A Cod the Size of a Donkey
Taking advantage of a day off work on Friday I headed down to the West Bay to see if I could finally get into the Cods this season. Pulling up in the car park and looking out to sea, things looked decidedly coddy.
A nice bit of colour in the water and I could see that the flood tide was pushing through as well.
I set up with a livebait rig on one rod and an 8/0 pennell on the other.
First retrieves found a pin sea rat on the livebait rig, so that was working well but the 8/0 pennell that had been loaded with a big cuttle bait, returned as a tangled ball of monofilament and bait elastic. I gave that rig one more try with the same result before changing to up and over rigs to stop the sea rats causing havoc.
After a couple of hours fishing and with only a Dab to break the monotony of the sea rats, I walked along the shingle to have a chat with Darren and his dad Vince to see if they had found the Cods. Alas not, they to had been playing the pipers tune and they were being pursued by sea rats as well.
High tide had come and gone and by eleven PM I had decided that a change of venue was the order of the day.
I headed East and was soon at my next mark. Finding a gap of around 200 yards between the remaining anglers I bagged up untold number of pizza boxes, beer cans and other rubbish left behind by the bunch of parasites who had fished before me, before I felt the area was clean enough to get set up.
First cast was with the livebait rig and I fired it up into the tide, letting out a decent bow of line in order to give the lead a chance to grip in the strong run of ebb tide.
I was still setting up the second rod, when rod number one signalled that something had hit the bait. The tip pulled over and over and kept going. I had no need to wind down, what ever had picked up the bait was heading towards hastings at pace.
I pumped and wound, gradually gaining line. I saw my leader appear in the surf and backed off the drag, incase the under tow offered the fish a last chance of freedom.
Using the next big wave I beached my prize.
Wow! There infront of me was the biggest cod that I had ever seen! I dumped the rod and ran down to grab my prize before the surf reclaimed it.
As I stooped to grab it, a feeling of sheer horror and dejection filled my head.
There was my fish, my hook fairly sat in the scissors of the mouth but there was something wrong, something horribly horribly wrong.
The head was there, the tail was there but the middle had vanished. I didn't know weather to laugh or cry. I took a photo, threw the carcass back from whence it came and sat down and burst into hysterical laughter. I now know how Pigtin felt over the smooth hound incident at the towers of doom a few summers ago.
The photo really dosent do the size of the fish justice, the remains weighed 12 to 14 Lbs!!
I fished down to low water at three AM with no bites, no raked sea rats and nothing of excitement what-so-ever.
I nearly broke my duck, so till next time
Shirl
hmy:
