I really don't mind a good swell and a dose of chop but its no fun fishing in seriously heavy seas. I don't get sea sick in any weather and I always try to nab the stern peg if I possibly can so that I can ride out the swell in relative comfort when the troughs get deep (and enjoy the added benefits that this position gives for presentation of baits in the tide) but getting batted about like a ping pong ball for nine hours in relentless wind and soaking spray and with no way out unless 'skip' decides its too much work taking care of his mostly puking green faced charges, is just purgatory, even so.
On the day, the complement of eight who'd originally agreed to fill the boat, had shrunk to just three! Me, my mate Steve and the organiser, Richard, a guy who I hardly knew, but was about to become acquainted with...
Richard likes to drive hard and fast. 'Driving aggressively' is not quite the couplet of words I am searching for; a wholly inadequate description, but somehow we arrived in Lyme in whole pieces, all twelve limbs attached to our three bodies - I thought the experience may have been a good way of preparing for the uncertainties of venturing on the briny...
We checked into our B&B, went out on the town and got the drinks in.
Lyme Harbour - the Neptune is the blue boat moored to the Cobb wall in the distance
Next morning we boarded the Neptune, our skipper and his son Luke greeting us warmly and then steamed out of harbour and towards who knew where? Richard had led us all to believe we were going wrecking but it seemed we were actually going to do a spot of black bream fishing over slack water and then on the tide drift for bass and pollack. Just fine by me, this was just up my street having never caught a bream before, and with bass of a stamp well above that available off the beaches of Essex a going prospect, and both fish about as good eating as fish get, I was well chuffed. Plus, we had a whole boat built for eight anglers between just three!
Leaving harbour...
Full bore!
The reef was five miles out and quite crowded with other boats on arrival. We anchored up in what was quite a heavy sea for such bright calm conditions and started dropping baits down through a hundred feet of water to the bed below; now a hundred feet seems quite a way down vertically but it is of course only thirty yards, and that's really not much at all but pumping my first fish up to the surface was a surprisingly long winded affair. It was just a little dogfish but it got me the first fish of the day bet in the bag! I was already a tenner up and as there was only three of us and only one more bet, that of biggest fish, I could no longer lose!
The Skipper and Richard...
Richard had a dogfish then got the first bream, a tiddler that Luke threw back. Steve working off the other side of the boat wasn't getting bites. Me and Richard, him off to my right and me sitting comfortably on my favourite perch, the stern, were getting all the action even though Steve's baits could not have been more than just a few yards away. It's the ground bait bag full of mashed mackerel carcasses and guts that the skipper ties to the anchor of course, the scent moving away down tide and under the boat but the tidal current on the deck 100ft below was obviously moving in a very slightly different direction than it was up top, in this case toward the stern at the port side of the boat. Steve was off the trail...
I had another couple of doggies and then hooked up to something that tugged sharply and up came my first bream, of about a pound and a half. Richard pulled in another doggie or two and a brace of keeper bream. Steve was looking forlorn so I invited him over to the stern, but he stayed put!
Luke unhooks and displays my first bream...
Then I hooked something altogether different, powerful and weighty, a fish that was putting the thirty pound class rod into a mighty curve, dragging the tip right down to the water before line peeled off the reel. I pumped it up in the water and then when I'd managed to lift it half way up it was off. I reeled in only to find the snood bitten through with a overhand knot somehow tied into the broken length dangling from the boom, and the hook missing. A small conger eel I reckon.
As time for the drifting approached I hit another bream but this was a far better fish, for sure. When it finally appeared in the upper surface Luke and the skipper told me in no uncertain terms to go very carefully now as this was a good fish and only lightly lip hooked. It was expertly netter by Luke and sure enough it really was a good un' tipping the scales at three pounds and a quarter - biggest fish so far. Err, also a personal best as I'd caught another earlier! Twenty quid up!
A specimen bream!
Then we started drifting lures for the bass, pollack, and the chance of a cod. Well. we drifted over the reefs for hours and I had hardly a knock whilst the skipper brought home the first bass, a three pounder, and then Steve finally hit form with a steady supply of hits and fish to his jelly worm, a keeper bass of four and a bit pounds which robbed me of ten quid, and a small pollack, a pouting and a tub gurnard all of which were returned.
Steve and Billy Bass...
My lure and Richards too, got barely looked at and my first certain bite only came right at the end of the tide, and just as it was time to go back to the ledger for bream in the last hour's fishing a time in which I landed another doggie and Richard hooked a fish which tugged about and then went solid as the bottom was snagged, though he swears blind it was always' fish on!'
Dinner time for the gulls - Luke gutting the catch
The day's keeepers...
That was that. We steamed home and had our catch safely ensconsed in the B&B fridge and went out for a cottage pie.
Next morning we got back in the car. I was dreading it, didn't trust Richard at the wheel one little bit, but was hoping that having the pressure to arrive at port swept away by a good weekend and no rush whatsoever to get back, he would have become becalmed. I was out of luck - the pub was waiting and his drop outs, who would be present around lunchtime needed to be slapped about the face with wet fish...
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