Another opportunity beckoned to break the monotony of lockdown this weekend. Conditions weren’t as favourable as they have been on my last couple of outings but Tony and I were still hopeful of a few fish. The choice of mark was another new one for me – though Tony has fished it for years. The mark has a reputation for good quality fish, with bigger doubles common.
A 10 minute walk through a farmers field had us circumventing some curious cattle – mostly young bullocks from the look of things. Thankfully they don’t get too excitable and we were shortly down on the coast and scrambling over smooth rocks and boulders to get to our first mark. Ive been toying with investing in some wader studs and at this point i think my minds made up – it took some careful judgement as I hopped from rock to rock, praying to god i didn’t slip and break my neck! Some of the rocks are really mossy and an absolute death trap when wet, especially at night.
We soon had baits in the water whilst waiting for the tide to recede enough to wade into our main mark for the evening. A couple of tentative knocks showed that there was at least something about.
We only had time for one chuck before the first part of the skeer was exposed so we quickly moved over. First chuck on here on a squid, black and cart cocktail proved a winning combo as I got a very convincing thump after 5 minutes – and upon lifting into it there was a healthy weight on the end. It kept low all the way in and made use of a few of the ledges, which I suppose added to the surprise when it finally surfaced and turned out to be smaller than I was expecting. Still at 4lb 10oz I’m happy with that for a first fish on a new mark!
This lulls us into a false sense of confidence – surely an early fish means a half decent night? Unfortunately the reality is there’s little more for me to write about as what followed was a pretty much fruitless 4 hours save for a barely sized codling for me to keep me from nodding off completely!
Only on the “last cast” of the evening does Tony finally beat the blank with a fish of around 2lb. “Be rude not to have another cast” he says and sure enough he manages another about the same size to level the score and we decide to call it a night before the tide begins to push us back.
So not the night we were hoping for but at least we did not blank – and another decent fish supper for me! Hopefully things don’t tail off early this year and we still get a couple more sessions in before the fish move off to spawn.