It was an early start for me to get down to Rockley and join Martin and Dean on AWOL, and by 7 we were motoring out through the harbour, keeping one eye on the plotter/radar screen and one eye on the fog.
The club spirit was soon apparent as various club skippers came up on the radio asking about the sea state and visibility and in normal AWOL style, Martin gave it a bit more throttle so that we could get out there first and report back!
Soon the sky above was giving glimpses of blue and as we neared the island we emerged into the sunshine and picked up a mark, where the anchor was dropped. Great, we thought, all we need now is for this sea to flatten out a bit, and then we can enjoy the pain in our shoulders from reeling in cod after cod...!
Yes, as everyone else has said, the wind blew, and the sea stayed lumpy (both more-so than the forecast had indicated I think) but the sun was shining, and Martin makes a fab cup of tea. But the bites came slowly, and for a while, after Dean was pulling in his fourth Conger and Martin was unhooking more Pout and Doggies, I was worried that I was going to have a blank, even though I was religiously (inspired by Dean who was trying everything in his fishy-attracting arsenal while I sat on my arse waiting to find out what was going to do the trick) changing my bait.
By this time Dean's first box of hand reared (I think it was hand reared going by the price of it) squid had run out and he opened another box. The squid in this one were much smaller. I was fishing with my usual 2 rods, both of which are fairly light and were bending a fair bit with the weight required to hold a big squid on the bottom in the tide, even though I was only using one squid at a time on a 6/0 pennel. So when we started on the little squid I still only used one at a time. Like has been indicated further back in this thread, I now started catching, but still only Pout-cod and Dogfish-cod...
Now, I don't get out nearly as much as I'd like, and it takes me quite a while to get bored of catching Pout and Dogfish, so I was overjoyed when I caught a Pout, then a Dogfish, then another decent sized Pout, then another Dogfish.
On the next drop down I felt something have a go at the bait, so I played about a bit pulling the bait back a bit, then letting out a bit of line, then lifting the bait again. I then felt a proper bite, but not huge, and so set about pulling up another Pout and the big weight on my skinny little rod. Once I got the weight a couple of feet off the bottom the Pout-cod decided to turn into a Cod-Cod and after a few minutes of gentle reeling and praying that my knots/line wouldn't part, up came this!
We all thought "This is it, the time has come! Cod o'clock!" but sadly that turned out to be not the case, and I think Martin only had a couple more doggies all day.
The tide turned and the boat swung around and the sea got lumpier, and to add insult to injury we now had the wind blowing into the back of the boat, and the winter sun wasn't enough to keep us warm. Dean retired inside the canopy, Martin tried to will himself somewhere else, and I tried Nigel's fish-attracting technique of nodding off a bit (didn't work) and about the time that everyone else was giving up, we decided to move back towards home and try another mark.
Sadly this failed to produce any fish at all, and so with the sun setting we upped-anchor and headed for the chain ferry.
It was a fantastic sunset though (almost) enough to make the trip out there worthwhile...
It was a slow day on a horrible lumpy sea (I think those are the worst conditions that I've been out in and 'survived') but I still enjoyed myself, so thanks for Martin and Dean for letting me aboard.
Cod weighed at home as 17lb 1oz.
Still knackered now though!
Oh, and I forgot to mention the bloody red weed!
