The weekend was alright, I did nicely with that nice springer and with another window of low winds on Wednesday I arranged to meet up with Mike and launch at Corton for a last-of-the-flood session from early to slack. It looked like a good chance to be had…
I arrived early, mike too and we were on the water a good quarter of an hour before intended, not that common to be honest! I was planning to fish two wishbones and a pennel, the latter with a livebait if I could get one the right size, and hopefully come in with some freezer-stockers. The mark was half a mile uptide and it was the middle of the flood when we launched and running hard, harder than the weekend. The beach is shelving a lot more than previously after the long blow but with such an easy set of winds we had no difficulties in launching. The paddle was hard work though but after quarter of an hour we were in the general area and dropped down, again the new 1kg bruce anchor held without problem and we both baited up and settled down to fish, Lead Us passing by with a wave on the way to the usual mark slightly north and offshore from us, hopeful too.
Down went the baits into a coloured and slightly rolling sea, ideal it was and five minutes later Mike hauled up a decent whiting while I brought in a small codling that had taken both baits and hooks deep down and had to be put out of its misery when I'd have happily released it to grow. Great – it looked like we were going to have a productive session!
Three hours of boredom followed without a single bite, the same for Mike and Lead Us weren’t getting any action either – three whiting kept and an undersized codling going back (the ebb fished better though and Lead Us at least found five codling later). A big piece of wood floated past quite rapidly at one point and I was glad it missed me as it could easily have caused me problems and possibly tipped me over, another bit of broken sea defence.
Just before slack I had the faintest rattle and Mike landed a second whiting but that was it, not even any interest shown in a cocktail of fillet and squid. we up-anchored and headed back in somewhat chilled and underenthused…
…That steep shelf I mentioned, well it was dumping badly even on this small swell. Getting in was fun and I had to leap out the moment the bow hit gravel (no sand there now) and pull the yak up the beach, the backwash making forward paddling impossible. So we dumped everything off and proceeded to play for 20 minutes. There was no way I could stay on surfing in however much I tried, always flipping at the end with the most dramatic being a near-vertical nose landing; not something to do when rods are in the holders for sure! Quite how things will be next time I don’t know. With the Hopton launch closed down and this potentially unusable for a while it leaves Gorleston, 4 miles north, or Gunton 2 miles south as our alternative launch sites and that will cut into fishing time not to mention the annoyance of previously being able to launch within 400 yards of the closest mark! We’ll see, besides it can’t be much worse, can it?
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