New years eve - Lady Helen Penarth.

barbelblanker · #1 01-05-2009, 05:48 PM

Sometimes it's really handy when you sister is engaged to a charter boat skipper (good girl)

.

The Lady Helen was not going out on new years eve so we (Dan , Lloyd and me) went out for a jolly. The weather was COLD, no , BL@@DY FREEZING. I have been up mountains, laid in gravel being rained on and generally been covered in water and mud on many occasions. But this was bitter.

We pulled up in the fog and eventually got the anchor to bite. Baited up and (Dan) cast a few rods upstream. OK to be fair I wimped out, it wasn't my rod and reel and I wanted Dan to brave the wind :)

I put the kettle on (first rule of anything) and we waited.

Within what seemed like no time, Dan hooked a dog (I think, it was cold I can't remember which fish came in when), Lloyd got nailed by what we think was a ray as it dragged him down to the bottom and wouldn't let go and I hooked a cod of about 4.5 LBS. Here we go here we go here we go, them other boats are just going to get smoked.

(Bait was rag, uptided).

Cockiness always precedes a fall.

It went dead , for ages. We had the odd whiting , a couple more dogs , a few conger then moved.

So I decided to cook the bacon and sausage we'd bought along and that's when we noticed the flame of the gas, just.

No gas (or it was too cold). Oh! Bigger ! It was looking like cold soup and rolls when Dan remembered the Barbi' he had thought better of throwing out not a coupe of days before. Now we were all aware how bl@@dy dangerous an open fire was so we CAREFULLY lit it in a stainless steel tray so we could get rid of it in the event of a problem. One frying pan, some sausages and bacon later me and Dan were eating. Lloyd decided that salmonella was not a good idea, me and dan knew that with the amount of beer we were probably about to consume on return that would not be a problem. That's better.

After the fire was out and we had our fill, Dan moved us to another mark.

We went after spur dogs and within minutes (again) of anchoring at the new spot, Dan was in ON THE ONLY ROD WITHOUT A WIRE TRACE. ALL them others they could have picked but NO . Needless to say after a hard and short fight Mr Spur closed his jaws and it was bye bye.

Lloyd repeated his trick of catching something big which , this time, tore off up tide and found the anchor rope. Not before it put a hell of a cruve in the rod.

The funniest moment was when Lloyd caught a conger (around 15-16 LB we reckon) and went to unhook it. Not hooked, it had swallowed a whiting and from 100 feet down had refused to let go. EVENTUALLY with some persuasion it released it's victim and was returned to attack another day. The whiting was not so impressed. Boy I would hate to get my finger in there.

A couple of conger and the odd bit here and there and we decided to see if there was one more spot to try.

(bait was mixed, mainly mackerel fillet, again uptided).

Now I thought it was rough AND had been drinking with my dad and a good friend of mine who has been lecturing in Thailand for ages but came home recently

, the night before. So I did NOT sit down on the way back

as I think I might have seen breakfast if I had (not to mention the sausage and bacon)

.

In the end it was just too rough to anchor up and time was running away with us too, so we went back to Penarth.

After freezing and bouncing all the way back we moored up, went home had a shower and that was it , down the pub

for a few new years pints before home for even more. I was still swaying

at midnight (and that WAS down to the fishing as I was completeley sober, so the pixies tell me).

Thanks as always to Dan for his skippering, Lloyd for his excellent company and of course Mike for owning the boat .