While the Cat’s Away Day 3…30/07/2011

A lazy start to the day for me. I got up long after the sun did and made a coffee before wandering down to the beach. There was supposed to be some surf but as I expected there was none – it was pretty flat. I did some stuff at home instead as Uptide was not going to be free until the afternoon and then headed to the smokehouse to buy a bloater for today’s breakfast and a kipper for tomorrow’s. Beautiful traditionally smoked herring and boy was that bloater tasty, fried in butter and water and served with horseradish. If only somewhere sold it fresh I could have avoided using a jar and done it the proper way but that’s life. It was while driving back that I had an idea…Noidea! I gave him a call to see if he was free this afternoon and he was so I arranged to pick him up an hour and a half later for a troll along the reefs at Sea Palling.

We arrived down at the Waxham access and dragged the yaks up the bloody great huge massive gigantic steep horrible bastard bitch of a soft sand dune in a few legs and then headed down to the water. It was clear we were going to get wet, the waves breaking a hundred yards out but it was all swell rather than chop so we figured we may just be okay. It was just coming off low water and out I went. I took my time and judged it for the best moment to break through the breakers. Splash! I still got a soaking ;D

We headed out to the other side of the reefs but with large swells smashing into the rocks we turned chicken and turned tail heading inshore of them to see what bass might be lurking there. I guess the 6 inch water was not going to work. As I sat there Paul came up behind me with the words ‘What the fuck was that?’ to which my reply of ‘the bottom’ had him look down. We were barely afloat ;D Oh well, we tried anyway and then pulled up on a sandbar to have a think.



Thinking done we clambered onto the rocks at the end of the reef and started flinging lures out. Unsuccessfully. I got a bit more wet and then, bored and with Paul losing the lip off his lure, we went back to the yaks.





We soon tired of the boring inside and decided to head out into the swell.



It was exciting to say the least and it was impossible to get as close as I wanted with the swell lifting me, sucking away loads of water and then crashing into the rocks…we’d be toast if we ended up there.



He’s a bloody jinx, Paul. Every time he comes out with me it’s rough ;D



Never mind, we trolled a few of the reefs with me losing a Rapala Sliver to a rock and coming close to being under the grill while trying to pull it free. I hated cutting my line. In the meantime, while heading back to knock it on the head and go piking we attracted a nosy seal, much to Paul’s delight. It came quite close to him and at one point surfaced 3 metres behind him without being noticed. It was great. We carried on and then Uptide turned up. Bad timing as we were heading home. Still, we stayed, chatted and fished a little bit longer.



It wasn’t the easiest day to troll though.





Bollocks. We weren’t likely to get anything so headed back to the first reef and made our way ashore. This was fun too and Paul’s last launch with me, when we hit the surf a couple of months ago, paid dividends.







I had a nice ride and bongo slide before surfing the last bit in and Paul also made it in one piece…Mark came next, bongo sliding as well with a seal behind him much to our amusement. He stayed upright and we tried flinging Dexters from the shore for ten minutes before heading off. A valiant blank ;D