Mr Fish
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2020
- Messages
- 21,107
- Reaction score
- 73,085
- Points
- 116
- Location
- North Devon
- Favourite Fishing
- Shore
At last. It’s been too long.
Have been struggling with headaches and wooziness for nearly a month now. Doctor can’t seem to figure out what it is although nothing obviously bad has been flagged up.
I’ve tried more pills than a hippy on his third day at Glastonbury
Anyway, it means I haven’t felt up to/didn’t trust my condition to go fishing, so have missed the last two club comps.
But this weekend was the end of season 48 hour rollover with about £190 for first, so had to give it a go.
Ideally I’d have liked to hike to remote rock marks for a good huss or rockling and/or spend a day on the mid channel reefs, but sadly I knew that wouldn’t be possible at the moment, I needed an easy mark with not too much walking and I’d been wracking my brains for somewhere to go.
My mate suggested off the path from the back of Capstone in Ilfracombe as it throws up decent rockling and although hardly glamorous, with specimen at 1lb 8 it gives you a fighting chance to weigh something in.
Speaking to another mate, he’d been booked for the hike of doom out to Morte Point with some other lads, but that walk is a killer.
He has MS but on top of that, is getting over a lurgy and was pissed up Friday night.
I said you’ll be fucked before you start mate, come with me instead, so he did.
With cries of ‘you’ll never catch anything there on a neap tide’ from the other lads, we made the not terribly difficult quarter mile walk from the car park to our spot.
It doesn’t get much easier
It’s really just a high tide spot, two hours either side, you’re a fair way up and tbh you really want a big tide, but given the circumstances, beggars can’t be choosers.
The one thing I didn’t want was eels. Apart from not liking the things, anything over 10lb would be a bastard to land and also a long drop for the fish going back. You can see where this is going….
Baits were simple mackerel for me on a two hook flapper on one rod and a 3/0 pennell on the other, nothing too big, to hopefully discourage the eels.
It was slow to start, but after half hour my pennell rod rattled, pulled over, rattled, pulled over. Ffs.
Yep, strap on!
Too heavy to lift with the rod so it was handlining it up, with a protruding lip of grass/cliff in front of me so couldn’t see where it was. Could feel my line grating lovingly over the cliff face though
Up he came. Bloody thing. Didn’t weight it, 6-8lb maybe. Didn’t care
Unfortunately he belly flopped on the way back in and floated pretty motionless. As much as I dislike the things, I don’t want to harm them and always try and get them back quickly. Whether he eventually went back down I don’t know as he drifted under the ledge and didn’t see him again.
You can see he got a mouthful of hay from coming up the grass
My mate forgot his lighter and had to walk back to the car.
While he was gone I caught another strap, much smaller, easy to winch up.
When he got back I caught a third, bigger, needed more handlining, shockleader was fecked.
Then a fourth. I could catch the bloody things in the bath
He still hadn’t caught a fish
Finally I had a rockling. It looked about a pound but on weighing it, only went 10oz. Looked bigger than that so weighed it on my mate’s scales, still 10oz. Oh well.
Forgot the picture, sorry. Pretty fish though.
Hadn’t caught one for 20 minutes so thought I’d better winch up another strap.
Then had a screaming bite. Oh goody, an eel
Nope, actually a 1lb 8 pollack. It would have gone back but my mate said he’d like it so it was his. Good condition fish.
I forget what happened next. I probably caught a strap
Because of the rock wall behind, I’d been casting next to the wall. Bad mistake.
On one cast, as my left hand pulled down it cracked the wall. Cracked my fingernail too.
With blood pissing everywhere I recast, mopped it up with an eel snot encrusted rag and inspected the damage.
It wasn’t too bad. A cut on the fingertip and another that split the nail by about 2mm, with clearly a cut under that but nothing 2-3 weeks of growth won’t sort out.
For the first time in a long time I needed to use my sovereign remedy crucial fishing first aid kit, that sorts out any laceration that doesn’t require a trip to A&E.
Electrical tape, obviously
My mate finally got on the board with a rockling. Well, on the board on the night - none of these fish even met the minimum specimen criteria to qualify to be weighed in.
(We don’t keep them anyway, unless we want to, it’s photos and photo on the scales).
I probably caught another strap
Here’s a pretty view
As the tide dropped, rocks were emerging everywhere but we still had some water to fish in and were still getting good bites.
I hit three and dropped three. By the looks of the bites they were straps (obvs) but they’d grown quite finicky - I often find this on the ebb, you’ll still get bites but they become harder and harder to connect with for some reason.
Around about 1.30am we packed up, although could have probably fished another 45 minutes but we’d both had enough by then, crocks that we are.
So I ended up with (however many, too many) straps, a rockling and a pollack, he only had one rockling
The lads out Morte only had a few straps all night so who picked the better mark?
And didn’t have to suffer a heart attack on the trek back?
