While The Cat’s Away Day 7…06/08/11

The plan was to go first thing with Stinkyweim and Noidea off south beach, Lowestoft and so my alarm woke me up. Then I heard the rain. Then I saw the rain. Then I saw the text from Noidea – he was going to bed having gone bream fishing straight after the smut session the night before. It made no difference as I wasn’t going out in the rain, no way was I getting wet. An abort without leaving the house. Instead I set to work in the kitchen.

The rain stopped later on and once finishing my jobs I texted the other two – Stinkyweim was now busy and Noidea was stuck at a train station. Lowestoft was ignored and in a race to catch the last of the tide I headed back to Hopton, telling Paul he could whip the Prowler off my roof when he arrived. I loaded up and set out into a sea more lumpy than it appeared. It was a legs-over-the-side day. I baited up an 8/0 pennel with whole squid (the pennel used as I didn’t like my presentation yesterday) and a size 1 wishbone again on the other rod. Both went down and I waited an interminable 5 minutes for the first bite, missed of course.

Five more minutes and it was game on!







Great! Ten minutes and my second decent starry smut off Norfolk – about 5lb and male. I was chuffed and this bode well for the afternoon – my other rod rattling away as I dealt with the fish after a good hard scrap in a couple of knots tide.

There was a good couple of foot swell coming through from the south, same direction as the wind and the ebb was heading down from the north. It was quite exciting and I was soon joined by a curious (large) father and son on a Malibu 2XL who struggled out against the tide to see what I was up to. I judged a book by its cover and was pleasantly wrong – both had buoyancy aids and the father carried a VHF; it looked like they had flares too. We had a chat and then off they went again.

The bites were very few and far between and nothing connected. Soon I spotted Noidea on the beach and then heading out to join me. He dropped anchor after a chat and then we waited for the tide to turn as it was starting to die off a little. It was still lumpy though and I struggled to land this brittle star on whole squid:



That beat yesterday’s whelk ;D Next up was another starry, a pup with big aspirations.



Nothing was happening though and after a while I looked over at Paul, the sea now building, running 3-4ft at times.



Eventually I got bored and asked him if he was happy to head in. he was and came over to me as I up-anchored



He’s still raising seas the bloody Jonah ;D

Back to the beach where the swell was completely missing us and we failed to surf in, disappointed to say the least. The front hatch came off my Scupper and I pulled her into the water to rinse the insides which were starting to ming a tad now, what with weeks of accumulated fish slime from my catches going straight into the hull. I got it ¾ full and tried to paddle it; the arse sunk and I was in the water. It took the pair of us a lot of effort to haul the yak out onto the beach and then raise it to drain. Then back up the ramp and off. Slow, very different to last night, but what an excellent tussle again!