It was such a still morning that I had no choice but to avoid going home to bed after work. It was necessary to fish. With the knowledge that further up north the water was clearing I decided to give another mark a try, my first launch from here, for a drift with feathers and sabikis, squid and sandeel traces and pirks. Nick was up for this as well after some persuasion and so we fixed on an 11am meeting near the ramp and tower.
Before leaving I tied a squid and sandeel rig together giving me six hooks and a selection of large, visible drifting lures and stuck on a Fladen Padstow pirk. The other rod saw a set of five tinsels and a lighter pirk, noth on the nano 10-20lb rods – I considered the baitcaster and spinning rod set ups but with a slim possibility of something large grabbing them decided to go heavy just in case. Another day for the Tempo too as I wanted sonar and charts and have yet to fit these to the MidWay.
It was a bind pulling through the soft sand but not overly long and a flat sea with dumping shoreline greeted us. It looked fine. High water was around an hour away, maybe another hour slack and then we’d be able to catch the ebb back to our start point. It runs deep here and then hits banks which could be teeming with bass but the short time we had left his for another day. Off we went.
My GPS showed accurate contour lines for once, less change here than off Lowestoft, but my transducer had come unstuck which didn’t impress. However, I left things on for the charts…as it turned out a bit of water that had come in through the hole for the antenna the other day meant I did have a working sonar after all so this was good stuff. And there were fish showing from the off. Down low, midwater, up high…we jigged but nothing, the seals watching us, grinning.
Perhaps twenty minutes in I started seeing he odd splash and there were a lot of fish up high…then I saw one come out. Herring! I shouted across to Nick “There’s herring here!” and stuck a wedge on the bottom of the tinsels. I cast, ripped the rod up in jerks and straight away had my first kayak caught herring! I was over the moon!
I cut this to bait the squid/eel rod and carried on drifting, changing the tinsels over to sabikis in the hope of more herring as the casting didn’t get me any more.
The rod bucked, I had a small whiting. Back it went.
It bucked again and arched right over, I thought I had my first bass of the year; a hard hit and a good fight all the way up on the start of slack water…a decent spotty dog broke the surface and the skin on my wrist!
I carried on drifting as the water cleared, over shoals and marks that wouldn’t bite. The wind was taking me now, not the current which had died right off. I headed out to 46ft and stopped short of the Prima wreck; it would have been a good day to drift fish this but I wasn’t in the mood to sacrifice gear as I was doing alright and it was only a short, relaxing trial session.
Drifting back I had a couple more small whiting and then, heading in close in 16ft tried casting towards the shore and along the contour to no avail, despite the seals hanging round here, one of which became quite inquisitive…
We landed, a successful recce and a new kayak species for me. One to come back to explore further. Not just for the summer either as it runs deep quite quickly from the launch.
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