With every trip since November cancelled due to bad weather, it was with great surprise I got that phone call Friday evening saying "It's on, pick you up at 7.15am".
By 8.30am on Saturday the gear was stowed and we were heading out of the river and into the English Channel. As soon as we had passed couple of inshore fisherman that left just in front of us, the skipper opened her up, and we were flying towards the horizon at 20 plus knots (not that you could see it because of the fog). "Skip says tackle up with 4ft traces and Storm leadhead shads, and be ready for when we get there, as the best fishing will be the first hour or so", came the shout. After a few minutes of tackle box rummaging everybody seemed to be tackled up with some form of lure. Only two of us had the “Storm” lures with the built in leadhead, in our kit, I had two packets! I didn’t broadcast this, as you are never sure how many you are going to loose, but I quietly passed my friend one to rig up with. After about an hour or so of steaming the engines were cut, and the skipper located the wreck. Fist drift and “Bang” into a fish. A few minutes later and a nice plumb Cod of around 4lb came over the side. For the first few drifts the guy next to me had almost a fish a drift, whilst I only had one more. Changed lure to something similar to what he was using, but by now the tide had stopped running and they had gone off the feed. However, as the tide picked up we drifted over a different area of the wreck and I managed to pull in a further five fish, with two dropped on the way up, biggest being around the 8 to 9lb mark. After about three and a half hours fishing it was time to go, flat out, back to port, to beat the tide. All in all, a very good trip.