The Finer Art of Fishing…07/09/09

The Finer Art of Fishing…07/09/09 There are two types of people in this world. Those with balls, and girls. Likewise, there are two types of angler too; those who have to fish and the other one. As knackered as I was after a hard night I had to get on the water and, stuck for ideas and time (I crashed out all morning) I decided on specimen hunting for a species that always gets the pulse racing; yep, one that takes balls to target from a kayak. Things had to be right to ensure success and I’d not gone after them at all last year; I had to prove to myself that I could still do it, that I still had cojones grande. I timed things badly. It was coming up to high water and I needed to dig bait. I could have grabbed something from the freezer but fresh is always better. I took the fork from the garden, jumped in the van and got stuck in traffic; I cleared that and the lock was open. Half an hour to go a couple of miles. The water was well up when I arrived and trying to break through the top layer of shingle, stone and detritus of the harbour beach was an effort even before I broke the bloody handle off. Could things go any worse? Well, I could see fish in the margins, my quarry and what looked like smelt. Well, I failed to find any rag but did walk away with two crabs, the pair of which would fit on my fingernail. I took Whippersnapper’s Tetra off the roof. I would need the width, drag and stability of this. The last thing I could allow was to be dragged out into the area where the boats move about, out of control. Next out was my specially made rod, sensitive enough to feel everything and with enough flexibility to cope with the powerful runs I could expect when I got a hook-up. Fitted with a free-wheeling centrepin I’d have the 1:1 pulling power so necessary to haul this leviathan up and allow it to run if I got into difficulty holding it. A crash dive could see me in trouble. I paddled out, past the most recent wreck, and down to the area I’d seen fish holding quarter of an hour before but they’d gone. I gave it a while and then moved. Nothing here either. Onlookers were intrigued as I headed back and settled in over a yard from where I’d launched. Okay, so I could have fished from the shore but it’s snaggy here and I didn’t want the risk of being pulled in. I broke off a fresh piece of crab and dropped down; the fish were here and visible. Voracious predators, they attacked the weight and bait immediately. Should I be using wire? No, just suitably thick mono. Bites were constant but they’re tricky buggers to hook and I missed so many strikes…finally managing most of a crab… …it took half an hour of constant twitching before finally I struck into one and it took off in all directions. A battle of epic proportions followed until finally I lifted it into the kayak; my first sand goby for two years. I was made up! Photographed, unhooked and released I set about trying for another of these pack fish and was soon rewarded. Satisfied, worn out and running low on time I ditched the remainder of my bait when I spotted a bass moving in to the swim; I found one morsel left on the hatch and set about tempting this…and, fighting its way through the frenzied mass of gobies, I got it on the hook. A shirt scrap later and it was ready for landing… That was it, target achieved, fun had and I was feeling tired again. I paddled the yard back to the slip and loaded up, another frustrating species off the list and perhaps my last bass of the season caught and returned. A night session for them next if I dare?

