Folkestone

Folkestone Rotunda Beach 3rd Nov.1999

Drove down to Marsh Tackle around 2.30pm to have a chat with Dave Hughes .. shop was busy with potential customers, so I settled myself down in a corner and waited.....

Had a lengthily chat with Dave over a cup of coffee and a few fags, about the state of fishing, the business etc .... got around to the disaster of my Diawa AWT sticking ... Dave took a good look at it, and felt confident that it could be repaired with a new spigot ... he then showed me the way to unstick a rod .... picked up a rod, and banged the butt against a wall .. jammed the two pieces solid ... then got two of us to hold each end (about 3 foot away from the join) and apply tension, Dave then took hold of the joint sections and moved it in a wide circular action (no pulling or twisting)... after about 3 minutes the joint popped open ... a very useful and handy tip .. Dave said that Diawa have a special machine that is designed to do the job!!

I bought a few weights, powergum etc, along with a small diode light for Dave to fix to the tip of the AWT once it's been fixed .... told him it was a show of confidence in his ability to fix the rod ;-). Then continued chatting about this and that until the digger arrived just after 4pm with the fresh gutted yellowtail. Paid for the four score, and grabbed a pack of squid to boot.

I'd not really decided where to fish .... as it was getting towards dusk, decided that Deal was too far to go .... floated the idea of Princes Parade at Hythe at Dave, who said it had not been fishing well this week, and that he still felt it was a long distance casters venue, ever since the sea defence work took place there some years ago. Dave had told earlier that people had been catching quite a lot of bass on worm baits over the last few weeks, and as the Rotunda is a known Bass, Cod and Whiting venue I decided to give it a try ....

Arrived at the Rotunda just as it was getting dark around 5pm ...... I decided to head towards the pilot house end, as the Rotunda has numerous rocky reefs esp at the Sandgate end.

Set-up two rods, one with a 2 hook (1/0's) clip-up rig, the other with a flowing wishbone ... both loaded with yellowtail, and occasionally tipped with squid. Although I'd taken the Beach Buddy I didn't bother setting it up, as the SW wind was only force 1 to 2, and the cloud cover was breaking-up. So I started fishing around 5.30pm, and then sat on my box and waited for H/W at 8pm.

Over the next half an hour I realised that the spot I'd chosen had a reef right in front of me, and lost two sets of tackle ..... I remembered Dave's words about bass, and decided to fish short, thus targeting the bass, and other fish as they moved inshore under the cover of darkness, and avoiding the reef which was about 80yrs out. It also ment not having to pack up and relocate myself .. something I really didn't want to do .....

6.15pm .... had a series of sharp tugs on what was now a 2/0:4/0 clip down pennel (instead of the wishbone) ..... reel-in, and up pops a 13" whiting.....

6.35pm ... get a series of sharp savage tugs on the pennel again (much more aggressive than the whiting bite), and the rod tip lurched forward .. reeled in to find a small bass of 12"...

6.50pm .... again have a series of sharp savage tugs and a bouncing rod tip ... another 12" bass results.....

7.30pm .. same story except on the 2 hook rig, and an 11"bass

Over this whole period I'd been having bites and tugs on both rods but failed to connect .. probably due to the size of hooks and the nature of the attacks on the baits ... but I wasn't worried .. I was hoping that may be larger fish were abroad.....

Well no .... after H/W.. things really slowed down and I caught one 6.5" pout around 8.30pm.

My headlight started to pack-in .. I'd forgotten to recharge the power pack!!!! Not really a problem as the beach is well illuminated by the lorry park behind .....

Landed a large edible crab around 9.00pm (which Karen had for lunch) .... and packed-up around 10.00pm......

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