I’d definitely go there again as a stop gap, certainly there’s fish there although I would pick a bigger tide.
Have been struggling with headaches and wooziness for nearly a month now. Doctor can’t seem to figure out what it is although nothing obviously bad has been flagged up.
I’ve tried more pills than a hippy on his third day at Glastonbury
Anyway, it means I haven’t felt up to/didn’t trust my condition to go fishing, so have missed the last two club comps.
But this weekend was the end of season 48 hour rollover with about £190 for first, so had to give it a go.
Ideally I’d have liked to hike to remote rock marks for a good huss or rockling and/or spend a day on the mid channel reefs, but sadly I knew that wouldn’t be possible at the moment, I needed an easy mark with not too much walking and I’d been wracking my brains for somewhere to go.
My mate suggested off the path from the back of Capstone in Ilfracombe as it throws up decent rockling and although hardly glamorous, with specimen at 1lb 8 it gives you a fighting chance to weigh something in.
Speaking to another mate, he’d been booked for the hike of doom out to Morte Point with some other lads, but that walk is a killer.
He has MS but on top of that, is getting over a lurgy and was pissed up Friday night.
I said you’ll be fucked before you start mate, come with me instead, so he did.
With cries of ‘you’ll never catch anything there on a neap tide’ from the other lads, we made the not terribly difficult quarter mile walk from the car park to our spot.
It doesn’t get much easier
It’s really just a high tide spot, two hours either side, you’re a fair way up and tbh you really want a big tide, but given the circumstances, beggars can’t be choosers.
The one thing I didn’t want was eels. Apart from not liking the things, anything over 10lb would be a bastard to land and also a long drop for the fish going back. You can see where this is going….
Baits were simple mackerel for me on a two hook flapper on one rod and a 3/0 pennell on the other, nothing too big, to hopefully discourage the eels.
It was slow to start, but after half hour my pennell rod rattled, pulled over, rattled, pulled over. Ffs.
Yep, strap on!
Too heavy to lift with the rod so it was handlining it up, with a protruding lip of grass/cliff in front of me so couldn’t see where it was. Could feel my line grating lovingly over the cliff face though
Up he came. Bloody thing. Didn’t weight it, 6-8lb maybe. Didn’t care
Unfortunately he belly flopped on the way back in and floated pretty motionless. As much as I dislike the things, I don’t want to harm them and always try and get them back quickly. Whether he eventually went back down I don’t know as he drifted under the ledge and didn’t see him again.
You can see he got a mouthful of hay from coming up the grass
My mate forgot his lighter and had to walk back to the car.
While he was gone I caught another strap, much smaller, easy to winch up.
When he got back I caught a third, bigger, needed more handlining, shockleader was fecked.
Then a fourth. I could catch the bloody things in the bath
He still hadn’t caught a fish
Finally I had a rockling. It looked about a pound but on weighing it, only went 10oz. Looked bigger than that so weighed it on my mate’s scales, still 10oz. Oh well.
Forgot the picture, sorry. Pretty fish though.
Hadn’t caught one for 20 minutes so thought I’d better winch up another strap.
Then had a screaming bite. Oh goody, an eel
Nope, actually a 1lb 8 pollack. It would have gone back but my mate said he’d like it so it was his. Good condition fish.
I forget what happened next. I probably caught a strap
Because of the rock wall behind, I’d been casting next to the wall. Bad mistake.
On one cast, as my left hand pulled down it cracked the wall. Cracked my fingernail too.
With blood pissing everywhere I recast, mopped it up with an eel snot encrusted rag and inspected the damage.
It wasn’t too bad. A cut on the fingertip and another that split the nail by about 2mm, with clearly a cut under that but nothing 2-3 weeks of growth won’t sort out.
For the first time in a long time I needed to use my sovereign remedy crucial fishing first aid kit, that sorts out any laceration that doesn’t require a trip to A&E.
Electrical tape, obviously
My mate finally got on the board with a rockling. Well, on the board on the night - none of these fish even met the minimum specimen criteria to qualify to be weighed in.
(We don’t keep them anyway, unless we want to, it’s photos and photo on the scales).
I probably caught another strap
Here’s a pretty view
As the tide dropped, rocks were emerging everywhere but we still had some water to fish in and were still getting good bites.
I hit three and dropped three. By the looks of the bites they were straps (obvs) but they’d grown quite finicky - I often find this on the ebb, you’ll still get bites but they become harder and harder to connect with for some reason.
Around about 1.30am we packed up, although could have probably fished another 45 minutes but we’d both had enough by then, crocks that we are.
So I ended up with (however many, too many) straps, a rockling and a pollack, he only had one rockling
The lads out Morte only had a few straps all night so who picked the better mark?
And didn’t have to suffer a heart attack on the trek back?
I’d definitely go there again as a stop gap, certainly there’s fish there although I would pick a bigger tide.
hope you feel better soon.