Arrived and broke out the spinning rod and a favourite Kilty lure. The beach was still pretty busy so it was more in hope than expectation I strolled through the scantily dressed hordes in my thigh waders and wading jacket looking like some strange fetishist with a fishing rod. The sun had literally dipped just below the horizon when I made my first cast. That came back without a hit but lo and behold, the second one got a savage take and a nice bass of around 3-4lb was beached and released to some surprise from a few watching people. Surprised myself as there were still people splashing around in the water in the vicinity.
3rd cast out, still with an audience, the exact same thing happened with another nice fish coming in, at this stage, I was a god amongst fishermen, maybe that strangely dressed bloke does know something we dont.....
It was back to earth with a bump on the next cast however with the only Kilty in my possession cracking off and heading for the horizon. A rummage in the pockets of the jacket produced a blue and silver Toby and whilst the action was very good, it wasnt getting quite the distance the Kilty was and for the next 20 minutes I had no futher takes. That is until I had a hit about 10 yards from my feet and the fish tore off against a decent drag hooping over the light spinning rod. I'd forgotten what fun it is to hook a decent bass on a surf beach on the spinning gear as you can just leave them run with no fear of snags and no need to bully the bejaysus out of them. The fight being a hundred times better than anything taken on the standard beach gear. Several runs later and a lovely fish of around 6lbs was at my feet....
Happy with that, I brought down the beach gear from the car and had 2 casts for some of the myriad of flats I had seen in close. 2 flounder and a turbot later, I packed up with the light almost gone and me with no headlamp very happy with the evenings proceedings. Wasnt bad for about 90 minutes or so fishing. Great to see the beach back on form with plenty of silver fellas, flats shooting off all over the place, sprat popping around in the water and several sea trout torturing the life out of me hopping around the place. You gotta love this time of year.
to build a small radium shelter! Back home, i remember the lads would use old spark plugs, nuts and bolts, and even beach pebbles tied with copper wire, as substitutes when fishing near the corals! Any comment? I know its laughable, but when i think of the cost of lead nowadays, it makes me wonder.....
