Brightlingsea 12th December - Seamouse goes east

[Lookfar]

Hi folks,

I got up at some unholy hour on Wednesday morning to head for Brightlingsea where Ray had offered to meet me for a bash at the east coast codling run. He was providing crew, so all I had to do was hitch up and hit the road. Easier said than done when your trailer clamp is frozen solid. Twenty minutes of clanging and cursing later in the freezing dark (my neighbours must hate me) and I'd freed the swine and was away. Managed not to get lost along the way and rolled into Brightlingsea (serious one-horse town) only ten minutes late and before my crewman had arrived.
Ray was already afloat and tied to the pontoon - sheer luxury. I paid the guy to launch (the rate, in summer, would be £15) and backed down onto slightly muddy but hard packed stones. It is a shallow incline, so the trailer brakes get partly submerged, but very easy on the car come recovery time. Not so sure about the mud all over the seats though. My crewman, Kyle, took charge of SeaMouse while I parked up then I collected my 100 lug and 3lb of squid from Ray and fired up the engine.
It's a bit edgy heading out into new waters without a chart, so I stuck tight to Moray. We had a fantastic day, not a breath of wind all day and a clear blue vault above us (apart from a big smudge of black smoke over Jaywick that smelt of burnt rubber from two miles away). Even the temperature picked up in the sunshine. We were running in depths from 6ft to 35ft and heading up coast, settling in after 6 miles or so in just 16ft of water. I let Moray anchor first then nipped to the offshore side of him, which bought us an extra foot of depth. Very weird, at slack water I'd have hit bottom before all the chain had gone over.
We had a good push of tide though, with thick swirls of mud showing how much the bottom was being stirred up. Kyle was a beach fisherman, on his first small boat trip, so I got him a few rods out once I'd finished getting rid of the south coast cod rigs mine were still carrying. Order of the day was uptiding, with two rods out of either side and two cast away down tide. We never needed more than 6oz all day and usually were on much less, this is an area that'd suit beefy freshwater gear better than sea rods. Baits were either whole squid on a flowing trace or worm or worm/squid cocktails on either multihook or single hook flowing traces/paternosters.
Ray soon shouted across to say they'd had their first fish but we were looking at motionless rod tops and I was starting to worry about my tactics/presentation. I finally started the ball rolling after about 30 minutes, a nice knock and a fish on. Not a spectacular fight in the tide run but I was watching the muddy surface with anticipation. You don't see the fish at all until it hits the air but it was a codling sure enough, about 12" or so. I was delighted and after a quick lesson in using a T-bar, back it went. Kyle then got going and had three sizable codling in a row, up to about 2lb. It was still slow going though, my novice crewman was whupping me and the tide was dropping away whilst all I'd added to the day was a pout. I chopped and changed both the end rigs and the amount of slack out and in the end got both the uptide and the downtide rods working properly. While we were on,there were some seriously large explosions somewhere in the Thames estuary. You felt them through the boat as well as heard them.
The codling came in steadily now, mainly undersize with just the odd one up to 2lb. The odd tiny pout showed up too, plenty of shore crabs (the codling were full of them) and then to my joy a tiny whiting to add to my species tally for the year. A seal paid a visit, which stopped the bites dead for twenty minutes or so. At slack water the conditions were dead still and we managed to swing around into the ebb without a single tangle from 7 rods. That was 7 rods as I'd hauled out my telescopic spinning rod on 4lb line for a laugh. Damn me if it didn't hook up three times, giving a small pout and two codling before the gathering tide forced me to retire it. That was huge fun, a 1lb codling at slack putting a serious bend in the rod and needing some careful use of the drag.
The ebb was fiercer than the flood and gave fewer fish. Worm had maybe a slight edge in getting bites but for the bigger fish, it was often a cocktail or a squid head they took. I had only one bite on whole squid and missed it, a shame as it had mashed the bait and might have been a good fish. We ran out of worms in the closing minutes of the day - perfect timing. Ray lead us in across a mirror-flat sea with the twin wakes behind and a big, orange sun going down to port. Magic (and bl**dy freezing with your head up in the slipstream). Recovery on the level slip was effortless. Ten minutes of light left to prepare for road and resist the charms of the chip shop right next to us, then a 2.5 hour drive back courtesy of the inevitable jams on the M25.

Final tally, 18 codling for me and 7 for Kyle, then 11 pout-ettes and a tiny whiting. There were 13 fish sizable, so Mrs M got the fillets she wanted. A nice day out.

Steve

[pingu]

nice read as ever steve and sounded a very nice day

dave

[Norfolkboy]

Nice one, Steve