The meet nearly didn’t happen this year. Last year was fantastic and I knew it couldn’t be bettered and with so much happening over the last year I wasn’t sure that it would be the same. Questions of insurance, risk, politics and more importantly weather and fish an October meet on the East Coast started to seem as if it was running out of time before something went wrong. I didn’t want that and I wanted it to end on a high. I’m sat here breathing a sigh of relief that it has!
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My week started busy. Tuesday saw me leaving the house at 4am, back on Wednesday afternoon and then off at 2:30 on Thursday and arriving home at 5:30 in the evening – to my first guest:
“Well that wasn’t too bad. Bang on four hours to get to your front door. Any good places close by to get some scran and have a beer?”
Umm, Yeah. Okay. The meet starts tomorrow Rich! Okay it wasn’t a record – Tratty turned up a week early a previous year – but what the hell. I raced home, dragged him in for curried mackerel and some beer and the evening kind of progressed from there, with Shaun having a beer party in his car a couple of hours later and being dragged inside too. How would I get breakfast sorted now?! Easy – and Si duly turned up having done the honours with some help from Paul. I now had 4kg each of bacon and sausages, half a carrier bag of tomatoes and three loaves of bread. Just needed Richi to get the milk for the bungalows on his way down the next day (the tea, coffee, hot chocolate, sugar and biscuits for each place plus bait already sorted in advance!). Much beer and cider was consumed before I kicked Rich out at 11pm and went to bed!
My alarm was set for 6 but I was awake early. I was excited now. The meat and tomatoes went in the oven (but got finished in the deep fat fryer) and everything required was slung on the table. Tim turned up to help and then one by one overnight drivers and locals pitched up and tucked in – you’ve got to have a breakfast to start a meet and it’s become tradition to have one at mine now and my daughters expect it the moment they see a line of cars outside with kayaks strapped to the roof.
By 9am those of us hitting the sea arrived at Gorleston to a flat sea with a bit of wind coming up from the southeast.
So there we were. Me, Tangleweed, 01Kayak, Fishy, Stinkyweim, Piscator, Westie, Bananaman and Dilligaf. Yaks were lined up on the beach, drysuits were pulled on, gear was rigged and the water beckoned.
The chop wasn’t as bad as expected and with the coarse guys heading off to seek out the pike on the Broad we duly launched through a sensible shore dump and paddled the two miles south to Hopton, the usual stamping ground that suffers from limited parking.
We milled around as we waited for all to launch and noticed the breeze picking up.
Now this should have been a 20 minute paddle at most with the tide but I’d guess we managed around 2.5 mph at most, the wind right in our faces and the swell picking up a bit. That said we weren’t in a rush anyway with high tide still a while away and the need to get past mid-tide to anchor easily at peak feeding time. Nine yaks in a group looks pretty good when moving and once we’d dropped anchor on the mark we started to get the lines down. It didn’t take long, bang on the money!
I had to start with my KP Scarborough and the modified and partially renovated split cane rod that Spark had given me. I had a 4/0 wishbone on the end and 5oz of lead to hold bottom and began the meet perfectly with a double shot of whiting…perfect!
It carried on like that with constant rattles and bites and somehow, I don’t know how, I caught (or had puked up) a lugworm from the sabellaria bed below! A first for me.
A better pull came after a while and up came a doggy, always a special catch up this way:
More whiting and then the hoped for starry smoothound pup. A couple of weeks old maybe and all that seem to be left now the parents have headed back offshore. I love these:
They both went back as did a lot of the whiting. A full freezer tray already meant that only big ones and deep hooked ones were retained. But sadly the codling didn’t show for me though Si had a couple of young ‘uns come up.
It was a couple of hours in that disaster struck. The trouble with 30 or 40 year old cane rods being used for purposes they weren’t designed for (ie chucking 5oz of lead about) is that they can snap and mine went off just below the spigot. It had, to be fair, done its job already but I was enjoying it, so tactile even though my carbon rods are far superior and at least it will be repairable if I can extract the remnants of cane from inside the spigot. I was down to one rod but slack water was coming anyway and I’d not be getting any action for a while so I just hung about waiting for the ebb to start and the fish to come back on again. They did.
But so did the swell. The wind had picked up a bit now too and with the slack it was now getting rougher. Wind was now over tide and building from the rear and a few waves broke over the stern and sides of the kayaks. At least it wasn’t choppy and so we sat out for a couple more hours.
With a couple of knots of tide now coming through we hauled anchor and headed back north with it, a far quicker return journey seeing us get in through the dump with only one casualty as Jeff relaxed too early on unfamiliar territory and gave Neptune a new anchor and reel. Then came the drag back up to the cars and off I went to the holiday village having had forty whiting to go with the smut and the doggy; well happy.
