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Elizabeth Castle Breakwater 17th Aug 2000
GR: 640,471
Decided to try for some larger wrasse, followed by an evenings ground fishing from the Elizabeth Castle Breakwater..... High water was due around 9.00pm, with a forecast for a sunny day with scattered showers and a light SW wind of 2/3.
Chris and myself had been out the previous day to La Saut Geffray collecting 50p sized hard backed crabs to try and enhance our chances of enticing the larger wrasse .... I'd also collected some fresh ragworm from the Motor Works to supplement those that we'd dug at the same time as crabbing, and Chris had obtained a large box of squid from the fish market that morning.
Drove over to pick Chris up around 2pm, and managed to park the car right by the slipway from where the DUCKS leave for the castle..... unloaded the car, and were fortunate enough to catch the next DUCK doing across within a matter of minutes .....
paid our money for the crossing as fishermen,..... bit of a bumpy ride over the sand/rocks at low water, but a lot more pleasant than carrying all the gear across..........
Walked through the castle grounds towards the Breakwater ...... had a chat with the Warden at the Breakwater Gate ..... this gate allows access to and from the breakwater via the castle, and is locked after 4.30pm , otherwise access to the breakwater is from the shore, which is a low water event only!!!!!!!...... Had to phone Karen at the same time to tell her that the last Duck was leaving for the Castle just before 5pm, and that the Gate would be shut at 4.30pm .... the Warden very kindly said he'd help if there proved to be a problem for Karen gaining access to meet us later in the day..... we thanked him, and setoff for the breakwater itself...
We'd intended to fish the inside of the Breakwater, which was rather lucky really, as there are no railings on the western side, and neither of us had brought rod stands, as we'd tried to cut down on our load for the long walk back later that night!!!!
We set up a couple of rods down the wall with 2/0 hooks with crab for wrasse, and I set-up a Christmas tree for pollack with 1/0's baited with rag, as well as a couple of rods out for general fishing..... tried to find an area between the crab pots, that would allow us to fish both over weed/rocks as well as sand ... found it about 2/3 of the way along.......
Our first real problem was that the depth of water at Low Tide with respect to the Breakwater was very shallow .... I'd guess about 7 or 8 foot, which rather put pay to the wrasse fishing... we had a couple of bites but failed to connect, and kind of resigned ourselves to having to wait for the rising tide......
Karen arrived around 4.45pm, and set-up a couple of rods for herself......
5.30pm..... the rod with the pollack rig gave a number of thumps in a downward direction .... and so I pulled up a small pollack of 11"......
5.55pm.... another pollack to the Christmas tree..... all 12" of it......
6.15pm.... yet another pollack... this time only 9" and with 2 lice stuck to it's head!!!!
6.20pm..... Karen catches the first wrasse of the day.... 8" of it... and on ragworm......
6.30pm..... I have another pollack ... 12.5" in length.....
6.48pm .... Karen has another 8" wrasse..... again on ragworm.....
6.57pm.... Karen has a larger wrasse this time, at 11"......... not really the 4 to 6lb class of fish we'd been hoping for!!!!!!
7.40pm..... another 10" pollack to me...... ........ decided to give-up on the Christmas tree and plug from the end of the Breakwater as the tide was reasonably high and whilst there was sufficient daylight to do so.....
8.20pm.... Bang...... the slither does it's job..... and after a short while, I've managed to land a pollack of 2lb......
9.10pm..... Chris has his first fish of the day..... a 20" thornback ray, caught on squid.......
9.30pm.... within the space of five minutes Karen managed to land 3 fish......
13" scad down the wall..... re-bait whilst she's getting a bite on the other rod...... no sooner has she put the bait back in the water to deal with the other rod, than she gets another bite, and pulls up a 10" pollack.... brings in the other rod with an 8.5' pouting on the end......
9.50pm.... Chris has a bite on one of his rods..... when he picks it up, we could all see he was into a better class of fish...... after a while he managed to bring it to the surface.. smoothound... grabbed the landing net, and after a couple more runs and dives managed to net the fish for him ...... nice fish at 4.3/4lb falling to a squid bait..... to say he was a happy man would be an understatement by any standard..... :-)
9.55pm .... managed to pull up a pair of pouting at 10" and 9"......
10.00pm .... Karen has a 10" pout......
10.19pm .... Chris has a small pout of around 8".......
Things then went very quiet.. with only the odd pout bite to maintain any interest....
11.52pm..... another pair of pouting, this time to Karen, at 9" each......
1.25am...... Chris had another 8" pouting.......
1.35am ...... managed a better pout, this time.... 1lb on the nose........
By 2.00am we'd had enough, the tide had dropped sufficiently to allow us to walk off the breakwater and walk around the outside of the castle...... made much easier by following the tracks left by the ATV's rather than attempting to scrabble over the rocks..... once we were around the front of the castle things were even easier walking back to the car via the paved causeway.........