Si was off today and I was finishing my last shift for a couple of nights so it would have been rude not to go out on the water. With him having an appointment in the morning I‘d get plenty of time to sleep before getting launched. If I’d not left three quarters of an hour late and not forgotten my keys at home the night before and not had to bike to the school to get my wife’s keys and not had a rusty bike chain and not had a flat rear tyre that is. As it was I got perhaps an hour’s nap before my alarm and Si’s text to say he was free. I was far more interested in coffee than fishing at this point. I then figured that if I wanted to have fishy fingers I may as well have fish fingers as it was highly unlikely that we’d get a fish where we were going.
The only possibility in the time that we had was to launch from the beach at the end of my road, paddled up past the harbour and troll lures along the rock breakwaters. So we trolleyed down from mine and were surprised to see that the water was actually not as murky as normal and might, in fact be clear enough for a bass to see our lures and make a lunge for them.
Now, the sea looked really flat, as it had in the morning when I’d cycled past, clanking, but on launching it was clear that the swell was still present and there were some rather nicely shaped, albeit small, waves rolling in which were rideable. Should provide some fun on the return then! We rigged up; Warbird Minnow 13 for me.
We paddled north to the harbour noticing the murkier water every time we crossed a bank and approached the harbour. A quick call on channel 14 and we were clear to cross the harbour approach and start work. Very clearly marked colour line at the harbour mouth, clear blue to murk-brown, but not in a place I could work a lure and frankly the state of the sea here at the harbour mouth was not conducive anyway, swirling and lumpy and decidedly choppy. Fun to paddle through but unpredictable. A quick call to say we were clear and the lures went out.
Now, I wasn’t sure what it would be like so I decided to use another of my Fladen rods with one of the new spinning reels I first tried last week, a Vantage FX30. The rod is one of the budget range ones but has been designed with kayak angling in mind and is a bit of a taster. Called Festival Kayak it is a 210cm 10-30g spinning rod finished in yellow with a white tip to help show up at night and a slightly shortened distance between the reel seat and the end of the butt. Pretty standard rod surely, just with a kayak sticker on? So far yes. Then come the splits. It’s a three-piece so that it can be easily broken down to fit in a rod pod or front hatch without having to bend or otherwise force it (I’ve damaged a few tips and rings like this, especially trying to put two rods in Ultra rod tubes) and there’s also a leashing ring attached to the top of the eva butt. Eminently useable and ideal for the increased risk of getting hooked up and smashed up on the rocks here.
Oh yeah, the swell was pounding into these rocks with plenty of spray and, being an hour after low water, some surf waves were kicking up around 20-30 foot out from the rocks at times. I was paddling around 12ft out…Oh yeah, there was only a couple or three feet of water under us at times and quite a few stray rocks only visible in the troughs…
Off Jackaman’s Groyne there’s one hell of an eddy, whirls you around a bit, chucks you up and down a bit, stops you in your tracks a bit and is a place that would be best avoided. If it hadn’t produced four bass in four passes last year at the end of the season that is. They seemed to love this maelstrom. Unlike me, no matter how crackers I might seem sometimes! But no, they either weren’t there, were higher or lower, weren’t feeding or couldn’t see when we passed and we carried on.
The water still looked like tea here as we paddled up past the docks and off the harbour wall to the rocks that are publically accessible. Past the Orbis Centre, past the Gulliver turbine (unmoving as there was a bit of wind), past the groyne at Ness Point and up to the smashed concrete and wood on the promenade. Then it was time to go home; at least we’d have the tide with us for the way back.
Theoretically. I haven’t the faintest idea why the flood didn’t help us but at times, paddling hard, we stayed still or even went backwards around points. Stuck in eddies, caught in overfalls, trapped between rocks and a tall wet place…It was a hard paddle but good fun all the same even if we did have to concentrate all the way back. Apart from ‘catching up’ on our romance…
It came over the radio that the bridge lift was imminent around the time we hit Jackaman’s again. With Si being bounced around 50 yards out I was sitting still and going up and down while the stern and bow were swinging either way at random. I called across to Si to look at my rod tip as it was suddenly bent right over in this washing machine, occasionally releasing and then being pulled straight back down. Nothing to do with fish just water pressure. We soon cleared the area though and called up the harbour to check we could pass, being given the go ahead and then passing Silver Dawn on their way in, kindly slowing and holding off while we passed. It was really lumpy again in places here.
Once past I expected the current to kick in again but it didn’t and, while doing some filming and breaking down the rod for a surf landing and some more surfing afterwards, I drifted north again. It was a right pain and I had to break a sweat today, being overdressed AND making an effort.
Disappointingly there was no surf anymore. It had reduced instead of built as ‘d expected. I had to hang back and wait a few minutes before a little one rolled in, getting no more than eighteen inches tall, which I could catch and ride in, swinging around and landing sideways on the beach in a very nice landing that surely impressed the two deckchair dwellers sitting by themselves right where we needed to land, the only people on the beach. I say surely impressed but I imagine they’d forgotten in moments if they’d looked up from reading their books/newspapers/kindles or whatever it was they were doing. I have no idea, I paid them no attention and carried on getting the yaks off the beach, back home and onto the cars, both of us fishless as expected and therefore not disappointed in the fishing which was a merely secondary aspect to our paddle on this occasion.
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