I pulled up at 7, minus my lighter which I remembered was next to my bed. I didn’t think rustling into the room in a wet and sand-covered drysuit with sandy boots would please my wife so I left it. Pulling up I unloaded, rigged up and looked for my phone. This doubles as my watch. I’d had it with me so it must be somewhere. I looked everywhere 4 times and time was getting away from me. A brainwave saw me check down the bottom of my drysuit, just above the boot. Sure enough there it was and so I did some contortions through the pee-zip and managed to extract it. 07:30 and I’m finally ready to launch and paddle, uptide, to the mark.
I arrived on the mark, reached around for the anchor and watched the reel, in freespool, float away. This was going really well! I clipped on, dropped the anchor and dragged it in with far more line already out than I wanted. Between that and the delay I was now a good groyne down from the mark and just knew it was going to be quiet. The swell, chop and tide run (mid-flow) in addition to the wind made my mind up – I just really couldn’t be bothered to up-anchor and try again.
So I cast out. A 2/0 wishbone with black lug tipped with squid and a 4/0 pennel with two black lug and a whole squid. I settled down to watch the rod tips.
They didn’t move.
Sunrise was a bit poor too.
They still weren’t moving.
In fact it was forty minutes before they finally moved and I swung in a pin whiting. Not a blank anyway!
Another half an hour passed; I turned around and saw a bot approaching, paddle up in the air just as belt and braces but he knew I was there and gave me a wave as he popped by on his way to Corton; I hoped they’d do better than me. They’d brought the fish with them though and I had my next bite. Another pin whiting.
I rebaited the wishbone with a couple of small chunks of mackerel. The bites were instant. Well, I only waited ten minutes! I missed them of course. Then a seal popped up to say hello or at least eyeball me for a while; perhaps there were fish here after all?
My final pin whiting came after an hour and a half on the water. It was time to go anyway and so I up-anchored, paddle din and landed beautifully on the back of a wave just as Aaron turned up with his wife and dog to say hi…cheers for the help getting the yak up and loaded!
So that was a waste of time…does this bode towards another winter of discontent?
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