For Grandpa, Finally…14/08/2013
“Where are we fishing Wednesday then snapper?” says Spark. Well, it’s got to be good, it’s my daughter’s birthday and she arrives home tomorrow so this is my last session for a while…I’m heading north, Sea Palling maybe? He’s still an invalid though…on reflection there isn’t a hope in hell that I’m going to drag his kayak over that bleeding dune! Somewhere else…Bacton. I’ve never fished Bacton. Bacton has a ramp from the track that goes straight down to the water; with fatty’s fat 4.3 and ice box that nearly reinstalled my hernia (and may have been responsible for his) this was an important consideration. Bacton is on Magic Seaweed too so we can check the conditions for the time up to and including and after our session; I check and it looks sweeeeet! Low winds, very low, and the whole coast looks peachy for my last day…I’m going to drift feathers, no baits as it’s clear water and mackerel should be high on the capture list so I can always slice one of those up if need be. Feathers, travelling light, on the drift, use a couple of different setups to normal then, see what they’re like for this.
Well I call them feathers, they’re not always. I had a tub with a mixed bunch of feathers, hokkais, tinsels, sabikis, all those kind of things and the plan was to stick them on a couple of different rods to normal. First up, the telescopic I had to play with, the Redstick 25-50g. Too heavy for freshwater fishing (would be okay on large fish but small fish no) but a good choice for feathering as it’d have plenty of whip in it so it could be left in a rod holder to do the jigging without my help and would also be able to lift strings of mackerel, hopefully. I stuck the little red fixed spool on to match too…my Vantage FX30. Now this is one sweet reel, I really like it but I’m usually on baitcasters so it gets underused. As does the 8ft Celtic Paxton Trolling Uptider. Which I fitted with my standard Warbird 3700R multiplier, the only change being a length of 90lb braid on the bottom to counter the added abrasion.
Abrasion? Why? Simple. I’d heard there was a chance of gurnard and weever here. Never caught either, wanted to and would also be great captures for the species hunt. Being bottom fish and being that we were on the drift though abrasion would be a possibility as my plan was to fish over depth to account for the various gulleys and ridges, holes etc. This would mean dropping down until the rig hit the bottom and then allowing another ten or twenty yards of line to run off the spool before tightening up. With a lead and a wedge at the bottom I was ready to go.
Well, I say ready to go but this was all pre-launch planning along with tide times, slack time, flow direction, swell height, wind direction and all the other considerations. Not forgetting the hour’s drive either. Nor arranging things with others…but there was Bacton at a couple of minutes past ten and there were a couple of the lads, Nick, Mark and Martin I think, already looking at the sea. I pulled up and jumped out, followed minutes later by Spark and Shaun and shortly after Flat who wondered down to say hi too. The water was clear and blue past the backline. The waves were marvellous long, rolling waves and it looked very pleasant out at sea. The surfer and the breaking of those long, rolling waves would be the only issue, kicking up above head height as they were in significantly wide impact zone. Hehehe.
We hung around watching, debating, analysing and then I drove around to the ramp; I was going. Shaun too, not knowing when he’d be going away again, having driven a long way too and knowing that the worst that would happen would he’d get wet. Probably. The others decided to watch and wait and make a decision later; always a sensible option. Spark was out anyway, medically it would be inadvisable. We, knowing what could happen, stowed everything inside to give the choice to float back in with all of our unbroken gear or rig up on the water. With cars ditched and yaks down the ramp it was time to go and we walked in above knee height with Shaun’s Ultra, getting him on and ready for a push on my go! Trouble is, once on he just wanted to go and I had to hold him back and keep telling him to wait! He was pointed at the rip where the water was running off the beach and lowering, slightly, the waves and as the last of the set rolled through I gave him a push…
My turn. I grabbed the Scupper and it was still between sets but starting to build again. And what? [i]“Make it loud. This is a Romeo Foxtrot. Shall we dance?”[/i]
Bash! Crash! Smash! Then I was out with Shaun and we started to extract the rods and rigs from the hulls after putting a bit of distance between us and the beach.
Thick rod ahead, telescopic behind and away we go. Beautiful clear water, sky and heads…gentle rolling swell lifting the feathers for us. Little wind, slow drift, absolute perfection for the plans.
