All Weather Window…18/03/2014

All Weather Window…18/03/2014 The forecast was all over the place and I settled on Sea Palling on the yak, or so I thought but chatting to Colin about Sunday’s fish ended up with an invite out the next day with him, Bob and Barry who I’d fished with before. It sounded like a better option especially as Mark fancied Sea Palling on Monday when conditions looked better there. Now, how could I get permission for a full day? I hid the whiting I’d brought back from the day’s session in the freezer and made no mention of it…did some tidying, made a list of things to cross off at a later date, sucked up generally and got away with it. Nothing wrong with being devious after all. I woke up half the house and left before I could be made to feel bad about, pulling up at the car park just before half seven. Bob and Barry were getting their stuff together and Colin was already down at the boat. I figured I’d use the Uptider and 3700R alongside the IM7 and my large KP but managed to knock a ring off the former. Luckily I had one of my Maxximus Nano rods with an LD15 in the car so a last minute swap and I headed down. There wasn’t a breath of wind, it was mild and bright already and I wasn’t really sure that my new Maxximus flotation jacket was really needed but it does get a bit nippy in the wind and at least it’d be there if required. All aboard, we headed out into a flat sea, the wind starting to build ever so slightly, having got tackled up before leaving. The finder was showing fish all the way from Jackaman’s up to the mark and lots of them. And they didn’t look like herring. Would they be hungry? Only one way to find out and the anchor went down. Lines down into a reasonably strong flow and within minutes Barry picked up a huge and fit-looking pre-spawning whiting, well over a pound in weight; into the bucket it went. I was next with the first cod, all of four ounces! So many of these juveniles around. Lovely looker, back to grow for next year! Colin was up next, a huge fish for the skipper! A fish the size of his head… Barry was filling the larder though, pulling some cracking whiting up but all I could get was these small cod for the time being. I was sitting there quite content when suddenly I saw Colin grab the net…a keeper? Barry again and down goes the net, in, under, up and it’s not dropped off as is so often the case. It felt a nice heavy one too and though Barry seemed a little less excited than the rest of us it still promised to be a cracking dinner for him. I was pulling in a whiting at that time, my first. Slack came and though the water was murky I thought I may as well have a play with some sabikis. Some tiny bits of squid and bigger laughs from the others and I dropped my rod straight down expecting nothing but hoping for a little fish of another species. Of course I had to surprise myself and the others with a cracking whiting! The ebb started to move through and I got jealous when first Barry pulled up a spotty dog… And Bob landed a pouting… That would have been two more species for the WSF hunt but never mind, they’ll arrive soon enough to my rods. The others carried on fishing… Ominous sounds appeared from the north and there, once again and far too familiar of late. Air Sea Rescue and the lifeboat were out once again. We hoped that perhaps they’d found one or both of the missing fishermen but it turned out they were out searching for a lady later found wandering around Kessingland safe and sound. They flew around for a while and then headed off again. I heard from Shaun and James, sitting off Hopton in the kayaks and now heading in having had constant action with a dab and loads of pin whiting. The sea was running through hard now and the wind was getting stronger all the time…and for some reason, since slack, the sonar was virtually clear of the constant fish that had been displayed on the flood. Very, very strange. And then the weather deteriorated. Flotation Suit time then, so glad I’d got it! It hammered down for half an hour, soaking everything and then… …and then the sun came out and treated us to the most magnificent double rainbows, a full arc too big for my lens. We carried on catching, a bit slower than the flood but holding our own and then it was time to start bringing rods in before Colin hauled the anchor up to the buoy and pulled everything aboard. As the sun started to drop we headed back home and into port. Another fine day aboard Lead Us.