East Coast Easter...10-11/04/09

I love the weekend, especially long ones and with Amos not due to come down until Saturday evening, Steve not back until the end of the weekend and Bootster otherwise engaged I decided on a solo Friday night cod session.

Come 7:30pm and I was ready to go. The girls were in bed, fed and read and so I grabbed the last bits of kit and headed out of the door. I’d modified my Navlight the night before too:



I didn’t know how until Saturday night however - it turns out Amos made the same modification himself this week. All you have to do is use the adaptor from your Icom VHF and charge it with that – hey presto, a bent navlight ;D Hmm.

Down to the beach I went, to a very calm, very flat evening. It was just on dusk as I launched and as I paddled out I saw a couple of good-sized swirls on the surface, within 50 yards of the beach. Bass? I thought about sticking a rod out but figured I’d spooked them anyway and didn’t have the right gear aboard so instead headed south with the current to my hole off Pakefield. I am sure I saw some more swirls here and there – never seen that before.

I anchored and baited up with frozen blacks and cast both rods out before settling down to wait. The first knock resulted in a just-sizeable codling but it went back with nothing more than a slightly sore mouth.



It was followed by another that was a keeper around 2.5lb and from memory a third. The Whiting also came out to play, I forget how many. The first was not a bad one and hooked in the throat so I kept it, the others going back.



At one point, while sitting there in the yak, I turned slightly and heard the unmistakeable sound of a fish splashing the surface near the yak, presumably attracted by the light…it sounded a reasonable one and that couple with the other ‘sightings’ of swirls made me wonder what was happening. It has been suggested that it’s possibly even sea trout – now that would be a capture and a half!

Come high tide I up anchored to head in, bringing home a couple more codling and dumping everything into and onto the car ready for the morning.

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Morning…05:15 in the morning…try getting me out of bed for anything other than fishing at this time of day and there’s a problem…coffee, drysuit, bait, gone.

Hopton this time, straight down the track off Beach Road, park up by the barrier, yak off the roof onto the trolley, rods out, gear out, all piled on, pick nose and down the slip to this:



What a fantastic morning! I paddled out to the north about 4-500 yards and crossed the drop off into the deeper water, dropping my anchor and baiting up. There was no point casting until the yak tightened against the anchor warp but I’d timed it well – it tightened up as the current started to run as I finished baiting the second rod up and down went the lines. This was followed by a third slung out of the back with half a herring fillet for a roker on the off chance.

It took a little while and then I got a tap. First fish of the day came in and has to be the rattiest looking Whiting I’ve ever had!



The sea was still. There was a hint of fog too that deadened the sound and diffused the sunlight – but there was something else. Something was going on…I turned and maybe 30 yards away was a seal, watching me. He went back down and after having brought another fish up he popped his head up 50 yards downtide of me in a direct line from where I was then casting! Another 15-20 yards and he’d have had a headache, poor bugger, but I didn’t see him again although a couple more appeared here and there throughout the next hour or so.

Next up was a Pouting.



Not long after I again turned around, this time to see a harbour porpoise break the surface 50 yards away, heading northwest. Try as I might I couldn’t spot him again but I was really pleased at how well the morning was progressing! I then spotted Pinkfoot on the beach getting ready to launch and, I think it’s the third time this has happened here, when he came out to say hi – against the tide that was doing a couple of knots by now, my rod began knocking…as he came alongside so did the first codling of the day.



He anchored up nearby and we settled down for a chat and some fishing. I spotted something else I hadn’t seen before after a while too – disturbance on the water in patches, clearly bait fish of some type. It was quite good to watch and when I then saw some fins and backs break the surface in amongst them I started to get quite excited but a freelined lugworm failed to attract a bite so I stuck with the bottom baits.

Not long after Carl asked where I was going…it turned out that I was going 149 metres south, thanks to a codling being enough to loosen the grip of the anchor in the tide that was now screaming through at full pelt.



The last cod came while I was sitting at anchor even further down amongst shoals of bait fish…against a screaming current I pulled one up that weighed in at 4lb 2oz when I got home. I had to actually pump it up to the boat against the flow and the last 50 yards had it coming along the surface, spinning and jumping, mouth open, with as much of a pull as a tuna three or four times the size!

Time was getting short so I pulled anchor and paddled up to Pinkfoot for a quick chat before heading in and home. Revenge is sweet and as I got near he snatched up his rod and struck…



The fight was on and I’d come up just at the right moment – this was only his second fish of the day and I was there to film it just in time.



The grin says it all – and he isn’t really as fat as the drysuit would suggest!



