A cold day at Orford Ness

Greenheart · #1 11-30-2010, 05:46 PM

Fished Orford Ness with Simon1968 last Saturday. Set off from A freezing cold Southend at 5am, arrived at a freezing cold & foggy Orford Ness just in time to catch the 7am ferry to the beach. Things were not looking good. A 15 minute trip accross to the part of the beach known as the narrows, saw the lads who had been fishing the beach all night with not a single cod to show

waiting for the return boat. But conditions looked good , although the shingle was frozen solid & once the ferry left we had no choice but to continue. Simon & I both set up pully rigs baited with large squid / lug cocktails. Simon also set up a live bait rig, hoping for a larger fish. A 25lb fish had been reported here the previous week. I was after a Dab for the species hunt, so I also set up a 3 hook flapper rig with size 2 hooks baited with worm. There were about a dozen people fishing the beach & soon everyone started to catch some small whiting.

The weather was getting progressively colder & soon we were fishing in a snowstorm. I was definately glad to be wearing a warm floaty suit & my new thermal boots.

After a while, Simon struck into a better fish & soon beached this nice codling.

He then proceeded to add insult to injury by catching my target species, "A DAB" on this Cod livebait rig...

We fished on untill the ferry returned to collect us at 3pm, but only caught more whiting.

It had been a fun, if somewhat chilly day. And was nicely rounded off with a pint of Adnams in the Jolly Sailor pub on the quayside, followed by a 2 hour drive back to Southend...