5am the alarm went. I wandered down, bleary eyed, put on the kettle and noticed it was pissing down. Wind I do. Waves I do. Snow I do. Rain I don’t do. I switched the kettle off and told Tim not to wake up, bastard that I am, and went back to bed for half an hour. I got up again at 06:30 and the rain had stopped. Coffee washed down some hot cross buns because I couldn’t be arsed to hurry and we’d missed the tide anyway. We planned another pair of wrecks close together but more or less straight out from the beach, again at 2.5 miles or so. Summerfield and Alacrity…both struck mines laid by UC5 the day after they’d been set and sank close to each other. Alacrity went down on 3rd January 1916 and measured 225ft x 32ft, Summerfield on 13th August 1915, slightly smaller at 188ft x 29ft. They lie in around 16 metres.
So there we have it. We trolleyed down to the beach after waking my wife up unloading…
It was still a bit moist but the sea was calm. The tide would be running a bit by now but the prediction didn’t seem a problem and we decided to cut across it and slightly against so that we could drop anchor and drift down over it. I wasn’t going to repeat the experience of my last attempt on the Tunisiana so had my new Richi Reel loaded with 400m of warp. Off we went…as you can see I was carrying my usual minor amount of kit.
It was a definite south south westerly. This wasn’t as forecast and it was over 10mph, again against the forecast. The tide, also, was about double the forecast…it was okay heading out straight for the channel and fun over the banks but coming close to the Stanford Buoy the tide was starting to show its strength. We had to get some pics though:
We still had a mile to go. It looked like a charter, which we’d watched launch, was now on our mark but it turned out they weren’t, being still half a mile short. As we passed them we saw something I’ve never seen off Lowestoft. Clear Blue Water. Bollocks to the wrecks, another half an hour paddle at least with this current, this was too good an opportunity to miss especially with fish all over the screen and we both dropped anchor. It was screaming through! I tried feathers weighted by a twin tail leadhead briefly while waiting for the yak to settle but settle it didn’t so I baited one rod with bluey and flung it over the side. It was bouncing off the bottom and my anchor hadn’t exactly caught yet…Tim’s had though and, swinging like a pendulum he called me up to ask if I was aware I was drifting. Oh yes, I was aware. I knew my cable tie had snapped when I snagged something on the bottom so had decided to drift for a bit and see if it’d hook up on something. A mile later I called Tim up again (we had radio problems inasmuch as my channels swapping themselves in my pocket ;D ) and said I was going to head inshore and fish off the point near the wind turbine…he was in agreement and had just started winding in his warp – he’d cut the anchor free rather than risk turning in the tide, the pressure was that strong.
We got to the cardinal markers that warn of the outfall and I dropped anchor again. The tide was no weaker here but I snagged up in no time and Tim came alongside and tied up alongside. We settled down to start some fishing. Sadly this was murky water so feathering was out but it bode better for the demersals. We sat there for ages until it weakened enough for the whiting to come on the feed.
By ‘the’ I refer to the lone whiting ;D black lug and squid, 2/0 wishbone.
I sat there another hour and then struck into a welcome starry smut, my best off here but only a couple of pound tops. I’d had a fair few small bites but Tim was getting nothing. We were tied alongside each other and our rods were mere feet apart. Same bait too. It was odd.
As the tide eased towards slack I stopped getting bites. Tim was getting them all the time now – there must have been a small feature that we’d fished in turn as we’d swung around. I would have been pleased with his eel, having never had one from the sea and not having one off the yak for four years.
Cheeky bugger tried to shag my paddle.
We were now on slack and it was close to time for heading home. It was time to play Tetris and troll the rocky sea defences north of the harbour. My anchor was well and truly in the rocks so I cut it off from above (getting to be a habit this) and off I went. Tim brought up the rear and brought up a schoolie on a blue J13 which went back.
I snagged my J13 and the line was cut through by a rock. Tim scooped it up, over reached while passing it to me and insists he was nowhere near to swimming ;D Seeing as I pushed against his rods as he hip flicked I guess I’ll give him that one ;) I followed this with my own bass just over the MLS at 38cm that looked about right for us to have for a shared lunch…an hors d’ouevre compared to what we usually eat to be fair but I had no time to go shopping ;D
It was bloody tasty too. My wife had used some oil from a jar of sundried tomatoes to roast some red peppers and I used this pan. I slashed the flanks, dribbled on some olive oil, ground some sea salt and five taste pepper on the flanks, squeezed a lemon over for good measure and then rolled it in the remaining oil in the pan before setting them onto a handful of fresh bay from the garden. A couple of tomatoes were halved and chucked in along with some left over roast spuds and the whole lot went in the oven to roast while we had a coffee. Asking Tim if he wanted butter on his bread he said he’d just use it to soak the juices up on his plate…that was a stonking idea so we made bruschetta by wiping the pan with it instead…and that was superb! Not bad for a quick preparation, Jamie Oliver could do well with that in his five minute meals ;D
So, 2 schoolies, 1 whiting, 1 smut and 1 eel between two people paddling around nine miles apiece in completely different conditions to those forecast and being unable to carry out plan a or b. As for the muppets…well, we didn’t fish with any. We were they.
Sidenote. An hour later the sea was whipped up into whitecaps and 2-3ft peaks. Again, not predicted, and by evening the wind was strong.
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