I paddled in and the beach had loads of people milling about. Luckily I didn’t come off as usually happens with an audience but soon had people around the yak. One lady pointed out my cod had been happily swimming around this morning looking forward to the weekend when I’d pulled it out. She was right too, and it explains why it seemed against the idea of coming for a ride on my yak. I think she wanted to eat it – but that’s our Easter Monday dinner. Right now I had things to do at home…

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…they involved filleting a sink full of cod and making lunch for everyone while they went to the beach. This was followed by the girls and I heading down to the pier to try and catch some early prawns for sea trout bait :D



Three. Two starfish and a small Edible Crab as well. Loads of anglers on the pier too – one pulled out a small pout when we arrived. A good hour was spent there before we headed off to the beach further up – I could see a speck in the distance that was Bootster out in my Trident. I sent a text from the beach right by him to say he was too close and what had he caught – seems he wasn’t too close after all as he’d had a couple of codling. In the meantime my girls had stripped off to vest and knickers and were up to their tummies in the water! Madness. They then proceeded to come out and roll around in the sand while my eyes did the same in my head. Bootster mentioned that Amos was rigging up on the beach so that was our next stop and we wandered down for a chat before heading home to make dinner, a launch being planned to follow that.

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It went poorly from the start. I couldn’t park near to my usual launch spot so had a drag down to the beach over a fair distance of sand. The tide was running by now as I headed south to Pakefield. Out I went and headed for a light that I thought was Amos. This meant I had to backtrack 500 yards and crab across the current when I twigged it was a Tilley the other side of the bay and spotted him out to sea!

He was out of the hole but had caught some fish so I dropped anchor and we chatted while waiting for the fish to bite. It took a while. I was still buggering about and between catching my nav light while casting, sending a lead into the distance and assorted other things that would get me thrown out of the School for Kayak Fishing Competence I managed to miss just about every bloody bite I had! Not that there were many and after losing a decent fish halfway up I was starting to get annoyed. Luckily, one codling took pity on me.



We decided after a while to move into the hole to see what was happening over there. Amos was pulling out some decent Whiting but the weed was causing problems and had perhaps been the cause of another dropped cod by me. We anchored up and I rebaited both rods from scratch and cast down. Things were still slow though.

Bang Bang Bang…I grabbed my left hand rod and had a scrap right the way up…a bit more speed and less of the nodding…this was something else, but what? Up to the surface and I pulled it, thrashing, along the top. Going mental near the boat I realised it was a Bass! Not just a Bass but a PB Bass! And the first sizeable Bass I’d had from open sea! A five-pounder! (By the time I got home!) I grabbed it (a two-pounder in reality I guess) and brought it into the yak, my braid snapping at the rod tip at this point for some reason. It tried beating me up but I managed to get the hook out in short order. I was over the moon with this and got a couple of pictures of the beautiful, spiny, shiny special meal for the family…



Lovely fish, and maybe I now see the attraction of them a bit more.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spotting freedom he leapt over my leg, landed on my knee, missed my outstretched fingers and disappeared into a gill-net of the future somewhere off the coast! I confess, at this point, to uttering a profanity of three-hundred. Still, Bass should all be catch and release apparently and this fifteen-pounder wasn’t really an ideal candidate for knocking on the head. I mean, what would I do with a fresh, sweet-tasting, firm-fleshed tasty twenty-pound Suffolk bass? Nah, best place for it, back in the sea.

Consolation knock before I can rebait the other rod and in comes a three pound cod…fighting exactly like my lost record-breaking 25lb bass…I can’t believe that I was actually disappointed when it was close enough to see it wasn’t another 30 pound bass! No buggering about this time, in, dispatched, gutted and gilled, deheaded and into the tankwell.

Back out, tap, rattle…



The first of a pair. Next up was a greedy Starfish!



The tide started to slacken around midnight and we set our noses for the beach, me giving Amos a hand up the cliff with his yak before I re-launched and headed north (now in the rain) back home for a good night’s sleep, my plan for a session the following morning scotched by my lack of sleep over the last few days. Time for a break.

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Postscript. Carpyken inspired me to try his dish of last week. Last night’s cod were filleted, boned, skinned and chunked into a Pyrex bowl with fresh dill, nutmeg and sea salt. Cheddar and Double Gloucester cheese were grated, mixed with Colmans mustard, black pepper, milk and flour, warmed and mixed into a sauce and poured over. Bread was liquidised into fluffy crumbs, dried out in the oven, mixed with basil and parsley and poured over the top. A bit of cheeses was then grated on top and into the oven it went…

…half an hour later it looked like this:





Ken, it was delicious – even the children ate it happily and my wife commented thus (of her own accord!).

“It’s lovely, I didn’t think it would be.” She criticises English cookery on many points, with fish being “a crime to batter and deep fry” and “how can anyone think fish and cheese is a good combination?”. Well done for impressing a Frenchie! Actually, 3 and two halves!