I'm off having a weekend break with the missus to celebrate our wedding anniversary so naturally I'm showing her a good time by taking her fishing with me. To be fair she actually loves it and I get the bonus of a picnic lunch and action shots If I get a bend in the rod although that never happens to me here at West Bay.
It's a place I love fishing but never do well at and in my defence there are much easier docks and quays on the South coast, my tally over a few trips has amounted to a lone wrasse, a handful of blennies, and a few small pouting.
A reccie the day before saw everyone blanking aside from the many kids crabbing who were filling their buckets much to the delight of the herring gulls that would swoop down for a buffet upon release. More encouraging were the huge shoals of small pouting, I only knew they were pout due to the kids picking a few up in their crab nets. That'll do me I thought - a few small pout, whittle out a shanny or two and off to the pub, if not I'll try for the mullet in the shallow end but these were also very small. Either way it will be fun fishing on coarse gear.
The rules here state 'Handlines or float fishing only' as the entrance is so narrow so naturally everyone lobs out a lead or casts a lure, but floatfishing suits me as it's all I do after all, none of that huge sea float malarkey either, you know the size of a cuban cigar, nope I'm looking for bites of the little 'uns so it's a bog standard avon float, so cue scenic float pic..
I set up in a corner that usually produces the odd blenny and get plenty of bites but they are so small they are coming off the hook, I swap my size 10 wide gape for a 14 a manage to get a minnow sized pollack of all things before a succession of tiny pout, small fish target achieved I reverted back to the size 10 and moved to the main channel, here it was fun trotting along holding back in deeper water and good ten feet or so down.
I then joke with a crabber I pass after he was initially impressed with my tally of 6 fish that were I to eat these they would be smaller than the chips. I then had the urge to move on near some rocks after as the chap there had just packed up. "of to catch some monsters?" the crabber quipped "Yeah right!" was my lighthearted response happy to settle for anything chunkier than take away potato produce. Little did I know!
I get to the pier's and where the ebbing tide hits some rocks hoping for a wrasse, by now it was quite shallow but I continued to feed each run through around 4 feet deep. These cheap Sainsburys prawns are so small they are like big maggots, because of this you get plenty in a pack so in a few went each cast, little and often as the saying goes.
I was enjoying trotting along these rocks and taken by surprise when the float buries, I strike thinking it's a rock before the clutch screams and the pure silver of a stunning bass not a wrasse flanks brightly in the spray, I ask the wife to pass my trust Diawa Iso but for some reason she's extending it fully on the quay, not a good idea as it's best to extend it using gravity when fishing from a height, fortunately seeing our commotion another angler rushed to our aid, here's an action shot of it at the crucial moment.
All the fish were returned unweighed and unmeasured but that's a 28" net so go figure. The place was super busy and I was getting quite an audience.People on the other side of the quay were talking to passers-by pointing at me doing the 'This big' gesture with their hands, I reckon they gave the bass a few extra inches, but it felt great given I would have been happy with something akin to a thumb and finger measurement at the start of the trip.
A doff of the hat also to Martin from Wimborne for landing these fish for me, It's always a grind when the person next to you is hauling and your not so I was happy to watch him finally get a knock and bend into an eel of all things. He said he was an experienced angler when offering to help with my first fish, I put my trust in him and he didn't let me down, landing them all without hesitation, thanks mate.
By now the tide had changed and so did my lovely trot, the flow reversed and the wind got in our faces, my cheap old prawns were falling short but I was almost out of them anyway, thoughts now turned to that pint, after one last look out to sea.
We packed up and the skies started to brighten instantly and yes that beer tasted so good, as did the second, by the time we decided to head back to out accomodation small mullet the size of dace were sunning themselves lazily on the surface, not often you see these from a pub garden.
