One After Another…07/10/2013

One After Another…07/10/2013 If it wasn’t one thing it was another. No car for MOT then no car for dead alternator. Looked like a local launch again then but Bruce was up for a fish so instead of going off the end of the road to try pakefield we headed for Corton where lead Us were out and had taken nineteen codling, a hundred whiting and twenty dogfish two days before; Colin was out again and I was hoping the tide would allow us to get to where he was… …I forgot my lucky hat. My wife had put my boots on sticks to dry, paired left and left, right and right; I brought two rights. It was flat, we got set up. Hard work paddling out, tide was running hard, gave up heading for Lead Us and dropped anchor on my smut spot. Except not quite, no lucky hat so we missed it. Okay, it’s all nice and rough here anyway, time to get the baits ready. Whole squid on the starboard rod, black lug and a whole sandeel on the port side. Third rod, set up for baited feathers and small stuff, was a victim of the hat. I’d overtightened the sideplate when cleaning the reel and it couldn’t engage the anti-reverse. It had to sit out of the way, which was in the way. Meanwhile, the tide was running hard. Too hard. I’d only let a triple length out so I could chat to Bruce alongside; it was dragging. Wrong! Less stable than normal too – the more line out the better it is. I released a load, went out to about eight times the depth, settled lovely. A walloping bite! Bass bite. Sandeel head comes in. Damn. The hat would have caught it. More bites, normal bites, one hit then nothing – fish going at the bait as they pass but being beyond it if they miss, no second chances. Walloping bass take two on the whole squid; nothing. A dozen missed bites before point 6, a whiting, on worm tipped with squid head. More missed bites, for Bruce too. Then a good bite, great bend in the rod and up comes, no, not a cod, a dogfish! Point 7. Coughs up a small sandeel and some shrimp. Takes skin from my wrist somehow even held properly… Bruce is catching regularly, plenty of whiting about. As the tide eased less missed bites. I was pulling in a decent fish when it went light, trace snapped. Dammit. That was my wishbone gone, this was producing most fish, as always. I retied my spare, rebaited with lovely whole black lug and squid heads and cracked the lot off on the cast – braid knot cut through the flouro knot. My hat would have stopped that. Two 2/0 pennels now. Great for starfish. Doesn’t count. A few brittlestars coming up too; cod food! More whiting, plenty in fact. Big ones kept, smaller ones kept when hooked badly, kept around fifteen, returned about thirty, missed about the same. At slack the wind got up and the clouds came over and we started getting cold. By the time the ebb started it was getting colder still and chopping up. After an hour of ebb it was running hard, then things went light; I thought my anchor line had parted or the weak link bust. I drifted fifty yards and was level with Bruce before the anchor dug in again. Maybe something had hit it and knocked it out of the mud. Bruce now tells me he’s lost a rod somehow, dealing with a problem, a fish, a wave and his leash failed somehow. Tide really going now and we needed to paddle in. I hauled anchor then went over to help Bruce as it was his first time anchoring and it was flowing hard. We had a bit of a battle – yak bought rigged but with no locking cleat for the anchor so no way to keep it bow on. I held onto the side – second pass getting me close enough to grab hold, and with my stern to the flow the tankwell filled and fish started to float – the one ungutted one floated off and I think some gutted ones also escaped. It was the lack of hat again, I swear. Two yaks against the anchor was too much, Bruce was making no headway. I told him to unclip and paddle in so I could hook it up over the forward hauling cleat and bring it in. Not a problem, job done and we both paddled back for a smooth landing. Well, I reckoned we hada lot of bad luck. Bruce reckoned otherwise as we’d caught. I reckoned it was true because we’d missed so many and lost some. No matter, we had tea.