DUNGENESS

Dungeness 19th Dec.1999

Drove down to Marsh Tackle around 2pm to have a chat with Dave and collect my bait (5score of gutted yellow-tail and a pack of squid) along with my AWT which had now been fixed..

Dungeness had not been my first choice of venues for the day, having got up at 4.30am that morning to fish Dover Breakwater, only to have my plans scuppered by the Met.Office with a forecast of force 5 to 7 winds...

Dave confirmed the rumors I’d received through the grapevine, that the fishing had picked up over the past ten days or so, and told me that a number of cod had been caught around Dungeness, although he did say it had been noticeable fishing better at low water.... so that’s where I headed off to around 3.30pm even though high water was due around 8pm....

Arrived at the small parking area in front of the fishing boats, and was greeted by a chap just coming off the beach .. We exchanged pleasantries about the cold weather etc, and was informed that there were about half a dozen people already fishing, and that one chap had a codling around the 5 to 6lb mark, although that had been during the early afternoon....

Walked up over the ridge, and set-up in front of the workman’s area just east of the point. The wind was reasonably light say around force 3 from the north, but with the cold snap, felt rather bitter to the skin...

Set-up two rods, with a rotation of 2/0 or 3/0 flowing wishbones or a 2/0 : 4/0 clip down pennel loaded with lug or squid or a combination as the mood took me....

Sorted out the Beach Buddy to give myself some extra protection from the chill wind and dropping air temperature.... and found that I had to replace one of the mantles on the Coleman that had been damaged in transit ..... I then sat back and waited....

Started to get lots of savage little whiting bites .... but failed to connect, but then as I was deliberately using large baits for cod, this was more of an annoyance rather than failure.... mind you, after 2 hours I was beginning to think that single worm baits on size 1 hooks could have been more interesting....

6.30pm .... eventually land one of the bait robbing whiting on the wishbone ... all 10” of it!!!!

7.05pm .... another whiting, this time 11”...

7.15pm... just rebaited up .. cast out ... get a little slack with my very numb fingers, and I get a birdie and a crackoff with the rocket ..... why is it that you always a crack-off when you’ve just loaded up your hooks and thinking that it looks particularly good in terms of presentation, and how could any discernible cod possibly turn it down ..... !!!

7.25pm ... OH JOY ... another 11” whiting

Go over to the two chaps fishing next to me .... have a look at the codling caught earlier in the day .. chap tells me he had a five ponder the night before, and that a number of cod around the 8lb mark were also caught over the past week .. the best being 15lb the previous weekend.... A little while later he came over and very kindly gave me 4 score of gutted yellowtail and some commons, and said that they’d had enough having fished all day ..... I should have taken the hint ....
Looked around to find I was the only one left on the beach.....

8.00pm 11” Whiting .......
8.25pm ... 12” Whiting......

Then nothing ...... and I mean nothing... the whiting bites stopped ... everything stopped .... it just got colder .. I even put a mug of coffee down to rebait my hooks, came back, and it had a crust of ice!!! ....
By 9.45pm, and no sign of any fish, the tide dropping fast, and with frozen fingers, I decided to call it a night, and drive back the 90 odd miles to Surbiton.....

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