Just needed to find the fish really. Bang! Bang! Bang! Telescopic is going nicely and on a pink shrimp we have …
First mackerel aboard, only the one but a very good one, long and lean. Ten minutes later and Shaun say’s he’s got a fish. Doesn’t know what it is, maybe a gurnard? Says it’s small, gives a brief description and I tell him not to touch it, keep the bloody thing away and let me check…I think he has a weever…which I want…and sure enough…
He’s either brave or stupid. I’m in no mind to curtail things with a lifeboat call out or tow through the surf, these things being capable of absolutely destroying your day. It’s eventually cut off with far less care than I’d have liked!
But I wanted one. Telescopic to the rescue again! My little size 6 sabikis doing the honours, bottom hook.
Super job, point 24, two out of three of today’s targets got already…what else can I jig up on this rod?
Ahh. Yes. Right.
Never mind. We were having a great time, relaxed and chatty and joking all the way. Occasionally paddling out deeper when we got into slightly cloudier water but it was all quite gentle. We reached Happisburgh. Time to slacken off the drags in case we hit a wreck.
Still drifting, the sea a bit lumpier now that we’re over Happisburgh Sand, a veritable graveyard of wreckage and I’m still trailing along the bottom.
And up comes this one…
I hook up one rod and start to spin around, I pull and pull and yes, it gives and starts to come up but the telescopic is now stuck fast on the obstruction and the line is hooked on the line I’m bringing up the other side…and the tide and wind are both pushing me. Before I can react and just after I’ve turned my head and started to slacken the reel in my hand at the sight of a hoop there’s an almighty bang and splintering sound and I’m left with a somewhat shortened rod.
I could still jig with it though. Had another three mackerel come up on it!
Started to get even lumpier as we continued on. Windier, more swell, more chop, the wind had changed direction and increased and we’d lucked out on a shoal; Shaun only had his weever and one mackerel, I’d had four keepers and a smaller one that got tried as bits of bait on the feathers and a snack (I love shimmering sashimi).
I’m still jigging merrily. The hokkais are out…
Off Cart Gap I have a bite! YES!!! I figure on mackerel again, hold it there in case it’s friends are about but no more hits. Up it comes and I am jumping, quite literally, with joy! Number 25, my target for this leg, number 3, my target for today, a Tub Gurnard, my target for twenty five years!
Look at it.
Twenty five years? Let me tell you a tale, spin you a yarn about a teenager and his grandfather, a bucket and a gurnard…
Here’s my grandfather with his last boat, Skelm. It was kept around the corner on the canal in Ampuriabrava on the Catalan coast. Skelm is Afrikaans for a crook, more a sort of rascal though the way we used it and it was named after a stray kitten I’d brought back a year or two before. It was a little Popeye boat in our eyes, amongst all the Sunseekers etc in the canals but it went out now and again and came back with mackerel, bonito and occasional garrick and dorado. They didn’t need anything bigger, faster or better anyway.
So there we are. Granny driving, me and Grandpa by our rods. We’d had a mackerel, it was in the bucket (alive and staying fresh). We went on the drift instead, bottom fishing for a while, Granny also dropping her rod down. The three of us, sitting there fishing.
That’s when I saw my first ever gurnard. Funny looking thing, a box for a head, little legs under its chin, funny little grunting sound. I think it was their first too, I think they wondered what the hell sort of fish it was too. It went into the bucket all the same.
In the bucket it settled. It splayed those wide pectorals out. Those pectoral fins outlined in glowing blue. Same as my one above. Grandpa, not one for catch and release, took it out of the bucket and, stating that it was far too pretty to kill (and I’d seen him shoot a nightingale once that kept waking him up at dawn which makes this all the more remarkable) placed it back in the sea to swim away. Since that day I’ve wanted to catch and return one and now, finally, I had. I was absolutely over the moon!
I’d better get back to the story I suppose. It got windier, lumpier and we were on slack water. We decided to head further in where the tide would change earlier; it did but the water was cloudier. We made the decision to stow the rods and paddle north again. The waves were rather good here, some biggies rolling through. I look around and there’s Shaun sitting atop the cliffs at Happisburgh by the lighthouse. Only briefly, then I’m looking down on him again. Great, fun paddle back this.
