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St.Catherines Breakwater 4th August 2001
GR: 720,529
Looked at the forecast, which didn’t make great reading….. south westerly wind force 4 with showers …..
Phoned Chris who told me that he was going to be busy that evening with the kids, but suggested I fish the NE section of the Island .. maybe somewhere like the pier at Bonne Nuit, and that if I wanted some lug then to pop over during the afternoon and he’d dig some with me … a very generous offer but not really one I could accept…. Take Chris bait digging and then wave goodbye as I went off to fish … I don’t think so….
Karen already had plans to see relatives and friends, so this was going to have to be a solo trip … but where to go….. thought about what Chris had said about Bonne Nuit but decided to leave it for another night when we could all go together….. I decided to have a stab at St.Catherines Breakwater, and although the wind would be almost in my face, felt that there was always the possibility of fish being about, such as bass, smoothhound, bream or even rays.
Went up to the MotorWorks and grabbed a pot of ragworm and a 1lb box of squid along with some 3/0 Kamasan B950U uptiders …. Went back to base, made some sandwiches, and collected by gear, and then set off for St.Catherines….
Arrived around 5.30pm, unloaded the car and walked about half way along the breakwater and set up by the bench just before the 3 wooden door arches …..
The conditions were much as I’d expected….. the bay was a mass of lumpy waves bouncing the little boats and yachts about… and with a strong cross wind running the length of the breakwater….
I decided to fish two rods…. One with a 3/0 pennel on a pulley rig loaded with a large squid bait in the hope of bass or smoothhound, and the second with a flowing wishbone trace with 1/0’s loaded with rag/squid combo’s as a general set-up……
6.00pm …. Watched the chap behind me, feathering from the backwall, land a couple of Pollack and the odd mackerel….
Spoke with people coming off all evening, and the general comments were “not a lot doing”, “very quiet” or “had a couple”, with the odd bream, pollack , wrasse, and mackerel mentioned here and there……
6.20pm ……saw a chap further down towards the end landed a small bream … walked down to the chaps fishing next to me who were there for the evening duration and were going to fish the back wall once high water (around 8pm and 10.1m) had passed and the tide had changed direction…..
6.30pm….. went to bring in the wishbone, and felt some resistance, followed by the tell tale nods of the rod indicating there was a fish attached ….. brought it up to the surface and there was a ballan wrasse (or rockfish as they are known here)….. got it up over the railings without further help, took some pix, weighed it (36cm 1.5lb), and returned it with the aid of my bucket and rope, and watched it swim off back into the murky depths….
The tide and wind were bringing in a lot of weed (esp. eel grass) and trapping it all the way along the inside wall about 20 to 30ft out, and this coupled with the wind made bite detection very, very difficult for most of the time!!! It also didn’t help that I seemed to have a bed of eel grass out in front of me, which on occasions I was being forced to pull out of at the start of the retrieve, either with the lead or the hooks……
7.30pm … snagged in the eel grass, and just as I started to apply pressure to rip through it, a knot gave way on the main swivel, and I lost the wishbone trace, I was more surprised than annoyed …. Long time since I tied a swivel knot that gave out…. Obviously hadn’t pulled it tightly enough before I’d trimmed the tag end, which had subsequently been pulled through and undone… put a new rig on.. and thoroughly looked over the knots… and continued on…..
The weather slowly deteriorated as the evening progressed…. With the wind picking up to what seemed more like force 5 at times….
One of the chaps behind me had his hat blown off and straight into the sea around 9pm …. Didn’t look very happy!!!!!!
Darkness came, long with a change of shifts …. Day anglers left, and night anglers arrived .. and so did the rain!!!! .. well light showers anyway…. ;-)
It was all very quiet (save for the howling wind!!), weed on the line and terminal tackle almost every cast ….. decided by 10.30pm that I’d had enough … spoke to others as I left who seemed pretty much in the same frame of mind…..
Just as I got to the end, there was a chap with two young lads unhooking a Pollack from a float rig .. said they’d also had a small sole…..
uumm now there’s a thought .. bit of sole fishing when the weather improves off one of the sandy beaches… we’ll see….