Gorleston Pier, Oh What a Night....  

As we said last week we went to Gorleston pier, but we did not last the full 24 hours, we managed 17 hours before the bad weather took its toll on us.

Friday night started out fine, the sea was a bit rough and we had light 9mph North Easterly winds but by 2am the wind was gusting to 25mph and the sea had a huge swell on causing it to be very difficult to not only to cast but very hard to hold bottom. Just as we thought things couldn't get worse we started hitting snags.

We moved from the top of the pier down to about half way along and managed to stay there for the next 12 hours. The sea was still in a very rough state as we started to catch a few minutes of sleep during the quiet hours.

Nigs was the first to fall asleep and as the silence continued I also dropped off only to be woken by getting soaked once again, this time not by the pouring ice cold rain but by a massive wave that hit the side of the pier which then engulfed the entire area. Whilst I had an outburst of cursing Nigs just sat their with his head in his suit fast asleep not aware that I had took the full impact of the sea as I had shielded him totally.

The most annoying thing for me at this stage was not the fact my cigarettes were wet but I had not caught a thing and Nigs had got a few whiting, and then to top it off, he wakes up and reels in another.

As morning broke we went and set-up the stove to have a good greasy fry up followed by a fresh coffee. Feeling a lot better after the rough night I went back to my rods and finally reeled in a whiting. The weather did improve during the morning and a couple of trawlers  managed to go out. We fished until about 4pm but the rain continued to pour bringing our spirits down with it, the sea seemed to be totally empty, others fishing were also not producing a thing either so we decided to move in to the river Yare bend, by now we were very cold and wet and the effort of fishing the fast moving water finally made us think that a few hours of relaxing in front of the TV was needed, so we packed up and went home.

During the 17 hours we managed to catch 7 underside and 1 sizeable whiting between us, I expect we ate more than that in the weight of eggs, bacon and sausages, but looking back at it, it was great fun.