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St Brelade’s Pier 5th August 2001
Map Ref: 583,483
Tide: HW 8.22pm 33.3ft / 10.2m
Weather Forecast: Wind S force 4, Showers
Karen, Chris, and myself drove over to Gorey Slipway and dug sufficient lugworm for the evening tide … well Chris and Karen did, whilst I stood back and passed the bucket to them every so often!!!!
By the time we’d dug the bait, driven back to St Brelade’s , made sandwiches, collected the gear etc, etc, we were running a little late….. and the forecast showers had arrived…. Well more like a persistent drizzle…. Really nice with a force 4 straight in your face!!!! ….. just managed to get onto the pier around 6.45pm, from the slipway/beach before the tide cut off that particular access route …..we were the only ones there, having met a family coming off due to the inclement conditions…… so we took up station on the end of the pier….
We tried to fish a variety of ways between us, so as to maximise our efforts… well that was the theory….. Chris had a float rig, and a standard paternoster on his two rods to start with …. Karen had a Wessex ledger, and a small drop rig on hers, and I decided to fish a large squid bait on a pennel, and a lug / squid combo on a small wishbone….
By 7.00pm we’d been joined by some youngsters fishing.. two chaps and a girl ….
And by 7.30pm things started to brighten up on the weather front with the sky clearing and the wind dropping down to around force 3 or so……
Karen decided that she HAD to fish with a long flowing bottom trace with a number of snoods with size 2 hooks coming off it …. Couldn’t really cast with it, more of an underarm swing to drop the rig far enough away from the pier wall and the rocks below …. Chris and I gave her a bit of stick, but help her make it……
An hour had passed and it was going very, very slowly with Chris having had the only bite to be registered, and had missed that!!!!
8.00pm…. Well blow me if I shouldn’t have listened to a womans intuition … esp. one who likes fishing and comes from Jersey ….. Karen pulls up a black bream of a 1lb (32cm) on one of her squid baited hooks from her new boat rig!!!!!!!!
8.15pm … with the light rapidly failing the kids started to pack away, but couldn’t undo one of the rods and asked for help …… Chris and I showed them the rowing trick to get a stuck rod apart … and their faces lit-up in disbelief as the two halves pulled easily apart …..
Around 9.45pm, I spotted in my headlamp beam, a very large fish swimming past us some way out on the inside of the pier and pointed it out to Karen .. difficult to tell if it was a bass or mullet at that range!!!
Well nothing else happened… all very quiet, and very disappointing save for Karens bream …. By 11pm the tide had dropped and we were forced to pack-up and call it a night!!!!!