Venue: Beach near Ring
Tackle: Various rigs, though pennell pulley mostly.
Bait: Mackerel, sandeel, frozen crab
Like a true tackle slut, I was seduced by Veals' offer of a Greys G-Mag multiplier 6 or 7 for £99. So, when my G-Mag 7 arrived during the week, I was only itching to out it through its paces over a rough-ground beach that I'd been meaning to fish for a while as I'd never had a chance before.
Anyway, the day started off disastrously when the car wouldn't start. Despite the well-meaning but utterly misguided advice of someone who doesn't the inside of a car from the dark side of the moon, I finally figured it was the battery and got the wretched thing jump started from the other car––though by now I'd wasted three good hours of fishing time, so my plan of fishing from low to high was knocked on the head.
When I finally got to the beach, things only got better, as it was a lot rougher ground than I remembered, and I lost two traces plus shock leader over the first two casts. In an effort to move away from whatever was snagging me, I went further up the beach. And it was here that the weirdness began.
Once I'd humped all my gear up the beach and cast out, I noticed a sight that makes the heart of every angler sink––a seal's head bobbing up and down between the waves. I debated going somewhere else, but as I'd lost so much time already, I decided to stick it out. The thing was, though, that the seal wasn't going away; in fact, he was staring at me from a thirty yard distance, if seals can stare. And then it was 20. And then it was 10. And then he was hauling himself up the beach towards me. At first I thought the smell of the mack might have drawn him in, but I tried feeding him and he wouldn't take any. Instead, he started rooting around in my bags like he was looking for something else. All of this was charming enough, but I started to get a bit sick of when he began to gnaw my wellies (while I was wearing them) and bark at me. I moved twenty yards back the beach, but he was worse than mutt and he followed me there too.
Eventually, seeing as I wasn't catching anything, I decided to pack it and I went home. For all I know, the seal is still there, waiting for me to come back. Or worse, some stormy night I'll hear a flippery thump at the front door and a throaty 'woof', and it won't be the neighbour's dog ...
Anyway, just in case no one believes me, see the pics below.
Lodore.
