Dogger Blank…05/06/2013

Dogger Blank…05/06/2013 Dogger is called Dogger (by me) partly after the famous Dogger Bank fishing grounds and partly after the nocturnal hobby of the car park users. Of course everyone else calls it Gunton or Links Hill but that’s no reason for me to! We’d not launched from here a couple of days before but with Lothing now looking less desirable I hooked up with Paul for his first sea launch since last year. Putting him on Eloise’s Tetra 10 again I pointed out the flat water bow and told him to take a little extra care from normal. With a choppy sea and some small dumping waves he was by now a quivering wreck and I left him in tears on the shore as I paddled out with ease, turned and watched him choose the lumpiest bits of water to come through!!! He loved it, yahoo-ing like the big girls blouse he is and informed me he loved it and had missed it so much. The sea was a bit odd so instead of drifting north to Corton we elected to stay close in case Paul wanted to head back in and only went out a couple of hundred yards to give him a chance to get his sea legs back. Baits went down and we sat there. For ages. Then, wonders will never cease, Paul’s rod started to twitch. Nothing on the end but that was one more bite than I’d had. A while passed and then another bite and up came a smoothie pup…he was over the moon! I love fishing with Paul, it doesn’t matter what he catches, it’s like it’s always the most welcome and special fish he’s ever had and he was chuffed to bits. Me? Not a bite. I still hadn’t had a bite when the happy son of a bitch caught a doggie to much joyous exclamation! Same bait, fairly close to each other…no real reason for it as usual. We stayed there another half an hour and then I had one big wallop that removed the head from my squid and resulted in nothing so I up-anchored and headed further out, Paul joining me. The tide was really weak and the wind held me at right angles all the while until it finally started to flood, by which time Paul had headed in. A few little tickles and nibbles came but alas not a single fish and, after being on the water for nearly five hours I decided to rebait, dump the remaining squid and have my last cast. I was down to one rod now as a cast had gone wrong and I’d snapped off a trace on my rudder and anchor warp. I just couldn’t be bothered to retie another on. I had three bites, none of which amounted to anything and so I ditched the leftovers, pulled anchor and paddled in. A bit of a dump on the beach saw me playing safe as I had a couple of pole mounted cameras onboard and didn’t want to trash them…Paul wanted me to crash and was filming so I had to just run in properly and, with a smooth landing, I subjected myself to his ridicule. He’s a bloody jinx that boy.