Rodney’s Beach

It must be around 18 years, probably more since Rodney took me here to catch my first Bass. Sadly he’s no longer with us but as far as I’m concerned it’s still his beach. I’ll always fish it a couple of times a year and I won’t ever step on this beach and not think about him. We had some good times here, a lot of laughs and some nice fish. Of course there were some failures. I liked to wind him up about these, he would blame me for most of it but we always laughed about it. Rodney also liked his bed so it was hard to get him out of it for the early morning sessions that always seemed to produce our best fish back then. That grey time of the morning, half-light. It was rare to get a smile from him at daft o’clock but a nice Bass usually cracked his face with a big grin. He was never far away from some kind of nonsense, fishing related or otherwise. Within a short distance of where I was stood he had a tent torn to pieces by a Great Dane, fixed some kind of belt problem on a MK2 Golf using a bait fork as one of his tools and had a panic attack climbing a cliff. These dramas didn’t necessarily amuse Rod but it did always give us something to consider bettering on any given fishing jaunt.

Anyway, I digress, the fishing was pretty good considering. I knew I wouldn’t be getting any decent fish tonight, it was very flat, but I didn’t expect to hit double figures. I’ve been over the Tay Bridge twice today on the other side of Scotland and drove past my home to Luce Bay to catch the tide for two hours fishing. Just as well it wasn’t a blank, too much on this weekend to stay any longer. I won’t be complaining about that for my first Bass trip of the year.

I just used my Sea Trout in-lines, pretty effective for this size of Bass at least.

I forgot how spikey these little fellas are while handling them.

Another highlight were these fellas. I did consider pegging it off the beach with them, Norfolk Terriers, can't say I've come across them before. I hooked a sand eel and fed it to them thus starting a short tug of war, typical terriers.

I might have a shot for Tope/Bass from the kayak on Monday weather and domestic life permitting.