Most of the coarse guys were back by now and between them they’d had roach, perch, bream and pike and a cracking time on the broad in good weather. I’d intended having a blast on there after the pike myself but the week had caught up on me so I mingled with old friends, stole the jaffa cakes and drank the hot drinks on offer before going off for a swim and sauna in the pool with my wife and daughter. From there things went downhill as we hit the clubhouse for beer – thanks fellas, those pints went down a treat!
Saturday. At least I only had to do breakfast for me and the girls. I decided on huevos rancheros (without the onions and garlic because of wearing a drysuit all day!). Flo thought it looked nice and blagged half but regretted it with the first mouthful as she didn’t realise I’d bunged a load of Si’s fresh chillies into it. That’ll teach her! I left soon after and picked Chris up from the village before again heading to Gorleston via a petrol station where he got himself a sausage bap. That’s more detail than usually required other than it making regular appearances throughout the day…
There were nine of us on the water again – Mickandles and Stinkyweim joining us at the mark, while SWyakker, Noidea, SlippyD, Fishy, Greygoose, Uptide and I paddle down again in a stronger wind and lumpier sea than the day before. We made good time though, all but one of us in a fifteen footer and Chris sat alongside us quite happily in 13ft of Trident…good effort that.
We got to the mark and missed it, being too far inshore and too far south and though the fish were biting they weren’t as quick as the day before. Or perhaps the shoals were just more broken up by the sea. Straight into a dab though, not something I usually manage on 4/0 pennels but such a delight to eat!
There was a bit of a dramatic pause about then but it was sorted in no time and things resumed. The wind was strong though and the sea lumpy and instead of sitting straight downtide the yaks were being held angled onto the tide which made things more tricky…but we coped and then came the whiting, smaller at first
Then another dog
And then Dilligaf, recovered from the sloe gin of the night before, paddling his Chatham 17 down in some decent water
We fished on until slack water and then I decided enough was enough. I took an unflattering shot of Stinky up-anchoring his Caper then joined the others to head back
The landing looked fun from the sea but went without a hitch:
Of course a couple of kids had to spoil things for us by pulling out a 3lb bass from the surf as we stood there with all our gear!
Anyway, one look at the cauldron and I had to play. Scupper Pro’s adore this and so I headed straight back out again, minus fishing gear. I’d best explain the cauldron. It’s quite well known as an eater of dinghies and we like to hit it on a big northeasterly. It’s shallow and the harbour wall projects out to the east while the breakwater runs side on to the south though there is a bend in the middle. This gives waves that come from 3 angles at least and ramp up when they collide. We like to hit the point where they collide most of all – you get thrown up, spun round and flung out in all manner of directions on short yaks and on the Scuppers it’s great training for when things go awry in the real world. Still, it wasn’t that big today so it was just good fun. Fishy finished his fag and joined me while SWYakker got his first taste of a Scupper that wasn’t on flattish water:
Yep, just because we can use a rod doesn’t mean we can’t use a paddle!
Back to the holiday village and I made the effort to launch onto the broad for a paddle after the pike. I wanted to try the new Ultra 4.3XT so grabbed it off the Johnson Outdoors demo trailer that I’d got Chris to bring down for me. A brand new boat that has had the forums buzzing from NZ to here and I had been looking forward to comparing it to its bigger brother. Off I went.
That fine entry and extended waterline really did work as expected. I did around 4 miles or so with virtually no effort at all, it just wanted to go. The seat back was comfortable too though I should have taken the time to adjust it as I had it in the wrong place and two hours in I didn’t feel so happy with it. My fault though. I prefer the ridged footwells to the flat ones too but overall it was a really sweet boat and as a boat angler pulled up to drop his mudweight nearby I hooked up my first pike between him and the reeds!
“Oh rub it in why don’t you!” was the comment I heard. It was only a small jack though and it shook the lure as I was lifting it in for a photo so alas I didn’t get its grin.
The next hit, again on my faithful blue mackerel Big S, was bigger but got off before I got a proper sight of it. I knew I should have replaced those hooks, they’re knackered so it’s my own fault.
Never mind, I snapped the WAFI’s instead.
I carried on around and bumped into Noidea and his dad who’d got down for a quick bash, lifting the boats from my van. Now, his dad, Virginyakker, had left his Ride 135 and jumped into my Scupper. This is someone who found my Prowler 15 tippy once before. Not so the Scupper, he seemed to be more than happy in it.
I was alone again as the sun came down…
…and as I paddled back up to Virginyakker I reflected on the meet. Five years is a long time to run something, especially in something that only really took off here 6 or 7 years ago and I felt a bit sad I’d decided it would be the last…but I also knew it was right. It had certainly run its course. Sunsets do that sh!t to you though, make you far too reflective.
