A touch of silver frost

After feeding Dogfish for two days last weekend I was keen to get back to a style of fishing that floats my boat. The weather over the last week has been windy with a few decent interludes and plenty of rain of course. On that basis I didn’t think the forecast would hold for 4 days and let me pop my nose down into the SW on Sunday, but low and behold it did. There was some frost overnight and although I wasn’t on the road at the crack of dawn it was cold and foggy pretty much all the way to my spot.

I thought the water clarity would be worse than it was but thankfully it was OK. There was however a nasty swell that I would need to be mindful of, apart from that it was great to be back where I like to be of a morning. After about 30 minutes the mid-morning sun warmed my face and with no potential Dogfish on the radar I was a happy lad.

This Bass made me happier, as fit as a butcher’s dog it slammed the lure at close range and fought well against a pretty brutal drag setting due to the ground I’m fishing here. Landing the fish was problematic in the swell, you can see the fish has some scale damage from barnacles, after recovering in a rock pool it went on its way. My shoulder has responded to the physio really well and there were no major issue in the first hour, my bag however had to be dumped as I could feel it starting to cause a problem. When my second fish came along I couldn’t be bothered to get the camera, not much in it between them anyway. With the tides being so small today the fish did not seem to be where they normally are at the given stage of tide. It was basically downhill after a good start, actually surprised I caught any fish. I  did also spend some time in this session thinking about next year and the challenges I’ll be faced with transporting, launching and retrieving a kayak here. They are fairly substantial but they are doable. I’ll need to be fit and have some time on the water under my belt first but I can’t wait.

 I took this on the way home, a flooded field at sunset with the fog starting to roll in, stunning.