A Pleasant Surprise

The night, which was cold turned into a lovely sunny morning! I missed it, as I was snoring like a pig in my flotation suit asleep in my chair! It was dark when I closed my eyes, and daylight when I awoke!

Everything was still damp, but it showed promise of some warm weather to dry up the gear!

Camp Gaylord was visible in all its glory come morning, the Rainbow flag had blown away during the night ;-)

Neil’s carp tent was the only thing that looked like a tent, but he had to sleep in it with his feet hanging out during the night!

Issues with boiling a kettle on the poxy stove meant tea was few and far between! My breakfast consisted of a pot noodle (Bombay Bad Boy flavour), this indeed brought the colour back to my cheeks!

A rare moment enjoying the “at last its boiled” cup of tea!

So there ended the second outing to Chesil Beach, total fish caught 16. Species count of 3 (Codling/Whiting/Pouting)

Andy was top catcher, Neil second, and me by default 3rd place which is not bad :-)

A very tired and long walk back to the car park up and down steep shingle banks, knackered and hungry!

Myself and Neil headed off to the nearby Fish & Chip shop, but that’s another story!

Best Fish and Chip Shop in Wyke Regis!

So after a long cold night on the beach it was time for nice hot food!

I had spotted a fish and chip shop not more than 5 minutes from where the carpark was, so we headed in that direction.

I was aghast at the menu prices, they were well over the odds in my opinion! £1.50 for a portion of chips, and £2.50 for large. The fishcake was £1.20 for gods sake, in Bristol they are 60p.

So I decided on 2 fishcakes and chips after getting agreement from the Governor of the Bank of England and awaited to be served! Alas the woman in front of me with two ankle biters had one of the fish cakes! This was a quandry, to wait for another, or alternate choice.... so I went with the option of 1 fishcake and large chips (even if it was nearly £4!!!!!!).

So having seen the man dish out the womans food I was well aversed in what a small portion of chips was like! He then said "Do you want salt and vinegar on the large chips..?", well Neil answered for me as I was gobsmacked at the pathetic pile of chips that was pretending to be a large (£2.50 remember!) portion! Then the fishcake went on top and I answered yes to more salt and vinegar, bearing in mind I hadn't watched the first lot as I was still computing being ripped off!

Neil's were dished up, looking the same as mine! So when we went outside I compared portions and decided to do what us Brits never do, go back and complain!

"excuse me mate, this is not a large portion of chips, its the same as my mates! These are a £1 more!" I said
"i can assure you they are" he said, "they are just spread out differently"

At this point I could of done one of two things, piss myself laughing, or lose it! I went with plan A, and said "you have got to be joking, spread about differently! These are £1 more, and exactly the same as my mates!"

So he eventually offered up the remainder of the "large" portion of chips! I returned to the car to eat them, and suddenly realised why Neil had called me crazy or something similar for getting extra salt and vinegar on the fishcake!

The chips were encrusted with salt, and the fishcake looked like a doughnut! We ploughed through them, drinking for England (alas only had 2 cans between us!). Luckily I had opted to leave the shop without extra salt and vinegar on my top up portion!

Both mine and Neil's lips were dry and cracking! I couldn't stop drinking that day, and when I woke up the next morning I could hardly swallow, let alone prise my shrivelled lips apart!

So if you want a superb portion of fish and chips, with less than the 6g's of salt allowed per day, I suggest you go elsewhere otherwise for 1970's salt portions at 2070 prices goto to Daniel's Fish & Chips (http://www.danielsfishandchips.co.uk/portland.html)

Good luck if you do!

A Long & Cold Winter’s Night at Chesil Beach

It was time to give Chesil Beach a second chance, after a miserable fruitless experience in the so called summer months where the 3 of us all blanked (excluding a couple of miserable mackerels) we decided to give it a go on a nice winters afternoon and evening.

Unfortunately Dave Thurlow couldn’t make it because of having a bad back, so the threesome this time was made up by myself, Neil Bedford (aka Neilboy) and Andy Miles.

We arranged to meet at the Chesil Beach car park (near FerryBridge) at 3pm. Well it never happened as I was running late, and banged my head on the boot (as the gas struts on the rear are faulty on my poxy Mondeo!). It left me with a lump and seeing stars!

So at about 16:30 we arrived at Chesil Beach, just as the sun was dissapearing, exactly what we didn’t want as we needed to see the lay of the land so to speak before sunset.

There were alot of fisherman about, but we found a spot not too far from the car park, even though we had to climb a massive shingle bank first!

We set about putting the gear out, before making the return trip to the car to collect the rest of the gear!

As you can see Camp Gaylord makes a return to the beach, not really much use as it was soaking wet from condensation by 11pm! But it would have kept the stuff dryish I guess!

Neil as usual grinning like a simpleton, looking forward to the night of fishing ahead!

New team recruit Andy is already suited up for the cold weather, if only I had done the same at such an early stage then maybe I wouldn’t have been so cold in the early hours of the morning! Hindsight, marvellous!!

  

First catch of the night went to Neil with his first cast on his brand new Daiwa bass rod and reel! Blinding result, a nice Whiting! Caught on lugworm. Weight just over 1lb.

Fish number two for Neil! Andy and myself, sitting at zero!

 

Fish number one for Andy, he didn’t even have time to finish his roll up! Oh and still nothing for me :-(

Neil catches another Whiting!

 

This is it then! Neil’s first cod! Caught on his Daiwa Bass rod, Neil was over the moon about his first cod. Another one to the species list!

Above is Andy’s fish, not Neil’s! Still nothing for me!

Sunday night turned into Sunday morning, and the weather was beautiful, but without any clouds in the sky it was freezing cold!

I feel asleep around about 2am, but it was so cold that the feeling of pain in my feet kept waking me up!

     

Above are various shots from the night’s fish catches, Andy did rather well especially as he didn’t get any sleep at all!

It was about this point I put my fishing suit into good use as a walking sleeping bag and snuggled down into the hood to catch 2 hours sleep!