Action Man
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2020
- Messages
- 136
- Reaction score
- 969
- Points
- 94
Evening all,
Permission slip was signed by the wife and last night I found myself on at the north Kent rock marks. Low water was at 8:15 and I arrived at about 6:45pm to which I duly foraged for some live hardbacks for the evenings sessions.
Conditions were calm but with a moderate offshore wind, the daytime cloud had passed and was greeted with some nice sunshine.
Fishing was slow, in fact no activity at all and sadly weed was a problem. Huge clumps of jap weed making retrieving really hard work. So much of a problem I got a little bit over zealous with my reel cranking and managed to cause some significant internal damage to my Penn surf blaster. This was gutting, the reel was unusable and I had to hand-pull in a ton of weed and line. Pretty peeved off by now I swapped over to my other reel and got fishing again, this time reducing my casts to 15 mins before winding in and bait changing. Didn’t make much difference though as the weed still caused problems after the shorter duration in the water.
The sun started to fade and the temperature dropped. I then got a succession of solid pull downs but nothing came of it. I decided to reel in and the crab was once again covered in weed, but at least I knew life was out there.
I clipped a fresh trace and crab on, then sent it out after a shorter wade giving the tide was now flooding. I set the drag and went off to chat to another angler close by. Didn’t take long but I got another solid pull down, it sprang back up then pulled down again and again , then suddenly disaster struck! The whole rod and tripod went over face down and slammed into the rocks. Fish on, but what a mess I had laying on the floor in front of me! I managed to get the rod out of the rock pool and had a spirited fight with the fish along with picking up tons of weed on the way in. Finally I had a nice hound of about 7-8lb.
So why did my tripod tip over when I had set the drag? Turns out my drag had actually broken, it was in fact non-functional. Further more I had smashed a guide from my rod when it hit the rocks, and this one was only repaired a few months ago!
There was not much time left on the beach as the time was racing in so I called ‘last cast’, and minutes later I was into another hound, this one coming in at about 4lbs.
After the slow start, It was nice to find a couple of fish, but frustrating in equal measures to bust one reel, find out another one was already broken, then the cherry on the cake was to crack a guide! Suppose consolation comes in many forms, nice to find a few grip leads wedged in the rocks!
Until next time
Alan
Permission slip was signed by the wife and last night I found myself on at the north Kent rock marks. Low water was at 8:15 and I arrived at about 6:45pm to which I duly foraged for some live hardbacks for the evenings sessions.
Conditions were calm but with a moderate offshore wind, the daytime cloud had passed and was greeted with some nice sunshine.
Fishing was slow, in fact no activity at all and sadly weed was a problem. Huge clumps of jap weed making retrieving really hard work. So much of a problem I got a little bit over zealous with my reel cranking and managed to cause some significant internal damage to my Penn surf blaster. This was gutting, the reel was unusable and I had to hand-pull in a ton of weed and line. Pretty peeved off by now I swapped over to my other reel and got fishing again, this time reducing my casts to 15 mins before winding in and bait changing. Didn’t make much difference though as the weed still caused problems after the shorter duration in the water.
The sun started to fade and the temperature dropped. I then got a succession of solid pull downs but nothing came of it. I decided to reel in and the crab was once again covered in weed, but at least I knew life was out there.
I clipped a fresh trace and crab on, then sent it out after a shorter wade giving the tide was now flooding. I set the drag and went off to chat to another angler close by. Didn’t take long but I got another solid pull down, it sprang back up then pulled down again and again , then suddenly disaster struck! The whole rod and tripod went over face down and slammed into the rocks. Fish on, but what a mess I had laying on the floor in front of me! I managed to get the rod out of the rock pool and had a spirited fight with the fish along with picking up tons of weed on the way in. Finally I had a nice hound of about 7-8lb.
So why did my tripod tip over when I had set the drag? Turns out my drag had actually broken, it was in fact non-functional. Further more I had smashed a guide from my rod when it hit the rocks, and this one was only repaired a few months ago!
There was not much time left on the beach as the time was racing in so I called ‘last cast’, and minutes later I was into another hound, this one coming in at about 4lbs.
After the slow start, It was nice to find a couple of fish, but frustrating in equal measures to bust one reel, find out another one was already broken, then the cherry on the cake was to crack a guide! Suppose consolation comes in many forms, nice to find a few grip leads wedged in the rocks!
Until next time
Alan
