3pm saw me pull up at the launch site, Onmas already on site. As I finished kiting up Steve also arrived and one by one we descended the slop to the beach (or what was left of it). High water was an hour or two before but with a good 6ft of beach (in depth) being swept away last week there was precious little left. For some reason we were getting strange looks...
The trio of handsome and courageous Vikings gathered to plan their pillaging of the sabellaria beds just offshore. Much discussion took place and the talk was spirited – how many cod would be off to Valhalla tonight, smited (smitten?) by the rods of the BeardHeads?
Out we went, Onmas first into a 3ft set that we avoided...a man on a mission, his BeardHead bringing courage...for this evening he was duty fishfinder
As I moved closer I noticed the striking resemblance between him and Adolf Beard Laden...
Steve followed on behind, heading for his usual spot and, for once, missing it completely. There was amongst us an air of total incompetence as I cancelled my plan to hit my spot and instead stopped over a really promising return and drifted straight past it while dropping anchor. I was also devoid of my baiting needle and my anchor warp got itself all bedded in on the spool and needed clearing.
Ah well...I settled down to fish and as it got dark I finally got the first rattle...fish on! The current was screaming through at over 3 knots as it was mid-tide and I suspect it’s springs or thereabouts right now (I don’t look at that, I just go fishing). It felt like a good whiting and sure enough it was – so I kept it.
Four more followed over the course of the evening but fishing was slow for me...very slow in fact. Bored, I called up Steve on the VHF to see how he was doing and he’d not yet had a fish. I had my second when we’d signed off. Jason had boated a whiting too I found out later when I called him up.
Another half an hour passed so I gave Richi a call as he’d mentioned possibly hitting the Needles but he’d not gone in the end. While we were chatting I struck into what I thought was another whiting from the typical whiting bite. It must have been a big whiting because it went mental with a typical whiting fight. Up near the surface and downtide of me it went even more mental and it felt like it was a huge whiting! I dread to think what Richi, listening in on speaker, thought about being at home in the warm and dry ;D especially when I pointed out it wasn’t in fact a whiting but a really pissed off cod of 5lb! In it came and was unhooked, bagged and in the tankwell before I realised I’d not snapped it.
Maybe twenty minutes later I heard Jason holler that he had a good fish on – he was a good couple of hundred yards uptide of me. He was still hollering a minute or two later. And again not long after. Five minutes or so after the first shout I enquired as to the size of it – ‘Dunno, haven’t got it in yet!’ came the reply.
I knew when he did though as he was yelping like a girl.
The air turned as blue as my fingers; “It’s ******* huge!”. “It’s a ******* double!” “It must be ******* 12lb”, “It’s ******* massive!”, “******* hell it’s huge!” etc. I was getting sick of the noisy bastard now ;D You’d think it was the first time he’d ever had a double figure fish, that it was the first double figure cod us Hopton yakkers had landed, that it was the biggest fish us east coast boys had landed this year and so on. I mean, what did he expect? He was wearing a BeardHead after all and they’re as much fish magnets as they are ***** magnets ;)
The last half an hour had been decidedly lumpier and we were getting the odd wave breaking near us or, as frequently happened to me, over the tankwell or the gunwhale. We stuck it out for another hour but then decided enough was enough. My VHF had died by now and the bites were few and far between for me. Jason called over that he was packing up as well and so, both up-anchored, we paddled over to Steve he wasn’t overly interested in going though as fish were feeding under him now big style – he had 6 cod on board to 7lb (a brace of them) and had returned one and missed some. He up-anchored though and we headed in. He was in a cracking spot, running along the edge of a sabellaria bed (as I had failed to do, ending up over clay-bottomed open ground).
The swell had picked up considerably now and was between 4 and 5ft coming in towards the beach. The noise of the surf hitting the shore was pretty loud too. Jason had stuffed his rods in the rodpod, I crawled forward to stick my anchor in my front hatch (which unnerved him further ;D ) and we headed in for what promised to be an interesting night landing...
I went first and took it slow to see what was going on. I was doing fine and was set to go after the one next one passed underneath when the bugger reared up and sent me shooting down the face of it and nearly tipping me off the side to the left when the nose dug in a bit...bracing, the nose came up again (plenty of buoyancy there on a Scupper) but the swell was going left to right and I rolled the other way, tipping off the other side before I could bring my paddle over to brace again. I was in the water up to my thigh and had a dive bag to flip back on between waves ;D This done I pushed the yak in, scrambled up the beach and pulled it out of the foam before heading back on foot to grab the others as they came in. There was a good 4ft shore dump now and I went towards Steve’s yak, thinking he was coming first and Jason after...then he held back to let a set under him as did Jason and they both came in, 50 yards apart, at the same time. Both got in fine and both were on a high. Not only had I been outfished I’d also been outpaddled too! Obviously their BeardHeads were working really well being new and fresh.
Well, enough fannying around, we wanted to see this monster and so Jason opened the hatch...and the bugger had disappeared, sliding down to the stern. Finally located and removed it was one impressive looking cod.
...so now for an excessive amount of gratuitous photographs:
It weighed in at 12lb 8oz...
Just look at the gob on that!
We opened Steve’s yak up and he fished out what would have been impressive under normal circumstances ;D
..Of course my solitary fish wanted to pose too:
I served her up for lunch today with my parents-in-law and it was heartily enjoyed by us all...cooked in foil with olive oil, tarragon, dill, salt, pepper and lemon juice, accompanied with a home-made Béarnaise sauce and deep-fried diced potatoes...better, I’m sure, than the Saumon en-croute I’m preparing for this evening’s festivities!
That was it, game over; what could we possibly do after a night like that? Well, going to the pub was the answer to that – a double being the equivalent of a hole in one at golf – and so, being back at a reasonable time for once, we removed our lucky BeardHeads and headed off for a pint...Happy Christmas fellas!
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