Folkestone

Folkestone Warren 16th July 2001

Well it’s official… I’m bonkers…. Decided not only to fish the Dawn Patrol, but to stay and fish the following evening tide as well…..
Forecast was for a variable wind of force 2 or 3 changing SE force 4 later…. Bright and sunny….. HW was due around 7.45am and then again around 8pm…

Having fished the two previous morning tides I was somewhat reluctant to leap out of bed at 2am .. but somehow managed to do some just a little while later… drove down to Folkestone and got to the Warren just before 4am…. By the time I’d walked to the slipway on the second apron and tackled up with a J9 for the shallow water of the advancing tide it was 4.30am….

Nothing much to report for the first hour or so, until around 5.40am when a small garfish jumped clear of the water right in front of me some 20ft away … gave me a start in that half dream state of dawn!!!

By 6.30am I decided to move back towards the Nags…. But there were already two chaps fishing directly under the Nags, casting out a variety of lures… so I fished over the second reef just down from them…..

I got the chance to have a chat with them later on … transpired that they’d been fishing Folkestone Pier all that weekend (14th/15th) ….. they’d had a tough time of it as well … with only mackerel showing on the top of the tide, and with very little if anything else about despite fishing in a number of ways, such as down the wall, out onto the sandbank from the elbow etc etc…. and at night the only thing being caught were dogfish!!! :-(

Just after 7am they moved off to fish beyond the backwall…. And so I took up station under the Nags … and started to chop and change between a J13, Slither, and a Dexter Wedge …..
9.06am … tug on the slither but failed to connect :-(

The wind had effectively dropped to nothing and the surface was a mill pond …. Just like a liquid mirror … but there was no sign of fish fry or the tell tale signs of fish being driven to the surface by predators below…

9.30am … The two chaps returned from the point….. no joy for them either :-(
By 10.15am I’d had enough and made my way back to the car….

But having arranged to meet Leon Roskilly for the evening tide I tucked myself up in the Car (which I’d parked so it would be in shade) and cat napped waiting for his intended arrival around 4pm…..

As it was Leon found me rather bleary eyed at 3pm.. an hour earlier than I’d expected ….
Slowly got my act together and we made out way down to the campsite for an ice cream …. The chap who ran the site / shop who had an interest in fishing, told us he’d only seen a couple of bass landed so far this year although there was talk of more that he hadn’t seen…

Leon and myself walked back towards the Nagshead for about 5.30pm, and pointed out to Leon the amount of slippage that had occurred all along the Warren cliffs, as a function of the high rainfall experienced during the winter …which I think was also exasperated by one of the large faults slipping in the centre of the second apron with the down throw side to the west where the greatest amount of slippage has occurred……

The wind had already increased and was blowing around 3 to 4 from the SW and making the surface very lumpy … very different from the mornings calm!!!!

Leon had arranged a fish-in for AnglersNet for the following Sunday (I thought for some strange reason it was on the Sat .. and then realised I couldn’t make the Sunday as Karen had arranged a lunch with friends!!!) ….. anyway the main target for the fish-in was for garfish and so Leon wanted to see what was about and set up to float fish for them using thin strips of mackerel….
He’d also brought his mullet fishing gear to give me a visual demonstration of his techniques as I’d been badgering him about going mullet fishing for ages …. And whilst the conditions were far from ideal (I should point out that there are mullet down the Warren .. but few fish for them … not sure many anglers are aware of their presence…)
It was a most instructive exercise in a method of fishing I was wholly unfamiliar with… see Mullet at Chatham
He also showed me a weed or wreck guard hook as an alternative to a treble on say a Dexter Wedge and cut down the amount of weed picked up….. which seemed like a very good idea considering the quite considerable amounts of weed floating about in the water.. I wondered where it had all come from as it was nowhere as bad on the previous morning tide!!!!

As the evening wore on, the wind actually dropped significantly …… however to our surprise the sea remained very choppy, and so continued to obscure any surface activity that may have been occurring…

I chopped and changed between a J13 and a Dexter Wedge, whilst Leon fished for mullet with a self hooking rig and focused on the float fished mackerel strip …

Neither of us had any joy…. And by 7.30pm the “Doom Feeling” had set in, and we decided to call it a day and headed off to the cars and then home….

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