Had a great day out on the 29th Jan. As usual, I met up with Cousin Chris at 8:30am at titchmarch marina. We had the obligatory cup of coffee then cast off and headed out of the marina.  There was a dredging barge with a digger/backhoe which was blocking our way out of the marina entrance. I guess they were not expecting any boat traffic early on a Thursday in January. It took them about 10 minutes to pick up their spud legs and manoeuver out of the way. They seemed quite good natured about having to move and I didn’t see any dodgy hand signals or lip read bad words.

The trip down the creek and across the Walton on Naze backwaters took a little over an hour and then we dropped anchor in the usual place. We were close to ‘lights on’  This is an old favourite fishing spot in Harwich Harbour where you line up the big lighthouse and the shorter bell lighthouse and fish close to the edge of the channel in about 4 metres of water.

Lines were dropped in the water about 10:10am or so. Chris was sure that the cod were after squid as he had been told that they were chasing sprats and were ‘off’ Lugworm. He fished 2 hooks though and gave in and put Lug on the other hook. The first fish caught was to Chris on Lugworm bait! It was a nice plump codling around the 2lb mark.

The bites were thin on the ground and to be honest, the 7 codling that we finished up with were all stuffed with sprats. One even coughed up a squid which looked suspiciously like it had once been on a hook. Not our hooks though but there was another fishing boat just upstream. I also caught a baby bass which is a bit out of season. We both had some small whiting as well. All the fish were caught on Lug and not a sniff on the squid.

The fish were biting very gently which is most uncharateristic for a cod. They normally lunge at food, swallowing as quickly as possible.  I think it was that they were spoilt for natural food and the worms were like ‘after eight’ mints to them. Go on then tempt me!

We packed up at 2:30pm and headed back. It was cold with an 18 knot south easterly and quite lumpy! We moored up at 4pm and I headed back home to Fillet the Codling.

It doesn’t get much better than this!

Happy Fisherman

Two fishing rods over Harwich

freshly dug Lugworm

Chris holding his supper

This one got lost

The Heart of the boat

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 1:24 am and is filed under My Fishing and Lugworm digging adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.