August 2004

0530, the alarm clock screams out, only 4 hours sleep but what the hell, today is fishing fest day, after getting dressed I find Nigs in the kitchen, kettle on, fag on the bottom lip making the flasks, eyes like a panda. We had the goods already in the car the  night before so soon we are heading off, as the miles pass and the M25 is well behind us our thoughts are of one thing, breakfast.

Now why the hell there are no services on the M20 remain a mystery but we end up in Folkstone with bellies running on empty, after following what feels like a million signs to the harbour we finally give in and ask the postman the way to the tackle shop in Tonside Road. 

The guy in Folkstone Angling must have wondered what had hit him as we ask him question after question about the pier, bait, tickets, lamps and front up for day and night tickets, oh and a bag of squid. I only had one more question for him, were can I get a full English. The chap walks to the door and point us to a cafe just over the road, this guy could not have been more helpful and I have no problems at all in recommending him to others.

Within a few minutes we have two mighty fine double breakfasts in front of us, after that a quick drive into town for some fishing mood food and on to he pier, from here on in everything gets a little crazy.

We had been here only half an hour and had worked something out, the locals don't take any notice of signs, I was told to back down a one-way street, not to bad but get this, the car park sign shows 1hr is £1 and 2hrs is £2, you got this so far, then 8hrs is £5, 24hrs is £8, ok that's pretty clear but more than 24hrs pay at the hut £3, right oh some why the hell anyone would pay more is beyond me, we walk to the hut the chap says put £2 in the machine, we walk back to the ticket machine and put our £2 in and get a ticket vaild for, you guess it 2hrs, at this point I say fine sod it that will have to do, after all we are packed in front of a sign to toliets that were not there and on a park for the hovercraft that did not call in there, what a place.....

We set off along the railway platform to the pier, up the steps to the wall, the sign says you can fish anywhere from the gate, what bloody gate there is no gate, why do these signs and rules keep coming up that mean sod all are all Kent people walking around in a daze or something. We walked to the bend and set up for what looks like a nice relaxed days fishing.

Sure enough we soon hit some fish, now within 2 minutes we noticed that casting out is not ideal as there was a rip on, why the hell no one else could see this is another one of those weird things, we dropped lines over the side, people to our right casting out and drifted over us and then tried to start a row about it, bloody danglers get everywhere.

Nigs starts the day with a pout and then I got in on the action with one, as the day goes on the pier gets real busy, must be over 100 rods on the wall, the fish keep coming, eels, pout, pollock, wrasse, ballan, weaver, mackerel, bass, spider crabs, you name it we had them, the mackerel hitting the feathers was my highlight of the day, fantastic feeling. This venue would have been my best days fishing ever if it was not for one problem, they seemed to still be selling tickets and the pier was full with now more than 200 rods out, we were getting pushed out with 6 rods in our peg alone.

It was now about 1700hr and the real odd ball chap that checks the tickets came along and told us that we must catch double figure bass tonight, he wants to see them and we must use live pout to catch them, well with this nutter on the pier and far too many bodies and lines in the way we decided that enough is enough and packed up, sod the night tickets this place is far to way out for us Suffolk anglers, the locals seemed totally mad to us.

We had a plan, find toliets, find food and find a beach location, all was sorted really quickly when we asked the "Billy no mates" at the end of the pier for help, he had done this that and everything else in his life time, you know the type, anyway he told us about princesses parade in Hythe, a little chef and a roadside beach, life sounded a big more normal now, so off we went on what was called a 20 minute drive, well it only took 4 minutes but hey the guy was right, the little chef did us well, washed, watered and fed we went for a drive to Dymchurch and back to Hythe.

After half and hour talking about were to fish we found our spot and got set up just before it got dark, Nigs pulled in a pout on his first cast and them nothing, I did not get a bite until 0300hrs, Nigs woke me up to tell me, it was a bloody eel, nothing else touched our bait all night from then on except a hedge hog that walked along the beach and chewed on a mackerel we caught on the pier earlier. We packed up and got away around 0430hrs getting back to the real world again at 0630hrs. That is some 25hrs of a fishing trip, so the night was a wash out and the pier got really silly with too many people on it but hey we had caught some of the strangest fish ever and what a mixed bag that was too, roll on next years trip away.