Home? I’ve been home all month. Or in my house at least…today was exactly a month since Wilmy deposited me at hospital for the surgeons to carve me up and repair an inguinal hernia. It’s been one very, very long month. Fortunately the weather has been atrocious with strong easterly winds pounding the coastline here resulting in massive coastal erosion and ripping the inshore seabed to pieces. But a window was forecast, I’d had four weeks of being sedentary (or bored) and it was time to go home, home being my Scupper Pro on that patch of sea that I know so well. Well, I slept badly. Couldn’t get off, kept waking up, all that…like a kid before Christmas. This isn’t normally an issue, hasn’t been for a long time. I guess it’s an indicator of the depths of my cabin fever. Around 2am I suddenly realised that I needed to print off my tournament voucher for the anglersafloat species hunt, Leg 2…yes. 2am. Thanks for that. Finally, at 05:30, the first bit of morning darkness I’ve seen for a while, the alarm went off and I crept out of bed without waking my wife. Ten minutes later, hands wrapped around a bucket of coffee and Dav was on the phone… “Beach Road is closed. Hopton is out, there’s rocks dumped at the bottom of the slip, they’re rebuilding the sea defences.” Damn…okay, think man, flood tide, next launch…”Go to Gorleston, Marine Parade above the wreck of the Swan, we’ll just have to paddle from there.” Then onto the forum, let the others know and hope they check it. Voucher printed, bait freed from the freezer – black lug, unwashed loligo squid and a handful of razorfish (supposed to be good after a blow and we’ve had weeks of it). Drysuit, boots, bait, rods, cameras into the car and then I look for a scraper… Yeah. The sun’s coming up now and it’s frosty…pulling up on the clifftop, after a call from Wilmy, and the thermometer is reading minus four…whose idea was this? Lovely morning though, lovely sea…benign but the ghosts are there with the sand ripped out of the beach, a drop and exposed groynes that were largely hidden before. Repaired hernia or not, I was getting on…yak off and onto the trolley… Then the rest of my kit out, drysuit on, etcetera as usual…Shaun is here now as well so that makes four, though he has to nip home for his seat. Time to go down the slope. At the bottom I was greeted by a nice mix of frost and sand. Now I mentioned the easterlies, the erosion and the carving out of sand. Well, these show it rather well – this was a smoothly graded sand beach not so long ago: Final setting up and stowing of kit and we’re just about ready A bird photographer pitches up and has a chat, I match the hatch…there’s razor, clams, brittlestars and clearly the seabed has received a pounding. Dav has given me some fresh-dug lug too so I have loads of choice today. Game on! We launch. I tell the guys it’s five miles when in reality it’s only around three. Jon calls me up, he’s spotted us but I can’t see High Flyer out – no, he’s on his commercial boat heading for Yarmouth to do some stuff on it. We chat and I hear Lead Us chatting to Cleveland Princess; the latter are heading south so I won’t get any nice photos of them today in this bright sunshine. Ah well. We pass the church and carry on down towards the rough off the holiday village; Lead Us, the sun glinting off the fresh paintwork Colin’s applied while being stuck in port, is heading for the same spot as me, or thereabouts, but I’m stopping short because my mark worked well on the ebb so I want to be uptide of it. The four of us drop anchor in the general area, Colin is down too and the fishing begins. It’s a bit slow. It’s a good ten minutes before my first bite and up comes a little whiting; undersized but a point with a picture. A quick smile and back in. There’s very little tide really, that alternate launch has cost us. We sit for ages…I notice, oh an hour or so later, that I have a missed call from Si – he was possibly coming today but we’ve not seen him. I guess he’s assumed from Beach Road being closed that we’ve cancelled…I call him up and completely mess up my voicemail by having the rod thump down; I strike and that Maxximus IM7 curves over; cod. Stonking fight all the way up in the thirty or so feet of water and almost on slack I feel everything on the 12lb class outfit and thin braid, this is the best cod scrap I’ve had in a long time! Up on the port side, foot slightly under my thumb goes in its gaping mouth; I pull up with the trace, one of the 2/0 hooks on my self-tied spreader wishbone is deep so there’s no worry. Interesting, it was this rig that caught the four last time I was out and my pennel is untouched as yet. I’m chuffed, 55cm and going on 4lb I’d guess, lovely, fat fish, its stomach full of smaller fish. That goes part of the way to replacing the 3 fish that went into fish pie for my in-laws and us to eat the other night! Then Marty pitches up having been offshore and had nothing, coming to try his luck on the inshore mark. I’d had an invite to fish with him but had already made plans – he still looked bemused by the call from my eight year old daughter the day before: “Snapper wants to know if you’re fishing tomorrow. Okay. Bye.” Then Westie turns up, finally free to get back east again and join us. It’s slack now and I’m being pushed away by the wind and so I’ve snagged. Tim paddles my rod uptide and tries to free it, no joy so another trace comes out and then, after a catch up, he goes and drops anchor too. Me? I finally find my reel-cam, inside part of my drysuit, and attach it in time to capture a whiting. A funny one too, speckled on top like trout or something. I’ve not seen this before. The mount can be easily moved up and down the butt by releasing the clip and was still attached with my next codling, a baby at 40cm. A few more whiting followed but nothing much apart from one 39cm specimen on a double squid pennel and so, with 4 keeper whiting and 2 codling (though the 40cm would have gone back if the hook wasn’t down at the back of the gills) it was time to debait, up anchor and head back to Gorleston…Lead Us thought the same and cruised by for a photo… Bristol fashion again! Up-anchoring, mid-tide. Always with trepidation but what a bloody chore today!!! First time using a Bruce, and it worked well and the usual swing went fine...but hauling the reel back amidships to release line, shuttle it forward and start to wind in went awry as soon as the carabiner twisted and I was jammed up beam on. This is about the worst position to be in on a fishing kayak. Fortunately I’m well-practiced at dealing with this and shifted myself to compensate while pulling the kayak sideways until I got enough slack to free the warp before it once again went forwards and I pulled the lot in. The others came past one by one, all except Wilmy. Trolley problems. I headed up and Tim decided to follow. Hell of a job against that tide, flat out we made a knot at most. I grabbed across his bow and he hauled until things went to the bow and then I scooted up, grabbed the reel and left him to it. A pity that the anchor jammed a bit later and had to be cut off after all that but it was one of three from the five of us. We’re building a bass reef, see! Back we went, back to Gorleston, having a good look at the landslides and smashed defences on the way. Caravans have been moved back, paths have been cut away and tumbled down the face and whole pilings have been ripped out. Work is being done quickly at least but I still think the only option is a string of rock defences right along the coastline from Hopton to Pakefield like they have at Sea Palling. Not only does it work, and well, but it makes for great surf and a superb haven to troll for bass… Westie and Wilmy led while I child at the back with the camera, radio and so on, Dav and Shaun half a mile ahead and within a short time we were back at the launch site for a nice easy landing. With everything back up the top (thanks for the help guys) and loaded up it was back home again where Abigail insisted on gutting a couple of fish herself and my Grandmother-in-law exclaiming, as I predicted, a classic French ‘ooh-la-la’ at the site of my cod. A month since the op and I’m back at home and giving my knife a workout.