Hmm. BeavesUK is going to Hopton to fish on Friday and wondering if anyone wants to join him. I’m stuck in this cage and pacing like a tiger…time to turn the tiger into a puppy and roll those eyes at the at-home-for-a-few-more-days-wife and garner enough sympathy to escape. Brotherwarren and Wensumdav are both looking to escape too and all of us end up parked at the bottom of Beach Road.
I’m the last to arrive, I’ve been on shift, come home, changed, loaded – after taking a fortnight-rotted pair of traces loaded with lug and squid from my baitbox and rinsed it almost to dissolving point – and deepfried three sliced chicken breasts in spicy breadcrumbs for breakfast, washed down of course with not nearly enough coffee. That’s how it goes sometimes. I jump in the car, now officially my main vehicle and allowed to be filled with sand and made to smell of fish since we picked the new family one yesterday.
Tony’s there when I arrive, unloading, we’ve not seen each other since Cley in the summer. Dav and Beaves are already anchored up, slap bang on the mark too and we get set up ready to join them, milling around and smoking a pre-launch cigarette. We’re both trying to stop but these are fishing fags so don’t count. Anyway, we paddle out, the tide should be starting to move now…and it is, building all the time on the way out and then we pick the wind up too. We get to the others, a cod and some whiting, then go past, move uptide and drop anchor. I get blown towards Dav so stop paying warp out and swing straighter but this snaps my weak link and I realise I’m drifting as soon as I stop paying out; Tony is drifting too, we’ve dropped too late in a strong tide. Bugger. We pull up and paddle back.
Sweat. In January. That’s not on.
We drop down again, I’ve tied my anchor, Tony has gone for a cable tie that would hold a train to a track. We settle first time and I stick my legs over and create my own white water. Out comes the lug and the squid. Two rods today, can’t be arsed to stick a third out for liveys in this tide. 6/0 – 4/0 pennel on one, a 4/0 triple muppet flapper on the other. I bait them, attach a 6oz breakaway and toss them in.
The pennel goes in five minutes, feels like a cod. That’s because there’s so much flow and the whiting has one hook in its mouth and the second in its head, pulling it in almost sideways. It would have gone back otherwise.
Another hour passes and then I get a bite while I’m on the phone. I miss it. It’s quite windy, a 5 or 6 apparently, but flat with this westerly.
An hour later, work on the phone at the time, I get another and pull a whiting up to the side of the yak before it drops off. 6/0 is a lot of metal.
An hour later and I land a pin on the 6/0. I get bored, I go see the others. None of us are doing well but we can’t and then I return to my buoy and clip myself back on. I start catching regularly for a while. Bites every five-ten minutes but all small. They all go back. Nothing but two small knocks the whole day on the muppets. I call over to the others:
“I’m going. I can’t handle any more excitement.”
Cue much laughter and there’s a scramble to give up and go home.
Final tally? Somewhere around 6-8 whiting for me, 1 for Tony (but bigger than mine), 4 for Dav and a dab, a codling for Beaves. Bass season soon. We load up and Dav pops over to pick something up and have a coffee – sorry to have talked your hind legs off for the next week and a half mate, sleep deprivation and a lack of social interaction kicked in!!!
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