Dover Breakwater 14/4/01

Weather forecast at 5am was for force 3 variable, changing to force 4/5 SW occasionally 6, with rain later….. yippee … the Breakwater was on….

Drove down to Kent with Karen .. managed to twist her arm and persuade her that fishing would be much more fun than working on her PhD…. Arrived at Marsh Tackle just after 7am, to find both Dave and Wendy waiting with bait and coffee … now that has to be service.. and with a smile as well :-)

Decided that as the fishing was going to be scratching at best (doggies, pout, whiting and dab), and that we would probably not be able to fish the back wall due to previous storm damage, we went for 5 score of wrapped black and a large bag of baby squid.

Arrived at Dover just before 8am .. the roadside parking meter was out so we unloaded the gear and then managed to sort out parking next to the Dumphead in the old lorry park… just like everyone else who subsequently came along!!! :-)

There were only a handful of people waiting for the boat (by the new lifeboat station) although more arrived as we waited.. talked to Tom (the pier marshal) who confirmed that fishing from the back wall was prohibited until repair work had carried out, and the same thing went for the knuckle (pegs 1-12)….. only other problem was that high water (5.8m) was not due until we’d have left ie 4.20pm.

Went over in the first boatload, walked down towards the eastern end of the Wall and set up between pegs 52-57.

We set one rod up each with 2/0 or 1/0 wishbones loaded with black lug and squid, and started fishing just before 9am…. I also set up a pennel with squid and had that down the wall for a while before the tide kicked in and made it somewhat impractical to use….

9.45am …. Nice series of bites that yielded a double shot, with a 23” dogfish and a 12” dab…..

10.05am … Karen pulls in a similar sized dogfish…..

10.35am ….. another dab to me, this time 8”

11.05am … manage to get into a 3 way tangle with Karen and the chap fishing down from us… but I still managed to pull up a dab of 8.5”….

11.40am … Karen pulls up a nice flounder of 13.5”….

Things then went very quiet for everyone .. with the odd pout, doggie and whiting coming up here and there…. Around 2.30pm the chap down from us around peg 30 pulled up what I thought was a Pollack of 2 to 3 lb, but on closer inspection and a wracking of my brains, plus a bit of umming and aaaring, realised my error, and that in fact it was a Coalfish ….. and kicked myself later for not having taken a pic for the Aquarium… oh well next time…

3.00pm …. Karen has a double shot with a 10” dab and an 11.5” pouting…

Packed up shortly afterwards to catch the boat home, overheard Tom saying that someone had managed to pull up a 3lb codling ….. unfortunately the chap he was telling had blanked!!!!

Either Return to Dover index Page
OR
Return to HomePage of UK Sea Fishing Diary