Sunday 12 April 2015

Afloat With The Legend

I was poncing around in the garage on Tuesday afternoon, when Tom Jones impersonator, ex charter boat skipper and local legend Hungry John Sait turned up, asking if I wanted a day fishing with him in the boat. Oh go on then, if you insist.
That evening I dug some lugworm from Mersea and picked up some fresh herring off the quay from "Herring Johnny" ( no, we didn't spend long on the nickname ) so we were all set to go.
The day dawned dry and windless and as we launched I said to John he'd have to tell me exactly what to do with regard to help with things on the boat. "Just sit down and keep out the way" he said. He can be rather, erm, straight talking.
We arrived at the mark right on slack water, two rods were cast out and a minute later one of the tips sprang back. A heavy, very slow moving weight was felt and a big skate broke the surface. John lifted it into the boat. Bloody massive it was, estimated at 14lb. I looked up and the other rod had gone, which resulted in another big skate around 12lb. Not a bad start. We continued to catch skate until the tide started to pull, whereupon the cod started to feed.
It was one cod after another, with small baits of fresh lug and squid being the killer. Cracking fish too, immaculate condition after pigging out on sprats and herring and almost all between 2.5 to 5lb.
The Legend had obviously put us on the right spot, because over the radio were heard that many other boats were struggling. We packed up at the top of the tide with the cod still feeding.
We ended up with 11 skate and 56 cod. I, as "The Boy" was nominated to gut the fish, which took the best part of an hour.
After getting back to John's, his wife came out, took a look at the fish, rolled her eyes and said "What are you going to do with that lot ?"
"Put them in the freezer" said John. "It's full" came the reply. "I'll buy another one" he said.
He's called Hungry John for a reason.
A fantastic day.

The results of unhooking and preparing fish

3 comments:

  1. You lucky bugger with those cod, mind you after gutting them you deserve some.

    John

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really exceptional day, I've not caught many codling this winter. All about being in the right place at the right time and that was nothing to do with me. As they say, "it's the skipper that catches the fish". There has been a good run of them along the Essex coast the past couple of months.

    ReplyDelete