Dover Breakwater 30th Jan.1999

Drove Paul Davies and myself down to Dover, in the knowledge that the forecast was in our favour to be taken across to the Breakwater .... SW winds force 3 to 4, mainly dry.....

Arrived at Dover around 7.30am, and went straight to Bills Bait and tackle where we had ordered our supply of lug for the day.... Clive greeted us with his usual cheery smile, and said that the tides would allow him to dig yellow-tails for the Sunday if I wanted them instead of the commons that were booked ...... readily agreed, and also purchased some small whole squid .... just as Paul had done.....

A quick bit of car driving around the building works that seem to have partitioned Snargate street into two, and we grabbed our packs of Ragworm from Roy in Channel Angling....

We arrived at the DumpHead only to find 14 other anglers ahead of us, and the news that Pegs 20 to 90 were pre-booked for a SAMF match...... worse the same pegs were also to be booked for Sunday as well, along with Pegs 100 to 130 for a Duke of Wellington match too...........

Paul and I decided that as we would have to catch the second boat, and that the first all had non-match anglers aboard, we would simply have to go and take what ever space we could, close to the 100 mark...... indeed when we got over Paul took up position around 96, and I at about 100 or so to give ourselves some space....

Set-up 3 three rods ..... Outside I had one rod with a 2/0 : 4/0 pennel, either baited with a whole small squid, or a large worm/squid bait, and another outside with a 4/0 long flowing wishbone with 4/0 hooks baited with large worm baits.... Paul had pretty much the same set-up ..I also had a rod on the inside with a 2/0 flowing wishbone, again baited with worm.....

Started fishing around 8.45am, and hoped to make use of high water which was due around 10am ....... the reality was a few missed bites, but nothing for almost a hour :-(

9.40am: Paul brings in an 8.5" pouting from the outside.....

9.55am: Paul looks to be struggling with his rod.... I asked him if he was in ... he nodded his head, and I told him to hang-on, until I'd sorted the drop-net .... quickly attached some weights to the bottom, followed by the rope ... in truth however, it really needed a lot more weight esp. around the top rim to make it sink vertically and not be continuously swept sideways with the tidal flow...... eventually, and with a lot of puffing / blowing/ swearing .. we managed to land the fish ... all 21" of codling and at just a shade under 4lb, that had taken a fancy to his lug and squid combo mounted on the pennel..... Paul was a happy chappy ....... me ... I had yet to hook a fish, let alone a fish big enough for the table!!!!!!

10.25am .. bring an 8" poor-cod on the outside wishbone.....

10.40am .. bring in a double shot from the inside .. 12" codling and a sad looking starfish!!!!!

10.45am: Paul has an 8" pouting from the outside....

I then lost three rigs in rapid succession ... two to tackle snags, one outside, one inside, and one the result off a crack-off using the whippy ABU rod on the inside to cast over the snag I'd just lost gear to!!!! .... God was trying to tell me something .. I decided as no-one else seemed to be pulling much in from the inside, I'd just fish the outside and with wishbones only.....

11.15am: I have a 9" pout ......

11.34am: manage to get tangled up with the chap next door, but still have a 7" pout......

12.25pm: Both Paul and myself, pull up 8" pouts!!!

12.54pm: I have another 7" pout........

1.10pm: Paul has a double shot, with a 13" codling and a 7" dab..... five minutes later and I've got a double shot with an 8" pout, and an 8" dab......

1.45pm .... manage to get snagged again, loose another set of tackle, and decided to fish with just one rod......

2.15pm: Talking to Paul about when the Plaice may be in, and saying around March/April time ..... just as I'm saying this, my rod starts giving a series of sharp twitches ..... you've guessed it .... up comes one 12" plaice ..... tried to get Paul to talk about double figure Bass, but for some strange reason, he declined ;-)

3.00pm Paul had our last fish, an 8" dab....... packed up around 3.30pm to catch the boat home....

Only one cod of around 7lb was landed and that was around Peg 150, in the first ten minutes of fishing!!!! 2 another codling slightly smaller to Pauls were caught as far as we know, one in the comp, the other in the knuckle..... most were catching small pout and dabs, with the odd school bass, dogfish and flounder thrown in..... the SAMF match were fishing catch and release, and were getting 5 points a fish , an a point for every cm over 15cm, so it was in their interest to go for numerous small fish rather than infrequent larger ones, which may have distorted our perspective of what could have been caught....

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