Dover Breakwater 31st Jan.1998

Arrived in Dover around 7.30am, went to Bills Bait and Tackle to pick-up my order of 4 score of fresh Yellowtail lug, along with some French Booms and a few other items of terminal tackle. Then nipped along to Channel Angling to collect 2 score of Rag.......

Caught the second boat across, and set-up around peg 60. Decided to fish a long flowing wishbone on both the inside (2/0's) and outside (4/0's), along with a "Christmas tree" (1/0's), down the inside for Pollack...... The chat at the Quay had been encouraging, with reports from the "Wall" from Wednesday being good in terms of codling, although only a few flatties and a dogfish were taken with them.

The weather was fine, although the wind was slightly stronger than I had expected, around force 5 and from the East...... high tide was at 1pm or so, and was large 6.9m.....

Started fishing around 9am, and it was obvious from the start that the tide was going to be a problem, even with 8oz fixed wire leads...... managed to get tangled to the right, were they had cast over my line (they had a bad time of it... they had only got 170g breakaway leads.... too light for this kind of tide....), and I managed to do the same to the Spanish (or could be French) chap to my left..... after this happened a couple of times, the Spanish chap, very kindly suggested that it would be much better if I walked up and cast beside him (although he was some 25 pegs away.....) , and then allowed my tackle to drift over and away from his..... wished brought my thinking cap with me, and could have avoided the problems from the outset.........

10.05am: Landed the first fish of the day...... 18" codling, just over 1.3/4lb, from the inside.....

11.00am: Tidal run changes direction... this means it's flowing in the opposite way to the wind...... white horses start to get rather large, but we were parallel to them so no problems, however looked like all the charter boats came running back to home....... it also ment that my last cast outside, was now in the wrong position, which I don't think amused the Spanish.....

11.15am: An other codling from the inside, this time 17"........

11.45am: and another from the inside.... 15" codling........

Things were really slow, most people looked as if they had blanked, and I had nothing from the outside, and not even a hint of a bite from down the wall......

1.00pm: High tide and a few fish are being pulled in...... I also have my first fish from the outside... 16" codling.....

1.20pm: 14" codling again from the outside......

2.00pm: last codling of the day for me... 16.1/2" codling from the outside......

I saw only two good fish in the 3 to 4 lb range being landed, one by the Spanish Chap (peg 35 ish), and the other at peg 20......

3.20pm: Packing up to catch the boat back, and landed my last fish of the day.... 12.1/2" whiting from the inside.......

The Chaps fishing from Bedford (I think), gave me a couple of score of left-over yellowtail........ they'd managed a few fish between them...... infact that was the picture all the way along as far as I could tell........ looks like the codling are thinning out and fast ...... :-(

The strap on my tackle box, finally gave up the ghost... it's an old canvas job over a metal frame... Efgeeco Rover.... had it for over 20 years, still remember the day I went into Gary's Tackle shop in Folkestone, with Tony Swain to go and buy it........ anyway, nipped into Channel Angling on my way home and grabbed one of those large plastic Diawa boxes.... should have done so, a long time ago.......

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