The Flip Side…02/09/2012

I had an inkling there might be some smoothies around by now, they’re due back after all. I had the day free after the car boot sale as my wife and kids were off with friends for the afternoon so it just seemed like a good idea to go for a few hours after lunch; if I went before I’d have to go right away and I just couldn’t be bothered. The wind was light and the sea pretty flat when I rocked up to the beach. I’d picked Tramps Alley as the launch site as there was plenty of rough ground there and it’d produced the goods before. Going solo in the sunshine I took my time and ambled down to the shoreline, got set up and launched into a smooth bit of water, hit the Goto button on the plotter and headed across and up the tide. Slow going this; building to mid-tide and a bloody great spring made progress slow but it wasn’t far and I dropped down over a previous mark, let out plenty of warp and waited for the yak to settle. The water was screaming through at three knots so heavy leads went on with whole squid on one rod, a 4/0 pennel on a running leger and a 3ft snood and a 4/0 wishbone with black lug tipped with squid on the one hook, mackerel fillet tipped with squid on the other; cod and thornback being the target for this rod. Five minutes in and the first bite came. A nice plump whiting had jumped on and was welcome as I’ve eaten all the ones in the freezer. A fair start seeing as how the tide was pumping and I figured it as too quick for much luck right now, certainly for any of the species I was hoping for. Bites were few and far between but the sun was out and I had all afternoon. Another keeper and a few that weren’t worth filleting and then I got snagged on the rough ground. I pulled and pulled but it wasn’t coming out. Letting out some slack I got hold of the line and tried pulling by hand; nothing. I wrapped it around my priest and started with that and just pulled the yak closer; stuck solid I was and I pulled anchor instead, finally breaking out the trace with one snapped snood as the yak drifted past. No matter, I could reset the anchor easily enough and as I was still moving I figured on a snapped weak link. I fished them out and started to haul… I didn’t get far. The carabiner came to midships just as the anchor jammed into something and I stopped dead in the water. One word, FUCK!, sprang to mind as the yak tilted alarmingly onto an edge and I flung myself the other way to counter balance; I was very, very close to flipping and was now beam on with water bubbling past…still leaning way I grabbed the trolley and tried to shuttle forward to no avail, the pressure on the line was too much and the buoy and carabiner were a good 6ft out from the side; that’s more stretch than I had built in! That’s when I heard the crack as the stern bungee snapped and I swung nose-on to the tide. Well that’s alright then. I hate uptiding. By the time the lead hits the bottom in this tide I’m downtiding backwards and miss every bite that comes along. I can’t strike the bloody things properly and after quarter of an hour of this I’d had enough. Simple really, paddle up to the buoy, unclip from the remains of the anchor trolley and clip up to the port-side trolley, shuttle it back and sit downtide like normal. I checked that all leashes and clips were clear, checked the trolley ran smoothly and paddle up to the buoy, disconnecting and swapping sides. There was that word again as the pressure jammed the trolley and I was side-on again and damned near went over a second time. This was starting to get silly now. Nothing was moving and I had two choices. Dick around and hope I could free it before I went over or just cut the trolley off. With one rod over the side (and hanging by the leash) from water flowing into the flush mount and floating it out it was a no-brainer and the knife came out. Ping! And I was floating free. Quickly. Paddle out and up to the buoy I went, reattaching to the loose starboard trolley again. Uptiding it is then. There’s been some sort of maritime festival on at Great Yarmouth this weekend. I’d not been and wasn’t even aware of it but had a treat to enjoy because of it. Many, many years ago as a seven year old I once saw an MTB motor under Haddiscoe bridge and since then have often seen it at its berth in Lake Lothing, only once seeing her under power in the harbour. She looks and sounds lovely; the prototype MTB, built by Vosper seventy-odd years ago. Dunkirk, Normandy, Churchill, Eisenhower, The Eagle Has Landed…MTB 102 has an illustrious history and seeing her shoot by a couple of hundred yards offshore from me in her own element finally was a real treat. Better than catching fish. I stayed a couple of hours more, fishing through to the slack and managing to connect to the occasional fish but with most of them being small it wasn’t anything exciting and at slack I went up to the buoy and started to haul anchor, having to rely on the front cleat only to keep me relatively nose-on. Ten whiting, four keepers and a reel to flush out not to mention a new bit of bungee on one side and a new bit of cord on the other…could have been worse I suppose.

Good Surfternoon…01/09/2012

Good Surfternoon…01/09/2012 It’s been blowing southerly and south-easterly all week with thunder, lightning, rain and just generally poor conditions. I’ve just kicked my heels at home instead of going out and getting wet which has left both my wife and myself a bit stressed to say the least so of course with the sun shining and a shift in the wind direction – though still strong – I had to check out the beach after getting in just after eight. I’d promised my youngest a Star Wars day; we’d watch Episode 1, play with the toys and have a fight with the lightsabers and just generally do nothing of any importance. She was well excited and had been for days. Me? I felt like going and seeing if I could get the remastered DVD’s of the original trilogy and episode 1 on disc instead of tape from town as she has got so into it lately and this would give us the ideal opportunity to check out the sea while going for a blast on the bikes while my wife delivered our eldest to her best friend’s for the day. Wow! Highwater and the sea was pumping. Really pumping. I’ve not seen it like this since last May and I’ve been itching to get the RRRapido wet properly. Running in long, unbroken lines that made it over the sandbanks without being broken up, one after the other and going 4-6ft with good spacing it looked like a superb session could be possible; indeed two surf kayaks launched as we went past. We upped the speed and stood for ten minutes as the bridge went up… The shop was closed. Damn. We came home and, while waiting for my wife to return and knowing that the water would start to drop soon and that’d be the end of it, we sat and watched the film. I was terrible at it, lasting half an hour or so before things caught up and I fell asleep. Candle well and truly burned this week. Still, I managed to rouse myself after a while, poured more coffee and watched some more. But where was my wife? It hit noon and I had to get lunch on. Chunked chicken breasts, floured and deep fried and a home-made sweet and sour sauce and we were away, my wife coming through the door just as I put the finishing touches to it. Green light; food down and I was off. Upstairs and my Psycho III gimp suit goes on. Mystik paddle is taken out and snapped together. ATC-9K is brought down, sealed up and mounted to the nose and my RRRapido is brought through the house from the garden. I’m out of here; see you two down the beach. Oh no! It’s dropped off a lot. The water is halfway down the beach now and the banks are absorbing a lot of the swell. It’s kicking up a bit further out but inshore it looks nothing on this morning. This morning looked nuts. Dangerous almost. Sick. There are a gaggle of surfers and paddle boarders hanging on the groyne too so the prime take-off is taken. Oh well. I look like a Power Ranger. Or a pervert. I wade in and paddle up the inside of the groyne letting the rip take me out past the boardies. I hang there, waiting and watching all these waves crash out before they get to me as the surfers take a few as they rear up by the structure…finally one comes through and I leave it for a paddle boarder, wait for the next and go for it. I’m just about to drop down when the paddle boarder comes through from my right; I pull up a few feet from impact and we miss. He’s not made the first, taken the second after all and I’ve not seen him while I’ve been concentrating on my take-off. My fault though, technically, as he was first on the wave. He forgives me. He should have left it though or not turned so sharply. It’s an age before I’m free to take another, dicking around with lesser ones that don’t get me shifting enough. I try a good bit further out on the banks themselves but there’s nothing but mess and the wind is screaming here. I get blown over at one point. I head back in and finally though I’m running and pull myself off the lip and down, down, into a turn and along, spinning up and over the top. Okay, good practice run; a couple more follow a while apart and then I grab a beauty; long, high, fast and beautifully shaped. I run along it, start to lose the height towards the end of the wave and pull round into a 180, lean forward and run in backwards until I lose depth and the tail buries and I go under. Brilliant! Another beauty arrives soon after and I run down it, pull round badly and go in sideways all the way to the shore; thumbs up from the girls who are now down the beach too, Abigail trying to use the bodyboard in waves a bit big for her; she jumps and splashes instead after a while. I hang around and start to catch some a bit more often and some are great. There’s nothing mediocre to be fair, it’s all or nothing but most of the time someone jumps on the wave before me; I nearly ram another late-entry boardie swinging in from the right. I get a few though and one is the best shaped wave I’ve seen down here. I finish playing after a couple of hours. It’s been so frustrating but wonderful when they’ve been available to me. If only I’d been free at high water though…

