After reading about Codling being caught (and a few good doubles ) I have been desperate to get out, but the wind was stopping any chance of that
A weather window opened up between 7pm Friday and 7am Saturday, so a few calls were made to my regular crew and bait was ordered
Arrived early and just scraped into the 5.30 outbound lock, along with 2 wafi's and another fishing boat
A quick chat to the guys in the fishing boat revealed they weren't revealing anything, one of them had caught 1 nice fish last week and obviously thought he'd found the end of the rainbow and wasn't about to spill the beans
Slipped out of the lock on to a flat sea (it was a Westerly and Penarth is sheltered with these) and made our way to the Newport end of the long sand bank near Cardiff North
Watched secret squirrel race in front of the 2 yachts and properly cut them up to get to his rainbows end on the Coral, gives us all a bad name
Myself, Shuff and Nipper had our baits out well before 6.15 ready for the darkness
Tide was ripping through at an easy 5 kts and the 8 oz Gemini's were struggling to hold bottom, with 16 oz needed on the down tiders
Nothing for the first hour, but when the tide started to ease, the bites started
A few Blondes came up, with Shuff's going 14lb
I hooked into a large Ray (Blonde probably) that I couldn't get up off the bottom, no matter what I did, that eventually snapped/bit through my trace
Had I got it up in the tide, it's very doubtful I would have been able to land it
A steady stream of strap Conger (to around 8/10lb) a few dogs, a few more smaller Blondes and 1 Bullhuss around the double figure mark kept us busy over high water and an hour into the ebb, until the tide got too strong and up we anchored
Moved to the outer coral hoping the tide wasn't so bad, but after an hour of kiting, we moved again into Rannie pool area
This was a lot easier to fish, had there been any fish there !
We moved again about half hour or so before low water (2.30 ish) to gully/hole a couple of hundred yards out, where, once the tide turns we would be right over the middle of it
Low water brought unforecast strong Westerlies that kept us side on well into the flood, and obviously scared any marine life away
A quick call to the Barrage to check water levels and the anchor was pulled and we headed towards the bright lights of the Bay through 5/6ft of water and finally into the 4.45 inbound lock
So just the one photo (sorry JonC) and it's not of a Cod
Got a cancelled South Coast trip to look forward to this Monday, so it's not all bad 😬
Hope next weekend is good, because the tides look perfect