The Nine Pound Pouting…03/04/09

It’s terrible. You wait all week long and come the weekend it’s foggy. It was foggy before the weekend of course but the hope was that it would lift. It didn’t, not by the time we were planning to launch, but why worry about such trifling matters when it’s the weekend and there’s fishing to be done? So we didn’t.



To be honest the fog was far better than it had been. We could see a few hundred yards most of the time and with an intended fishing spot close to the shore there would be less likelihood of either getting lost or run down – not a major concern anyway with compasses and GPS chartplotters to take care of the former and VHF, airhorns and whistles taking care of the latter. So without further ado Myself, Steve111 and Norfolk By got ourselves ready for a spot of spring morning yakking.



Our plan was to launch and paddle against the ebbing tide south to a spot off Pakefield where I’d had good sport a few days previously. It’s only a few hundred yards out and is an area a foot or two deeper than its surroundings. The current was only a couple of mph and so we made our way down at 2-3mph without breaking a sweat. Anchors down and line let out we settled into our seats and baited up. I had (poor) frozen blacks on one rod and average fresh lugworm on the other, both on my running leger pennel plaice rigs and sent them off downtide and to the sides.



It took a little while before the first knock and I brought up the first Whiting.



I carried on in this vein for a couple of hours, nothing much happening at all when suddenly I got good knock on the rod tip and struck into a Pouting. This was a reasonable size, nice and plump, and had one of the hooks quite far down so I decided to keep it for the table.



As the day wore on the fog lifted more and more and it was becoming pleasant. In the time I was out I missed or dropped three codling, boated about half a dozen Whiting (all of which went back, nothing worth keeping there) and that single Pouting. 9:30 came and it was time for me to head back in as I had a few things to do to…with the fresh and frozen lug I’d used that Pouting cost me nine pounds.

I left the other two to carry on – I think Norfolk Boy could have stayed all day as he was by now hauling codling up every few minutes – they’d started to run now and were right in his patch. For his second time out he was doing great – outfishing Steve and I, outfishing his winter on the beach and having a whale of a time.



The smile says it all really…