Every Cloud has a Silver lining!

Old Smoothound · #1 05-22-2005, 02:27 PM

Hi Guys,

When I got the call from John M to say the trip on White Huntress was cancelled due to the weather, I was very disappointed to say the least.

So I made my way to Veals to collect some fresh peeler crabs, to go down to Porlock North Devon in search of some smuts.
Every cloud has a silver lining, so as always turning a negative into a positive I gleaned some info on where the smuts had been showing.

It was going to be an early start…….up at 3.30am down to Porlock just before dawn to try and beat the impending weather system forecast for later that day.

And what a dawn it was…………………………

Best time of the day.

As I was unloading the gear from the boot of the car, some of my club mates had turned up for their boat trip, which I had declined a place on in favour of the trip on White Huntress, a few weeks earlier.

Christ your up early mate, followed by where you going with all that crab Shaun? Then followed by a lot of P*ss taking when I explained that I had had to change my plans due to the weather on the South Coast. “Skippers are a load of Wussies down there Shaun anything over a force 3 and they don’t go out mate!” was the next p*ss take. Well as you can see from the picky the sea was almost flat calm and a Southwesterly was expected which means it would be coming off the land at Porlock hence the trip was definitely “on” for the club boys boat.

After even more p*ss taking the guys very kindly invited me to join them on the trip “to save me casting a long way at my age”!

So off we steamed for a days fishing off Porlock Bay, the Ivy Stones, the waterfall, the Point Scillery and Lynton. All the bait I had with me was peeler and a couple of frozen mackie and a packet of sand eels.

To cut a long story short what turned out was a glorious day, with lots of fish caught in tough showery conditions. We had a total of 6 Bull Huss, 1 Strap Conger, 8 Pollack, 3 Mackeral, loads of Dawgies and 4 Bass.

Me I caught 1 mother of a Bull Huss weighing 11lbs, 1 strap Conger and as many Dawgies as you could shake your rod at! Ironically no Smoothounds showed up, but there will be another time for them.

Here’s the pictures of the Bully and Strap Conger. Sorry about the quality but in a tossing boat, with one more passenger than it should have it was a bit cramped so I could not take my normal quality pictures…….

All in all the Clouds had a Silver Lining for me on Saturday!