Folkestone

Folkestone Warren 20th July 2002

Slightly slower start than the previous two mornings, up at 2.15am, and yet Karen had still only just decided to hit the sack after making me a couple of rounds of sandwiches for the morning …..

By the time I’d got everything together, stopped off for petrol, and generally sorted myself out, I managed to arrive at the Warren just before 4.30am….

The forecast was for a light westerly wind, with sunny periods, with a 50% chance of rain / showers developing. Seemed more like the NE force 2 or less, with occasional rafts of cloud, with an almost crimson sky to the east …. Uummm .. red sky in morning…. So I took my waterproofs with me .. just in case ….. there is no shelter down on the aprons, and having been caught out before, decided that prudence would be the best course of action….

With high water not due until around 8.30am (5.6m), and with the water only just touching the apron base, I decided to take a look at the engineering work at the end of the second apron …. Didn’t look too bad, mainly large protective boulders in front and to the side of the slipway ….. hopefully nothing to disturb the fishing for too long, if at all!!

Walked back to the Nags Head and set-up to start fishing around 5.10am ….. decided that I try a surface popper in the gullies as the rocks / reef were being flooded, casting from the buttress / groins …..
Around 5.20 or so, two other people started plugging from the shore using waders, in front of the large buttresses between the first high apron and the low apron ….. unfortunately they worked their way back down the first high apron as the day wore on, and I never got a chance to speak with them…

By 5.40am, I was forced to stop using the popper …. With its limited resistance, I was forced to run the brain between my fingers to apply additional tension during the retrieve …. However once my fingers started to get wet, the braid started to cut into my index finger joints .. just like very sharp paper cuts ….. add salt water … and yup I’m a soft southerner, and so decided that a nice J9 would be much kinder to my delicate pinkies!!!!!

Moved over to the buttress in front of the No8 conduit and persisted until around 6.30am, when the splash and spray of the incoming tide forced me off …… so I fished either side of the two buttresses, casting from the apron itself using a J13, as the water had risen sufficiently to allow me to do so.

Things looked encouraging, with a greater amount of visibility in the water, slightly calmer conditions to see any surface activity, should it occur, bright and sunny weather, and reasonable amount of baitfish in the water……

BUT ……. Despite my best efforts, of using different plugs, lures, retrieves etc etc ….. nothing, not a dickey bird …. Not a single chasing school bass, nor even the splash from marauding mackerel …. Nothing …. Nothing for a further 3 hours, except for one tired, disillusioned whiting, of the human kind!!!!!

9.30am …. My mobile goes off … it’s Steve Burling …… tells me that the previous evening with his two mates had not gone well … one small school bass lost, and a couple of chasers, otherwise very dead ….. he’d also met a chap fly fishing for mackerel / bass, who’d had success on the Thursday evening with large numbers of mackerel coming in, up to the apron wall, but sadly not that evening.
Also recounted to Steve, how he’d stopped to chat to a Dutch lad, whilst leaving his fly dangling in the water … apparently half way through their conversation, a two and a half foot bass came up from the deep, nosed the fly, and sank back down …. Dutch lad turns and blinks rapidly at the fly fisher and says “ Did that really just happen??” !!!!!

Decide to stick with the Dexter wedge I’ve got on, as it’s nice and sunny, and mackerel as well as bass may just give it a bash….. soon however the FEELING OF DOOM had set in …. And I was back to a J13…

9.50am … ye ha ….. just finishing of the retrieve, when the bottom of my t-shirt gets caught up in the handle of the spinning reel …. And stops the plug dead in the water …. At the same time a small school bass that’s chasing the plug comes into view, and nudges into the plug as it stops …. Not an attack as such, more a colliding bump, before it dives away…….

10.15am ….. start to retrieve the J13 …. Bump … first thought was weed, but soon realised it was a fish, but a small fish …. So had it on the surface…. A small school bass … soon landed, measured (12.5”), photographed, and returned…..

Soon after the wind shifted to the West, and the sea state changed to lumpy ….. gave it about half an hour, but by 10.45am I’d had enough, and so packed up, and trudged off back to the car, and the 80 mile drive home, and bed…. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

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