It took a while and was around 4pm by the time we found the right ramp at Bacton. Some old paddler was dipping his toes, back and forth, where we wanted to come in and after waiting for ages we had to choose another strip further up to land in. Now, which way did it break? It was nowhere near as clean as this morning sadly, more dumpy, so I went first, towards the middle, expecting a right hand break judging by the wind and flow and swell and and and.
And it broke left. I was wrong-footed and got snatched out while bracing against the face and rolled.
I paddled back out – grinning – told Shaun which way it was going and then promptly tried to carve left, again being rolled out on the brace. A lot of power in these dumps. Shaun also had a play and it must have been a good half hour’s worth of rinsing off that we had before heading back to the cars.
What more could we have wanted for the day? I had a fine mackerel for tea and my targets were reached, Shaun had his mackerel and one of mine, I had a brace for another friend, we’d had an exciting launch and fun landings/playtime, a grand day out…it was the perfect day to end my holiday on in fact. Marvellous. And Shaun had a missed call from work – he was back out to the rig the following morning.
Dave’s launch was the most picturesque:
I just can’t help myself. A whole three hundred yards passed before I had to drop some feathers down to try for mackerel. I had a heavy pirk on the bottom of the stiffer rod – the Paxton Trolling Uptider – with some Seasilvers and a 28g wedge on the 10-30g Xtraflexx spinning rod below some Hokki Pink tails. It took around five minutes before the heavier rod started to shake and I hauled in a fine mackerel, about fifteen feet long judging by the photograph.
Good stuff. A couple more mackerel came on the troll and drift and after an hour or so we made it down to our war relic and scouted around to find it. I had the numbers from Dave and crossed over a large lump just south of it; I marked it and tried for my first drift, tangling my two lines on the turn and drifting a few hundred yards downtide while I cut and retied things; back up to start again, passing Charley who had the first codling aboard. I started to jig uptide of him:
First drift I missed it, paddled up for the second, saw loads of marks on the finder and said aloud ‘there’s fish here’ and was straight in; codling, the target! The bottom seasilver had done the trick. It wasn’t the largest in the world and went back; the promise of big wreck fish made it unnecessary to take. Maybe.
I was slap bang on the wreck on my next drift but didn’t wind quick enough and my luminous pirk and bottom two seasilvers were gone. I retied some multi coloured feathers and my other pirk, dulled from sitting in saltwater for a while in the past and, with my battery now dead and only allowing brief bursts on the finder I was well prepared for failure. I paddled back up and had mackerel on the way – three on the spinning rod and one on the Uptider. Seven now, dinner is served! Charley’s GPS was now also down and Ian didn’t have his; my handheld was in the car still. We would have marked the wreck with Charley’s anchor but we had no buoy…so fishing as sporadic.
Ian was getting knocks with no fish then the tail went from his shad; he switched to metal and had his first small codling.
As I drifted past my rod shook and I pulled up the first of four pouting.
I scooted around a bit, trying o find the mark – it’s only small – and the next time I managed it I ended up beaming again; my tub gurnard last week was splendid, now I had it’s grey gurnard brother! Twenty five years hoping for a gurnard and I get two types in a week! Marvellous – species 26 for the competition. Same Hokki Pink Tail rig as the last. Photos and back to swim away; besides the mackerel I’d kept nothing yet.
More pout.
This pirk was missing fish in my hands, I scrounged a speed jig from Dave and had a couple of pout before snapping it while trying to put a bend in it. Second drift afterwards I hooked into a fish which dived and I became snagged in the wreck. It wasn’t budging so I cut off and tied myself onto the line. As I dealt with the next trace my spinning rod started to go and up on the wedge came the second cod.
Charley headed in and soon after we followed, I drifted back further rout in the hope of more mackerel but only managed a joey before landing a few minutes behind the other two. I’d had an absolutely first class session and was over the moon with it. Proper wrecking, both target species and another point. Great company, great conditions and a great day.
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So what did we learn. Quite a few things. For myself, firstly, make sure my GPS/Sonar batteries are going to last the course! Second, take something to mark the wreck. Third, experiment with different jigs and pirks and rigs and the way you fish them. Now for some reading to learn some more…
