BeardHead’s First Trip...19/12/2009

You know what it’s like, you see something on a website (fail-safe lure, Filipino wife etc) and you just have to have it. There’s no escaping the fact that it is the ideal thing to own and eminently useful and so it was that I found myself ordering the perfect kayak fishing accessory for winter use – Beard Head. All ‘proper’ sea kayakers have a beard (well, maybe not all, Freya Hoffmeister hasn’t got one for example) and so this could perhaps see us being taken more seriously amongst that circle. The added bonuses for me were off course that it not only gave me a beard but hair as well…and even more fitting was the colour; my BeardHead is yellow ;D

It’d be rude not to try it out on the water at the first possible moment and having dropped my daughters off at their grandparents I pulled up at Hopton. As I got out of the van I heard a shout, turned around and saw Onmas just wandering up the slip with his dog! He’d been out for a walk and to drop off Steve’s BeardHead and the timing couldn’t have been better – both to see each other and for him to give me a hand getting my cold Scupper Pro off the roof.



He’d found a Ray’s Bream dead on the beach which was a bit of a surprise to me. Chatting while I got ready to launch he took some photographs as I paddled out in all my BeardHeaded glory.

I paddled out to one of the usual marks and dropped anchor. The current was stronger than expected and I ended up just past where I wanted to be but settled down and baited up. Out went the lines and I sat back to await the action. It was bloody cold (Steve told me later it was minus 3) and the windchill added to this. My neoprene gloves were at home so I was instead reliant upon some knitted fingerless ones. They weren’t of much use. As I sat there my fingers slowly began to chill. Luckily my BeardHead lived up to expectations and my head, chin and under-nose were toasty warm…it worked!



I sat there for a couple of hours as the sun went down and my feet and fingers steadily got colder and colder. The back of my neck (unprotected by BeardHead) also began to chill and so I made the decision, having not had a fish, to call it a day and head for home. I guess I’d been on the water for a couple of hours maximum and it was without doubt the coldest session I’d yet experienced. I paddled in, loaded up and drove home to warm myself up again