Leader-Lines on Orford Island

"One all night trip with the deluxe weather package please mate!"

Out of the 19 people that signed up a fantastic 13 made it, the few that dropped out had genuine reasons to, after all we did have a rather rough storm the week before that left many without power and other building problems. Before I go too far in to the nights details I would like to thank everyone that came over, you are a really nice bunch of anglers and I hope that we will see you all again sometime is the future, also big thanks to the skipper, Peter Merrin is one of the most helpful and reliable skippers we know.

Everyone meet up at the Quay for the 6pm crossing, soon the boat was loaded and underway, there was a few spots of rain but nothing to bad. We got to the landing point of the Narrows some 20 minutes later and eagerly off loaded the gear and raced over to the sea. What was to come next was a bit of a worry, the wind was blowing 50mph of the sea with hard driving rain, we all set up camp with a bit of a glum heat sinking feeling deep inside, a couple of chaps got straight down to business and cast out but the rest of us sat behind over shelters with the hope that the wind would drop. The camping stoves came out and the coffee started to flow but things look bad, very bad. After moving camp from the tide line me an Nigs decided that rather than getting into a tangle or worst still a tantrum we would leave the rods in their cases and get some sleep until things improved, that was not before a quick game of "I Spy" of course, erm "R", that's "Rain" then Nigs, have you ever been in a situation were you are completely stuck with no way home and nowhere safe to sit during a gale ? all I had in my mind was that voice of John Burk on his program "999", "This was a normally fishing trip but then disaster stuck..."

Just after midnight, that's some 6 hours later the wind eased, changed direction and the rain stopped, thing really started at this stage, we moved back to the tide line set up the rods and fished hard with big baits, after all we had tons of the stuff left. At this stage we were not aware that the others had only just started so feeling a little silly we fished our (soggy) socks off. 

Nigs caught a very nice 2lb 8oz codling on his first cast and went on to bag a few more up to a plump 3lb 10oz one with a few 1lb+ whiting, I also had a nice codling around the 2lb mark and some pretty big whiting, my funniest fish was a 1lb 7oz dab on my last cast, it took 8 lug on a size 4/o hook, greedy thing.

We all packed up around 7.30am Sunday morning and head off to meet the boat back, all the news and info from the others was much of the same, even if we had a bad start to the night and had all been on the island for 13 hours everyone of us had a big cheesy smile our faces. So a good time was had by all, personally I had the best fishing trip of the year that night and looking forward to topping it next time.

Hold on I'm not finished yet, because we had bait left, Nigs and I went back to  the Leader-Lines HQ for a brew and fry-up then fished another 4 hours at Aldeburgh, so all in all we were up for over 36 hours, now you know we're keen on the sport or just slightly un-hinged. (Monday was a bit of a sod to say the least, not much got done at all)

A Very Important Notice

"Mummy, what's a Dangler?" 

I'm pretty sure that everyone from our party cleaned up after themselves, some even took other rubbish bags back to the mainland for disposal, so Danglers please help us upgrade you to an Angler before the sport is ruined for everyone, "take your bloody rubbish home with you!"

Look it up in a Dictionary,

Danger, fat slime ball, thinks it's an angler but does not hold the skills, pigs would rather not live with such, only happy when home is covered in take-away cartons and other filth, not able to walk fully upright as too much of a slob.