Stade, Hythe 9th October

[dover squidy]

Fished the latest of the Phoenix Dolphins sea angling monthly club comps, arrived at the stade around 19.10 with my doubles partner Tom in tow, found where the rest were encamped, upon getting to them and looking down the beach, boy was that bloody water a long way away lol, knowing the tide was big last night but not wanting to keep running up and down the beach, i set up half way, knowing then i would only need to move once, first cast resulted in a legal size whiting, points and weight on the board, second cast another legal whiting bang on the 27cm mark, my thoughts then turned to, oh this is gonna be a good evening, keep droppping these whiting in the bucket and adding weight and possibly taking some money away back to Dover with me,
how wrong was i, cast after cast resulted in undersize whiting returned to grow bigger, final tally taken to the scales for me was 7 legal size whiting for jus under 3lb and second place, oh well 10 points and my money back lol,,,,actual total i caught was 21 yting and a dogfish, no surprise when it was 10 cm undersize lol.
Funniest thing of the night for me was not attaching a rig to the leader properly and it slipping of on the seabed, slightly peeved at myself i quickly attached my second 3 hook flapper and cast into the distance, upon getting a bite i reeled in, hhmmmm me thinks this seems a bigger fish, codling maybe??? nope i actually caught my other 3 hook flapper and dragged that in complete with a ting on both rigs lol, jammy sod or what hey lol, baits used were lug, squid, bluey, sandeal, and prawn,
i do know of a couple of others putting on pulley rigs with size 5/0 hooks to try and avoid the ting, and target the cod, but you guessed it the ting impailed themselves on bigger hooks as well, but with a 3 hook only rule it also limited there options,
seems the water temperature at the shore line maybe a little to high at the moment for the coddies to come inshore, but given a week or 2 and a bit of cold them cod will appear in numbers, , , , , , , , I HOPE