First sailing was just before high tide, at 1400. Just Mitch on board. A story to that... Well, always a story to everything I guess. A much longer story meant I was on the vodka the night previous, celebrating loads of stuff. Sadly though, I forget the toll hard alcohol takes on my body, and I was still wondering if it was a good idea as we headed out. Just mitch, as it was a penalty trip for me. Free of charge.
You may have noticed, I am a one man band, and some days I get it very wrong. Not with the fish, you understand, as they are the easy bit of this business. But with booking the trips. On one particularly bad afternoon, I managed to not put Mitch, Mark and Damo's bookings into the diary, This leads to them thinking they are on, but being given the bad news the night before. However, where it is my fault, you also get instantly a free session, or as many free sessions as I hadn't put down. Customers always fight me on this. "No, its ok. We see how crazy it all gets". But... I do actually need to penalise myself so that I don't do it again. And here Mitch was, for a double session.
I wasn't expecting too much from this session, but as always, the fish has other ideas. All the quality fish from the 9 landed, were on surface lures. The 8lb 12oz fish that made me cover girl tonight, hit an Axia glide in Sardine colours. The lure of the day though, was the Sammy. Especially on Mitch's rod. He fished really well, and took the bulk of the fish. We did do some shadding, but only small fish were eating the mighty minnows. We also got abused from a militant naked lesbian, who turned up at the side of the boat to tell us we shouldn't be there. Apparently, the square buoys marked "BOAT LANE" means exclusively for swimmers. It is amazing how empowered militant lesbians can get, even naked, when they think they are correct. The fact that these lanes have been put among the swim buoys precisely to allow craft to access the beach (further marked on shore by a pole with a square hat, although these usually quickly end up being burned by naked bbq folk ) at 8 knots max, seemed to carry no clout at all. It took a pretend call to the police for her to finally heave her rolls of fat back to the shingle, gather her clothes and depart.
2nd sailing, and we were joined by Mark, and Danielle, of "Street fishing London" fame. I had invited him down, as he is a very experienced drop shotter, and I was thinking that might be the way to beat the pin fry. But it clearly isn't necessary when the surface lure is not only producing lots of action, but quality fish also.
Of the 14 fish we landed in this sailing, Most over the 42cm, up to the 4lb mark, once again, Mitch and his Sammy in Ayu did most of the catching. At least 9 of that tally. A truly excellent performance. Lota of misses as well. Deffo some big fish lurking around as well. And with a really good forecast for surface lures for much of this week, I really cannot wait to get back to it in the morning. Still a few spaces on most days for the rest of the week as well, thanks to the football...