Feed The Need…02/12/2013

Feed The Need…02/12/2013 The need is for fresh fish. The need is for fresh fishing. It’s certainly fresh right now, fresh as in really cold. That glorious summer of t-shirts and jigging in clear water and plugging for bass while getting a tan seems like last week but it’s what, two or three months now since it ended? Now it’s just cod o’clock all the time, even the rivers have dropped right off. Still, cod fishing in dirty water at anchor is what I do so best crack on. So how did it go at the weekend I wonder? It was bloody marvellous last week, cod everywhere, everyone catching…Sunday there were 8-12 boats out on the patch I fish…I wonder how they got on…Hmm. A few calls later and I hear the worst…none, none, five…and of the others? None, none, a couple, three or four…umm. Riggggggggghhhhhhhtttttt…..so, info shared and it’s not quite the info I want. But hey, I can sit at home and have nothing or sit at sea and have nothing. I think I’ll sit at sea then. Tides aren’t quite ideal. I don’t mind that they’re big tides, 2.5m springs that are going to reduce my time on the water, but I do mind the time. I’ve got to wait all morning or get up early and I didn’t get up early. So it’s onto the net to waste a few hours doing nothing. I can’t launch before 12:30, anchoring will be hard if I do and the fish won’t feed then anyway. So is tart the usual round of sites and there’s the news. My buddy Cam has been in hospital over the weekend and now they’re saying he’s not going to live forever. That’s settled things then, I’ll catch the cod he’s been wanting to catch for the species hunt and which has been eluding him. No matter that he’s down on the south coast and won’t eat it, I’ll catch it for him anyway. Now, another thing about Cam is that one of our first conversations was about centrepins, my old KP that I destroyed in fact. Cam loves his pins and so do I though I’ve not been using them this year because of my concentration on all things Fladen…except for a fortnight ago when I took my bust one out that my aunt gave me a couple of decades ago to commemorate her after she died. So I’m taking my working one – a 4” deluxe (wood facings) KP scarborough, a freewheeling centrepin reel that is a South African icon. People don’t use them nowadays, they don’t understand them. If they did they might… Rigegd up to my Maxximus IM7 12lb class rod it feels goooooooood. Worms out of the freezer, some microwaved to plump and firm them up as per the suggestion online, some defrosted and laid on paper in a tub to see if that helps avoid the wet and slimy bootlaces I normally end up with. Let’s see what difference they make. Cooked worms? Not convinced to be honest. Maybe I have no sense of smell but the kitchen stench everyone has written about seems to be missing. I head off. Not meeting anyone so no hold ups with the traffic. I get down to Corton and unload, suit up and drag the Cuda down the ramp to the beach. Lovely and flat, little wind, a touch of swell, perfect other than what I know about what’s under the serene surface, ie 3 knots of current. I launch. I drop anchor, spin around and it’s rushing past. My left rod goes out with the Warbird 3700R multiplier, an 8oz breakaway lead and a 2/0 single hook running leger…uncooked worm tipped with squid on this. Then, 6oz pear lead, 2/0 running leger pennel, cooked worm tipped with squid goes down on the KP… spinning merrily away as it drops down five or six fathoms (if I can’t say sprag I can say fathom at least. That’s six feet of depth or a couple or so of those foreign things that my French wife talks about. I refuse to be swayed, they’re close enough to a yard and she can’t for the life of her roast a chicken, being unable to ‘fathom’ fahrenheit. Haha, both meanings of fathom used in the same paragraph. Love it.) Now, I’ve let down in fathoms but that’s no good for the amount I let out once it bounces along the bottom…and I tend to cast in yards so I let out a couple of chain…nobody uses chain anymore but quite frankly if I let out a cable I’d be reeling in all day on this reel with its 1:1 retrieve; I’ve got a cable out on the anchor warp as it is. Or maybe a furlong, I didn’t pay too much attention. Suffice to say I need all this distance to combat the tidal flow so it’s kind of important to the story. So I sit there with no movement whatsoever on my rod tips. None. There’s virtually no whiting about and the cod seem reluctant to feed until the flow slows so now, while waiting patiently, I decided to amuse Cam , stuck in his bed with no escape, with my best joke, filmed finally in glorious Technicolor. It’s about a couple of prawns. This passes the next 35 minutes and as I have no bites in that time it’s well spent I reckon. Others do NOT agree and have since threatened me. [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7CCnQSzL5U&feature=c4-overview&list=UUd9V_RytNmQBwOeQ_BTvflw[/video] That done I call Richi back, he interrupted me just before the punchline (just like my wife does who’s jealous because I can roast anything. Not with this joke though, she screams and walks out when I begin. No sense of humour, or rather a strange one. They still watch Benny Hill in France you know. As for Tatie Danielle…well. Amelie partly addresses this but it’s not enough.) Where was I. Oh yes. I chat to Richi for a while and then sit and watch my rod tips. I see a very slight shudder eventually, is that a bite? I add more bits of worm and new squid to my baits. Another half an hour passes, been two hours now and then finally a whiting rattle…but nothing hooked. Then the other rod, moments later, same again. Nothing. I sit and wait. At bang on three o’clock, for something to do because I am so bored after two and a half hours, I send a text to the skippers I was speaking to earlier: “Haven’t had a fish, two small bites only.” A couple of minutes later and the KP-fitted rod starts to buck and bang – I pick it up, unwrap the line from the handle and strike. YES! I’ve got a cod on the end. I bring it up, 47cm, lovely stuff, ideal fillet size. It comes into the boat. Centrepin strikes again! It’s destined for the table so it’s bled, strung and sent over the side into the water to stop the gill cuts clotting to better bleed out. As I’m getting asked a lot about this process here’s the images; cut rakers on one side, cord through gill and mouth then back on itself and into the sea. Well, I’ve done what I came for, I sit for half an hour to let it bleed out with no further bites and, with it getting dark shortly I head in for a smooth landing. It’s nice out here but I have to be back home shortly so can’t stay until the end of the tide which isn’t long now… I drag the Cuda from the water, across the beach, up the slope and to the car park. Kit inside I lift it off the trolley and onto the roof…looks like it’s time to go home now. Now, there’s a postscript here. I know this fella who hasn’t tasted fresh cod for quite a while and I decided to be charitable and donate yet another cod to the needy…as much altruism as micky taking!