Lothing It…10/03/2014

Lothing It…10/03/2014 I’d just stickered the MidWay up and thought I’d take her out fishing to see if they stayed on. Taking a relief shift at the last minute the night before put paid to my plans of an early launch and so it wasn’t until 830 that I was ready to join James on the water…but he was heading in as the sea was starting to take a turn for the worse. Fair enough, come to mine and we’ll drink coffee before heading down to Lake Lothing on a goby hunt! So that’s what we did, unloading onto the shoreline at low water. A quick hunt around for some harbour rag to go with the lugworm and with a nicely muddied fork and a dozen little wrigglers in the tub I walked the water’s edge to look for my quarry. It’s very early for them but I was delighted to see one (and only one) of a decent size…must have gone an inch and a half! So, in we went… While James anchored up in the deeper water and sent down some fresh lug I scoured the shoreline looking for that goby or another one. Could I find it? No chance! I spotted one little midget fish but it darted off and I have no idea what it was. Likewise the smelt were missing but not to worry, it was pleasant enough looking in the clear water. I gave up after a while and went and tied up alongside one of the sunken boats in the hope something might be lurking below. I’d seen plenty of fish topping when I’d come back in with Colin the other day on Lead Us but that was at dusk. Something wasn’t and I soon tired of this so when James paddled over we went on the hunt and a bit of a sightseeing tour, paddling past the Excelsior before checking out the wrecks of the Probe and Yellowtail and the two jumbled piles of bits adjacent to each other that contain the remnants of the last engine of the type. Still, seeing as we were down this way we figured we may as well check out MT102, looking fine in the sunlight. I love this boat and a very important historic vessel it is too. James hadn’t seen it before. We decided to call it a day then without bothering to fish any more. I briefly considered heading down to Ness Point to have a little fish off the rocks but decided that sleep would be a better option; the time was around 1pm. I wish I had now as I was woken at around 3pm by the sound of helicopters overhead. An upturned boat was spotted a couple of hundred yards off the Ness at around 2pm and had it been spotted sooner perhaps things would not have turned out so tragically.