Dawn Bass Raid...03/07/2010

It was a long week. A long month in fact. I had Saturday off though and decided to make the most of it in the company of friends and so mid-week I sent a text out to see who fancied a Friday night sleeping on the beach at Sea Palling with an early start on Saturday morning to try and get some bass off the reefs but in the end the consensus was just to meet down their early, a consensus also held by my wife who told me I had to get a proper night’s sleep in a proper bed. It wasn’t like I’d been burning the candle at both ends for weeks, more that I’d chopped it in half and set light to those ends as well ;D

Fair’s fair and I went to bed before she got home from swimming so that I’d be rested by the time my alarm went off at 3:30. With a coffee inside me I was just leaving the house when Gary called to say he was here. Gary is someone I’ve known for a good few years. He runs the Timpson store opposite my old place of work and I’d dropped the OK classic trophy in there for engraving a week or two prior. We chatted about kayak fishing as he’s a very keen angler and I’d given him a link to a couple of sites and invited him out for a session. Of course, when I went to pick the trophy up he was raring to go sometime.

“4 o’ clock tomorrow morning suit you?”

...and here he was ;D

We made it to Sea Palling before 5am and dumped the yaks and gear on the beach before parking up. We’d pulled in behind TaffSteve on the way up, Mark and SteveO (both on their second trip) were on the ramp and Onmas was trundling down the road behind us. With Westie and BillNorfolk expected in an hour it looked like it would be rush hour out on the water soon enough.

Gary, Onmas and myself launched into a flat and very clear sea. It was low water and the nearside of the reefs were largely exposed as we paddled out through them. I began trolling as soon as possible (why bother paddling in clear water without doing so?) with this season’s trolling banker, the blue Rapala J13. As I went through the gap and turned uptide I had my first hit! In came a schoolie of around half a pound...time on the water? A couple of minutes. This bode very well for the morning...Gary, who had been grinning right through the morning was grinning even more now!



We trolled the reefs to the north end without any further luck and then Onmas and I began a run back down, chatting as we went along with him slightly to my rear. This meant that he saw the rod buck in the flushmount before I felt it ;D As I grabbed the rod and began to reel in I could tell it was a better fish. Not big, but it felt like a keeper and looked it too once it came up to the surface. Alas it was an involuntary catch and release bass and swam away with me feeling the hunger pangs already. Not long after though I hooked up with something else...



I set the lures again and soon caught up with Onmas. We carried on south before I decided to change one of the lures as I kept bumping the bottom with the inside J13. I put on another Rapala – Original Minnow I think, although I’m not sure. This was in a kind of pearlescent blue mackerel finish, about 9cm long, quite thin and has a rattle. It took a couple of minutes to tempt bass number 3, a 44cm fish of around 2lb. My new collapsible landing net ensured he came home with me.

Gary:



Mark:



Now, it sounds like this was quite hectic fishing but actually it’s compressing the time. Fish were few and far between; these were over the course of about three hours and it took me about another ninety minutes to get my fourth and last fish. A 39cm schoolie it came home and was duly baked in salt for my lunch. I’d not prepared fish like this before and it was delicious. This fish came while I was just heading down t say goodbye to TaffSteve and Westie who were fluff chucking like a pair of hot shot city folks. A right pair of barristers ;D I’d passed Mark on the way down, who’d caught a fish or two, and he told me Steve had landed a bass on his brand new fly rod. When I enquired as to the size, however, I was treated to language far less sedate than that commonly associated with that most genteel of angling methods. With claims of one on the fly being worth two on the lure I did wonder if perhaps he had a point, and whether it would stand up to scrutiny at lunchtime. Somehow I think not.

Heading in, I saw SteveO landing a keeper. I’d lost sight of Bill ages ago but he also caught as did Westie. Onmas had to head in before us though and only had a short session. This left Gary. A couple of takes but sadly no fish to bring home - not that it mattered to him in the slightest as he’d enjoyed it thoroughly and will be featuring in many reports to come...