Time and Tide...12/12/12

Time and Tide...12/12/12 Having backed out on Saturday I felt obliged to go for the next window and, fortunately, the wait wasn't too long. With low westerlies and the swell dropping down from two days of rough water things looked promising - dirty water and a nice, smooth sea. So things were arranged with Mike and I went off to bed. The next shift moaned like hell at how cold it had been driving in at half seven. Okay. I wandered home and yeah, it was pretty cold. I ran the girls to school with a reading of minus three and a half and decided to text Mike and delay our launch by another half hour just to try and get a bit of warmth into the air when the sun came up. Which suggested it was now coffee o' clock. And cold. Mike pitched up and unloaded while I hauled myself into my drysuit before the short walk down to the beach. The difference from the day before when I’d been surfing was marked, smooth, bright and sunny with little wind. A lovely shaped wave that would have surfed really, really nicely had it been more than a foot tall ran down from the groyne and along to the left and we launched over a couple more for the mile run down south against the tide to the old hole off CEFAS that we used to fish years ago. Okay so it probably no longer existed, filled with the shifting sands that make up so much of the seabed here but it was somewhere to aim for and I knew the rough location. We stopped and fiddled under the pier - Mike had spotted a lovely new lead hanging from the centre of the structure, tantalisingly out of reach with the tide down as it was right now. Quite how it had got there we couldn't tell but we figured we could try again on the way back when the water was up. We carried on and started to head out as we approached. What a change. It had been an easy paddle inshore but out here a quarter of a mile it had picked up a lot and progress was slow. I decided to drop anchor short of the mark once I got bored and let out what I thought would be enough warp and felt myself pulled backwards as the stretch came out of it. WOAH! Feet over the side it is then. I rigged up, baited up and cast down. It took a hell of a lot of line to lay on the bottom and I never felt the lead hit. Fingers crossed. The lines appeared to be moving towards me as the flow around me started to ease a bit. Let's see - yep, I'm moving. Dragging through the soft sand below. I reeled in, let out more warp and cast again, waiting to stop. It took a while but then finally I did and, a few minutes later pulled up a nice, plump whiting. I figured things would start now but no, still an hour from mid-tide the extra drag of the whiting was enough to snap my weak link and set me off again. I reeled the other rod in, hauled anchor, re-attached a weak link and dropped down again. I still dragged for a but before it bit - Mike was way back having caught first time with the same anchor and same kayak so the reason was a mystery, especially with almost two hundred yards of warp out - maybe I was on a bank or gulley, I had no sounder on to check. Two rods down, four snoods, wishbone pennels with black lug and unwashed squid. Nothing except weed. A boat or three left harbour, the radio reported nothing but a very few whiting and a tide screaming through offshore. Mike's anchor dragged and he decided to haul up around the time that I came to the same decision - I was off the launch point by now with all the fannying around I’d done, about half a mile out. The anchor dragged again, briefly so I started to reel in and went broadside - right hand rod was snagged. I let line out and tried pulling by hand - no joy. Okay, try the other rod. Same thing, snagged and pulling me around broadside. Marvellous. Anchored by two traces...and unable to break them out. I got them as tight as I could and cut both free. What a waste. I pulled my reel to the bow and turned easily. Ready to go I started to haul it back to grab hold, release line and start the retrieve but ended up broadside once again with water coming over the gunwhales and the yak being pulled down - I’d snagged this now. I was starting to get a bit pissed off with this mark and scuttled forward to grab the reel and then got on with things. Hauling by hand and with the warp streaming out behind I paddle din across the tide, held back quite a bit, and surfed a lovely little wave in to the beach where Mike was waiting for me. A lovely wave that the Scupper picked up nicely but the streaming warp pulled me sideways to the right instead of running straight or to the left. Which is why I unloaded and had a play instead. It'd warmed up by now and was nice and bright. We caught a wave or three, once together when we managed to wedge ourselves together over the top of my headcam before I decided to wash the rotten green slime from inside my hull. Off came the front and centre hatches and I pulled the yak into the sea and started to flood it. A fish from last week floated past the centre hatch opening - what a waste. Strangely I’d eaten one last week that had tasted a bit strong. Things were explained now - I’d removed the correct number of fish but one had been there a week, from a session when I'd not been sure if I'd retrieved them all but could see no more. Clearly I have somewhere that whiting get jammed up. Well I wasn't eating this one though it was still reasonably preserved from the cold. Hell there was some crap in there. I paddled it around until it half sank then surfed it in with the arse submerged and the bow out of the water - surprisingly well. Mike went next. Then, with waves filling it to the brim and sucking water out as they retreated we sluiced it and I scrubbed with my hand and emptied it and refilled and generally freshened the inside a bit before wandering off for a coffee. A success? Well, as fish go, no. As enjoyment goes, yes.