Three aborts in a row was getting to me big time. All this time off and the weather has conspired against me each time. Enough was enough and so I ‘negotiated’ a pass during the afternoon for once. I don’t like to do this as early starts stay off the radar somewhat. I guess the fact that it’d be a blessing for everyone helped though ;D
I thought about heading for the usual spot at Hopton but decided that I’d go off the beach at the end of my road and paddle down to Pakefield. I used to fish quite often just offshore from the CEFAS building and had done pretty well in the past. Now normally I’d aim for the smaller inshore hole, stored on my finder, but I didn’t fancy luging the extra weight of that and the battery down to the beach so decided instead to guess it, to go for the rough area. I knew I’d miss it but with bugger all happening in terms of bigger fish it didn’t really matter.
I got down to the beach and launched in a pretty calm environment. There had been surfers and a paddle boarder out earlier but it was pretty small so I headed out without incident. Then I turned south and set off for the ten minute paddle south with the ebb. It took 20 minutes before I remembered that the ebb goes north which was why it was such hard going ;D Nothing like familiarity…
Half an hour saw me in position and anchored. Between the wind, the swell and the current I was wandering all over the place but I baited up and cast out two rods and waited for a small whiting to rig live on the third rod carried in the hope of a big cod – four 20lb’ers have been caught locally this according to reports. It took a while but eventually the first came in; it was a keeper so the second got rigged instead. I had a couple more soon after too.
The tide was running pretty hard still and that was what surprised me most about the knock. I had just turned the ATC9K on a couple of minutes before in the hope of swinging in a fish on film when I got ‘the knock’. I like the knock. It’s quite infrequent this year but just as pleasing when it happens. I picked up the rod and waited for further indication, giving it time…
As I started to put pressure on the rod bent over in a satisfying curve! I could tell it wasn’t a big fish on the end but it was pulling and the current was increasing the pressure quite a lot. The yak started to turn and with it breaking the surface twenty yards downstream I also had confirmation that I’d snagged the livebait rod with my weight…great. Wait all this time for a codling and then risk losing it. I shimmied forward, grabbed the snood and hauled the fish in…3lb or so of fresh Suffolk codling ;D I was happy now, my weekend was not such a bad one after all.
I carried on until slack water which also coincided with an increase in wind speed and wave height. Up came my anchor and I headed back to my launch spot expecting fun and games as the north easterly wind, north easterly swell and north-south flood should all work together and kick up some decent waves to come in on; I strapped everything down. It was quite invigorating on the way back and the run in was fun too even though it hadn’t got big (being low water). I beached, loaded the yak onto the trolley and went home. A pleasant, short trip with ten whiting and a codling landed, all but 4 of which were keepers.
Back home I unloaded my haul into the sink and got to work gutting with Abigail looking on and having a biology lesson. The whiting were pretty empty but the codling delighted her with its gut full of shrimps (no prawns) and one small fish of undetermined species.
Then it was onto the filleting. I like to fillet fish to fit more easily into the freezer and also to allow me more scope in the kitchen but in this instance I had a specific process for these fish. Whiting are a bit fiddly to fillet but are excellent ‘training’ – if you can fillet whiting well you can fillet anything well.
The dozen fillets went into a dish on top of a layer of salt
And were then covered in another layer.
Then it was time for the codling.
Once both fillets were off they were skinned, placed into the dish and salted as well.
The whole lot went into the fridge and in a couple of days should be nicely firmed up with most of the moisture removed. These will then be frozen and used at a later date for brandade de morue, a gorgeous dish.
My weekend ended better than it began.
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