Emma woke up in the night roasting hot, I checked her temperature and it was 39c.
I gave her some medicine and hoped she felt better in the morning, but she didn’t. The poor little monkey was sick in the morning and spend most of the day on the sofa.
Here she is looking poorly having her temperature checked, which was 40.1C! I gave her some more Calpol (for 6+) and when I checked it again it was on the way down as you can see below!
I was worn out after fishing all night, and had only two hours sleep, but still I was dragged around Bristol Zoo. I feel asleep a couple of times whilst sat on the benches!
Here is Emma after she had her face painted, it must have been a trainee as she took ages to do it!
Here is Catherine feeding the parakeets, the second photo is me!
Now Dave had long since gone, and me and Neil were left to slog on through the night in cold and damp conditions.
I lost count how many times me and Neil had to de-sea grass our fishing lines, some of the clumps were huge! I mean huge! It took some untangling to get it off the line!
Anyway in amongst the seaweed Neil actually managed to catch something, a sand eel. Not ideal, and he couldn’t get the hook out so had to cut his head off in the end, the body and head continued to move for 30 minutes or more, most disturbing!
This was to be the last catch of the trip…
At this point I retired to my tent, and got my two hours sleep only to wake up freezing cold, damp and dying for a pee! I couldn’t go outside my tent without getting dressed as it was raining, so in my desperation for a pee I managed to get the trousers on the wrong leg, things were getting desperate, but I managed to correct my error and have a pee on the beach!
Now my teeth were chattering, it was cold and wet. Everything was soaked through with the drizzle. My chair was soaked so I couldn’t sit down.
Sea conditions faired no better today, and the sea grass was ever present! I didn’t even bother to put a new shock leader knot on my line after my last one got caught in the biggest clump off grass ever seen!
Tea was the order of the morning, it was 06.13am at this point, and it was miserably damp!
The night before had lots of fishers on the beach, only the foolish remained overnight it seems!
My little tent, all damp and in need of packing away!
Neil still persevered with the tangled lines!
Now tea was taken, time for bacon and sausage sandwiches.
We then packed up and after numerous trips to the car headed back to the much drier and warmer Bristol!
Total fishes caught : 3
Other : 1 Sand Eel
On the way back we did a quick recon on Clevedon, which had some potential!
Until the next time……….
Today the EM1B team of three headed due South towards the well known fishing mecca known as West Bexington, which is at the west end of the famous 17 mile stretch of Chesil Beach.
Times were looking good, everything was packed and I was away on time towards collecting Neil at 8am. A quick fuel stop and McDonalds double and sausage & egg McMuffin before arriving in West Bay to collect the bait.
A small snag, the shop didn’t have any! It was due by 10am and it was 10.45am when we arrived. We decided to wait, as the nearest place was Wyke Regis some 35 minutes away. The delivery finally arrived just after 11am, and we got our ragworm and squid.
Off we went to West Bexington, now the car park is on the beach, and directly infront of the car park were lots of people fishing, in hindsight this was probably a good idea as the walk to and from our spot in deep shingle/gravel was bloody exhausting!
We found our spot and set up camp, it was bloody windy, but it wasn’t raining!
Dave Thurlow setting up his sea fishing tackle.
Neil was quick of the mark to get his rods in the water
Where as I was taking it slowly, here I am thinking I’ve got to go all the way back to the bloody car across this beach and its going to take 10 minutes!!
Well Dave was the first to catch, with the first mackerel of the day, we had great hopes at this point.
Here is it in all its fishy glory, this is of course after it was humanely twatted with a lead pipe.
Now this got everyone thinking it was going to be a prolific day’s fishing, again hindsight is such a wonderful thing!
Now Neil managed to catch another two mackerel shortly after Dave, things were looking up! Little did we know it was going to be another 12 hours nearly before we got another bite!
The weather started to get a little worse at this point, no rain, but it was windy and getting a little bit chillier, but we carried on regardless! In the distance below you can see Portland/Weymouth and the sheer size of Chesil Beach!
We had set up a makeshift windbreak using a large lump of plywood found. Here we were to make sausage sandwiches, soup, beans and numerous cups of nice hot tea!
So we ploughed on, the waves at points were huge and the spray off them often reached where we sat! The picture below does not capture the sheer size of some of the waves. It must be said that te weather had stirred up lots of sea grass, which seemed to glue itself to the fishing line and pull the rod making it look like a fish was nibbling, it was bloody frustrating!
Neil managing a huge tangle in his new reel, one of many we had to deal with during the night.
One large wave got the better of Dave, whose trousers got soaked at this point!
So we fished on towards the end of the evening…..
We had a lovely set of sausage sandwiches which took quite a long time on the gas stove, and I put way too much oil in the frying pan, but they eventually cooked and we were all thankful of something to eat and it was hot!
Dave decided to call it a night at midnight, again in hindsight he made a good decision! So he packed up and headed back to Bath, where he no doubt had a lovely night’s sleep in a warm bed, and not the 2 hours I had in a tent which was damp, waking up to rain!
Here’s a unique way of displaying the pictures from the outing on the River Avon with EM! Enjoy…
