Sixth of June, seventy years on from the invasion of Normandy. It’s a few years since I’ve been across, twenty years ago I was just about to join my first ship running the Portsmouth-Ouistreham route. A few days short of seventy years since a relative, John, had been killed in action at the age of eighteen a few miles inland. His grave had been the last place I’d visited the last time I was there. It would be a more peaceful beach for James and I today.
I pulled up at Caister at nine, had a lovely chat with an old boy who popped out of his garden, initially about fishing (his best off the shore here was a 17lb cod) and then about the anniversary commemorations; he’d missed participating in or even knowing about the invasion at the time as he was in Ceylon at the time. We chatted for a while and with a promise of a fish if we caught something and an invite for a cup of tea we set off down to the water.
Bait-wise we had scraps. I’d used the last of my squid the day before on Cleveland Princess, had one manky wrap of refrozen black lug that I forgot to bring and relied on James’ cut up remnants of squid, mackerel and black lug. He’d tried for sandeels the evening before with his cast net to no avail…that was just for tipping though, we were intending mostly to work sabikis and tinsels on the bank half a mile out after Sandeel, launce and mackerel. Dave had had some of the latter the day before a bit further up the coast and the water was starting to clear here.
Nice and flat at first, we headed out to where we thought the banks was, drifted a bit in about forty feet of water; loads of suspended matter but no bites. The terns were working a bit further out and James headed out more…then, my first bite. The rod hooped right over then sprung back; up came the baited sabikis and the bottom hook, with a strip of squid, had gone, the light line missing from just before the knot. No mackerel…
I paddled out to James, rigged up the fishfinder and the returns were everywhere and constant, loads of marks but nothing feeding. We jigged and jigged, drifted down to Scratby and with the wind and chop picking up paddled back to fetch our anchors to try some static bait fishing.
James ran home and got a bottle of Desperadoes each from the fridge; we were getting desperate and it was a nice enough day with easy close in fishing and little tide.
Baits down and we sat there facing the waves. It took an hour before the first rattle and, saving a blank, a pin whiting came in; not long after James followed suit but that was it.
We headed back to shore soon after, passing a tourist who decided against laying on the fine sand and chose a piece of concrete on top of a pillbox on the beach instead. Fair enough.
We landed, loaded up, apologised for not bringing fish and headed off to the chippy where the lure of some shiny coins saw me heading back to James with a nice piece of battered plaice. Oh well, there’s always next time…
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