Amos was in the mood for a spot of fishing up this way and had a couple of days off; I was free as well and my wife was happy for him to stay the night which gave us plenty of options. A delay on the roads saw him arriving from London at nine, by which time I'd dropped the girls at school and checked the state of the sea at three different points. That was our day planned then!
Coffee and chat followed before we rigged up and headed for the end of the road. A siple plan, paddle out and along to the harbour, troll the walls and then cross to troll the rocks up to Ness Point before shooting out half a mile and paddling up to Gunton to drop anchor off Links Road. Only a couple or three miles with an ebbing tide which should start to slow around the time we dropepd anchor. Meanwhile the word was good; Brian and Andrew were out on the three mile bank and having a good start; they ended with eight roker, a bass and a multitude of hounds.
Trolling wasn't too convincing. The water was coloured up and running with the tide doesn't help the lures vibrate all that much, nor do the signals transmit as nicely it seems. It also makes things a bit quick too and I'd guess at around a four to one ratio of success compared to running against the tide. But it's always worth a go when travelling past.
We got no takes at all and had to head out to avoid anglers on the rocks at times. I considered a run back but decided against it and headed for Holland instead, stopping half a mile off and drifting down to a point that'd put us out of the way of passing traffic. My rods, now changed over to 2/0 zip slider 2/0 pennels, were baited with squid and once I'd dropped anchor these went down with eight ounce breakaway leads on them. Amos pulled up nearby and started sorting his own rods out.
Straight off the bat! Once settled I called up the coastguard just to let them know we were here to avoid false alarms and had to talk while my rod was banging away inside the holder. It stayed on fortunately and with the brief handed over I reeled in smoothound number one! A small one, a couple of pounds but a decent pull in this tide.
Half an hour and a couple of missed bites later and I struck into another fish; not a hound this time, heavier with a different fight. I was surprised on bringing it in to find one of the small cod we were seeing a couple of months back; the mouth had created enough drag to make the fight seem like a better fish, a big mouth that had taken a whole squid!
I followed this with a whiting, third species of the day.
What followed was nibbles, snatch bites, another two small hounds and a small cod and one thumping great bite that I missed while trying to use my phone. Amos finally had a fish, a three pound hound. Then, however, our wonderful day started to decline, the sky darkened, the wind built and it started to hammer down! For the second day running I regretted not bringing my cag and got wet. And cold.
Fortunately only another half an hour need follow before up-anchoring; I wanted to troll back against the last of the ebb once the bites stopped and try for a bass before landing at slack and the right time to get home for the family. Did the bass want to play? No. However we were treated, by the harbour mouth, to the sight of the Excelsior entering port. Built in 1921, this 77ft Lowestoft-built fishing smack is amongst the sixty most important historic vessels in the UK and a pleasure to see where she belongs. Once she'd gone in through the heads we crossed and headed back to the beach, landing and heading back to mine for the evening.
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