the yacht basin. A good spot for pike it was already taken and although I found somewhere that might have produced I got no bites on the float rod so set it up for feeder again and headed back to my original place. Another biteless hour passed and so I decided to head back, trolling fruitlessly all the way. Two Dace, three Gudgeon and four Ruffe was my total, no Pike runs and no Bream and two lost rigs. Nothing spectacular but a nice, relaxing session on a surprisingly mild morning - and next time I fish there it’ll be the time of year when the Pike will be queuing up to take a lure!
Oh, and a Stickleback came next to the yak on the surface at one point. Laughing at me he was.
I was on the water with my Prowler 15 at 06:30 after another early start. Initially I decided I’d troll a mile downriver to the bridge and back then grab my match rods, head downriver again and get the swimfeeders out. I was trying some new purchases again, this time Rapala Magnum CD18’s brought back from South Africa in Blue Mackerel and a very shiny silver/red/black one. Big lures, at 18cm, I was hopeful that they might tempt one of the big girls due to spawn as they’re more likely to move for something worth eating. A 45lb’er came out of Norfolk last week and although I wasn’t heading for the circus bound to be up that way there was still the possibility of a good fish. Like all anglers I retain the ludicrous optimism that one day it could be me.
I set out, keeping my lines reasonably close in so as to not snag the bottom and started to wake up. The water looked okay, not too murky and not too fast so I was hopeful that I might get a run. Down to the quay and I’d had nothing so turned and headed back. Back past the bridge I changed over to a pair of Super Shad Raps in Redhead and Nordic Perch patterns…fingers crossed.
Still crossed, I got back to my launch point, grabbed the match rods, bait and tackle out of the car and set off back to the boatyards to start fishing. Three red maggots on a size 16 hook and a feeder full of crumb and maggots on each rod and I cast in.
A few small taps saw me reeling in nothing so I took one maggot off and tried again.
BANG! An almighty take, the rod tip arched over and I struck into a Dace that tore off with the speed of a thousand gazelles! I was ready for it though and after battling tuna and sharks abroad I was more than prepared – so fishing-fit now that I didn’t even need a gaff to drag it aboard!
On the livebait rod it went and I cast out to the side while continuing after my silvers. Again the rod plunged downwards and I fought a Ruffe to a standstill, releasing it for another day. One of my targets down.
It was the third capture, however, that got me all nostalgic. It reminded me of a conversation I’d had on my mobile in the same spot exactly a year ago…a conversation which I’d hung up on when a Gudgeon had taken my bait…when I came off the water that afternoon the subsequent call-back had resulted in my driving to Great Yarmouth where I found that my concerns were over and I’d got the hoped-for job as teaboy for Andrew ;D I considered calling him to hang up on a Gudgeon for old times’ sake but thought better of it.
Still nothing doing on the livebait I had a visitor come around the side of the boat I was tucked in next to and observe me from a metre away for a minute or so, completely unflustered.
The bites slackening off I went for a paddle to try my luck for Chub in a favoured spot. Things slow down here but the bites and fish are usually better. I had a couple of dropped ones then cast into a tree and lost a complete set-up. Worse things happen at sea but at least casting into trees isn’t one of them ;D I waited a while longer and then got a thumping bite, struck into it, felt the fish on then swore as It dragged the gear straight into a snag. There was no getting it out and I snapped the line trying. I decided to try with my livebait and a flat set up at the mouth of the dyke (!) in the yacht basin. A good spot for pike it was already taken and although I found somewhere that might have produced I got no bites on the float rod so set it up for feeder again and headed back to my original place. Another biteless hour passed and so I decided to head back, trolling fruitlessly all the way. Two Dace, three Gudgeon and four Ruffe was my total, no Pike runs and no Bream and two lost rigs. Nothing spectacular but a nice, relaxing session on a surprisingly mild morning - and next time I fish there it’ll be the time of year when the Pike will be queuing up to take a lure!
Oh, and a Stickleback came next to the yak on the surface at one point. Laughing at me he was.
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