Back to the bungalows and thence the clubhouses for beer and the stealing of Amos’s food (and chips from starving when he wasn’t looking!) and then back to mine to sleep.
Sunday morning I knew would be good weather for fishing. The wind was moving round to the southwest so would flatten nicely. The sun would be shining and the fish were still about. Ideal for Eloise, my nine year old, to come for her second kayak fishing session at sea to christen her new drysuit and try out the new Tetra 10 Angler.
We’ve just sold her Kea, which she paddles beautifully, as it isn’t right for anchoring and fishing from. Well, for me to relax anyway! The obvious choice was the Venus 10 but with this Tetra being designed with fishing in mind it was the obvious choice to try; if she could handle it then it would be the one. I fall out of the Venus anyway. It’s designed for the female centre of gravity etc etc blah blah. I thought that was blurb until I sat in it and got wet. Anyway, she was going out in the Tetra and with her paddle being on loan to Paul (who snapped his the other week) she had to take my Mystik double torque surf paddle for the 600 yard paddle across and against the tide.
So, could she handle it? We’d be stuffed if she couldn’t!
Why was I even questioning things?
We anchored up together and got baited up. She wasn’t going to do the lugworm because they were fiddly (and a bit yuck) but she’d do her own squid tipping. Fair enough.
Okay, watch the rod tip and when it rattles pick it up. When you pick it up wait until it rattles again and strike.
“I’ve got a bite dad” she said as she picked it up…then she struck and wound in…
Number one…
“Okay, a competition. If you catch more than me I’ll buy you some sweets.”
“What if you win?”
“I’ll probably buy some anyway!”
Then I landed my own.
And another. I was now in the lead. She wasn’t happy.
Then she caught another. Then two more. She’d doubled me…
It was that lucky piece of squid she’d put on see, the one that now had another two to my one…there followed a strange birds and bees talk about pheromones…there must be something in it
Then I got a double shot on a pennel…not had that very often. Old seagull was waiting. He could see they weren’t keepers.
Then she pulled up a small edible crab that had to go back…then, right at the end, we both got a good whiting up together at the same time – but mine fell off as I swung it in and hers didn’t…so, had she won? Hadn’t she just! 23 to my 11!!! She’d doubled the old man and he wasn’t trying to lose like he sometimes does! Outfished by my daughter…I was chuffed actually, and really proud. I told her to move out of the way while I hauled anchor.
Bugger me, she did too – paddled off quarter of a mile against the flow (slight as it was just starting to turn) towards the other yaks. I started to catch up and then turned inshore – she was fine and turning in too. I figured I’d catch her on the beach if I thought she’d struggle, get some pictures too.
The damned camera locked up as I tried to catch her riding a wave in. She didn’t struggle at all and stayed dry. Until I turned my back…
Of course, what’s good for one is good for both and I drove home to do a swap…off went Abigail, now that she’s seven!
She was really pleased. She paddled out by herself, paddled around a bit and enjoyed just being out on the water with dad and no-one else. This is a girl who, on her second birthday when asked what she wanted to do said ‘ ganooooing’ and went off with me for a couple of hours. We didn’t get a bite but when Jeff joined us…
…we saw a fish. Less than a hundred yards away some guys in a boat got a take. 300 yards or so from the slip by the bungalows. 17lb 3oz pike! I filed the spot away for next time…and we paddled in to meet Flo and Eloise for a swim with Ken, Fi and Anthony before they drove back up to Yorkshire.
I felt a bit bereft. Nearly everyone was gone now. Tarponben and Tarpondeb were on their way back from Beccles with Hungryfisherman so we arranged to have a Chinese together (just before which I had to race home to give my brother some fish he’d come out to collect) and I got to spend some time with them too. It is unfortunate but because I have people on the sea for my meet I felt I had to be there rather than splitting things and going on the river for a day with other mates (I didn’t see PNGwin, Starvinmarvin, Toldaymueller or Lureman and Lurelady except in the clubhouse all weekend for example; sorry about that guys.) Jeff and Janet joined us too and we at least caught up a bit before they did head off back home in the morning.
And so, with a final drink with Amos and a final swim with Flo I headed off to fetch a van to drag the trailer back to the warehouse. Snapper’s Eastern Meet finally coming to a close. It’s been a blast.
I have no idea how many people have attended all in over the years. Certainly well over a hundred. Richi, Starvinmarvin and myself have done all five. There’ve been a lot of fish, a lot of good fish too and a lot of laughs. Plenty of hangovers, some funny morning afters and a lot of good paddling. The latest Ocean Kayaks (and this year Neckys) have always been on hand for us to play with and mostly the weather’s been good. And it’s been a smooth ride.
Thank you, everyone who’s been a part of it.
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