On the basis that a picture tells a thousand words and I don't have any, here is the next best thing; 760 words.
The day started out with Edgey trying to demonstrate his superior knowledge of Shad terminal tackle setting up, to impress StephenM and failing miserably. The resulting mixture of a cats cradle and an almighty birds-nest at the end of his rod was subject to vast amounts of ridicule by Frank the skipper. (And rightfully so Ed).
StephenM took advantage of this to take a photo, which no doubt will be submitted to the photo editor for approval, lost, and destroyed along with the camera that took it.
The brave compliment then set out for the far reaches of the middle of the English Channel in the hunt for, in the immortal words of the Skipper, those Germans, whom he said without a trace of irony, deep down are really quite nice people. Well he said a lot more than that, but posting rules prohibit me from giving an exact contemporaneous account.
Upon arrival at the first of the Germans, who apparently, well according to Skipper Frank, bombed Pearl Harbour, but if they did it was for Hawaii pretty cold, they started the first drift. The wind was awful, cold easterly, sea choppy and most of the compliments lines became tangled. Despite this an early Cod was hauled aboard. Another two further drifts produced a whiting.
Reel in and off we go to next lot, said Frank. Problem was Edgey being deaf in one ear, did not hear very well and sat down on the starboard side of the boat thinking we were going for gentle chug for about 1 minute. How wrong he was.
Frank opened up the throttles and away they went at about warp factor 9 into a choppy sea. Edgey by this time was a: getting soaked, b: with his back to the rest of the anglers and crew sitting in the nice sheltered cabin area, c: totally unaware that all were having great amusement at this unfortunate set of events. Trouble was for Edgey being somewhat unsteady in the undercarriage department; he did not dare to stand up, in case he fell overboard!
Luckily crew-member Guy took pity on Edgey and persuaded Frank to throttle back to warp factor 8.9 for long enough for Edgey to crawl to the shelter. StephenM just took another picture.
After then it all got rather blurred as Edgey was so busy catching, that he no time to watch what everyone else was doing, except to be able to extract a modicum of revenge against newly christened Stephen the Sailor-Buoy; this was because Stephen foolishly told Edgey that he mucks about in long white things with flappy bits on them; Anyway digression over, Edgey pointed out that at that time, about 4 hours of fishing having elapsed, Sailor-Buoy had not caught anything.
After what seemed like another three tonnes of fish had been hauled in board by Edgey, he took pity on Sailor-Buoy and offered to swap places with him.
Sailor-buoy grabbed the chance, whilst Edgey continued to haul in fish like no to-morrow at Sailor-buoys previous spot. Well a couple of Pollack. Sailor-buoy continued to blank.
It was then at Sailor-buoy noticed that in fact Edgey had fallen asleep leaning against the rail and was on auto-pilot winding in slowly and dropping again whilst conversing with Frank about all the salmon they had caught.
He decided that perhaps this might be a good tactic, whereas previously he would drop his bait down and wind back up again with his hand a pink blur as he cranked it up again, he began to emulate the Piscatorial expertise of Edgey.
The result was that a Cod that had been waiting patiently in the queue to munch on Edgeys bait and was next in line to take it, was very confused when it was taken away from him and replaced by something that seemed to have adopted the tactics of a pneumatic drill powered and yo-yo effect jelly worm that came and went with such speed, he never had the slightest chance of biting it; eventually he found it stayed in front of him for a millisecond longer than he was used to. He grabbed it and hung on for dear life, which of course it was, because soon he was in the fish locker and Sailor-Buoy had finally broken his duck.
The rest of course as they say is History.