Crame Name Famed

Well it’s been interesting here at Snapper HQ lately in terms of getting ourselves in the press, thanks largely to our former sponsorship with Ocean Kayak UK (with the change of distributor I have decided to no longer represent them if they wish to have a UK Team) and Eloise's sponsorship from Fladen Fishing who supplied the rod, reel and end tackle with which she got top female, second junior and a specimen Black Bream in the OK Classic competition at Swanage. Well, we've still got boats and Abigail, my new Padawan has just had her first kayak seas fishing session on her Ocean Kayak Kea which has now been fitted out. Firstly Whippersnapper was featured in Sea Angler at the Swanage Comp (yours truly also getting mentions there and TSF) and with her and I both picking up specimen bream plus my big bass a few weeks later we got ourselves in the catch/bass/mission pages of Sea Angler and Total Sea Fishing, with her picking up the Shimano Mission patch for her Black Bream and my getting the Black Bream and Bass ones…oh, and I had to pull up the feature writer who ran on a load of old shit about smoothounds in a previous issue, getting that letter in the same issue of Sea Angler. Back to a boring issue next month then…

Piscatorial Padawan…21.08.2012

Not long ago on a beach not far away…Snapper’s Padawan finally got her chance. With very light winds and a flat sea it was time at last to fish from her newly-rigged Kea. Not quite eight years old, she’s been wanting to catch something big enough to eat for a long time…could this be the day? Taking advantage of Whippersnapper’s Fladen kit, the rod, reel, buoyancy aid and above all the cap, Abigail was also going to test out a prototype kayak rig from Moonfleet Angling. A Gurnard rig made with size 6 hooks, beads and blades I figured it might do well in the clearer water around at the moment and maybe pick up some of the scraps found over the sandy ground between the banks off our local beach. Kitted up and with her Kea inverted on top of my Scupper we wheeled ourselves down to the beach. It didn’t take long; the traffic stopped for us (we used the force) and we were soon line up ready to launch. Grasping her gremlin firmly in hand she was off and away over a small dump and was out past the groynes before I got afloat myself; there’s no stopping her! A boat pulling a shrimp trawl inshore had me in mind of fish being drawn into the disturbed area and we headed for their line of travel and dropped anchor. It was simplest to raft up next to each other and, baiting up with a pinch of black lug and a sliver of mackerel tipping it off, hopes were high. With a 2/0 flapper on my rod, baited the same as he Moonfleet rig we cast out and sat back to await the rattles. Watching her rod everything was a bite. I couldn’t show her what a real bite looked like though as none came and after half an hour without a touch we up-anchored and moved further offshore into deeper water, dropping down again and sitting back to wait. And wait The crabs were active, stripping the hooks in a few minutes and changed over to squid baits. Would this do any better? Well it didn’t hold the crabs at bay but another half an hour passed before the first knock. Missed. Still nothing on my apprentice’s rod. No movement. We changed over to squid on there too. Another missed knock for me. At least there was something about. We tried using the force but nothing materialised and we just sat there chatting. The third fruitless knock on my rod and still nothing on hers saw us make the decision to have a last cast and then head in before boredom set in… We detached and I began to haul anchor. Off went my little Jedi and by the time I was ready to head in she’d just about arrived on the beach. I watched as she landed in front of a bemused family on the beach, dragged her Kea up past the water line and promptly jumped into the water for a splash around in her wetsuit and PFD. She wasn’t all that concerned about blanking as long as she was having fun and, philosophically, decided she’d have another go before the holidays ended. Sounds good to me! So, verdict on the new rig? Not yet, it was my fault, not Moonfleet’s!