Things shift. Conditions change. We glance away and lose the plot.
We had two blows from the Northwest last week.
Quick howlers, that piled up a lot of spectacular surf, and threw loads of plastic debris up on the beach.
Northwesterlies never usually last long enough though. On the second and third days of one, after the plastics tide, rich pickings of sawn timber can come in.
I still had four pots out and feared for them.
There was no sign of one pair when I first looked. It was the afternoon.
(I use “litre” buoys, that are the best for our scale of things. You can see them, they are cheap, and they don’t ‘bolero’ the pots on in a surge. They don’t affront the full-timers, either by their grandeur or invisibility.)
If you want look out for pot buoys on the western seaboard, do it in the morning. The light is shining on them.
The pair I found were empty and had had a good scraping.
I found the lost pots after the second blow.
I went out early and saw both pairs a long way out to the east.
That fisherman had told me gear got pulled towards Dinas Head.
Every now and then you meet someone who’s every word proves to be a gem.
I set a net yesterday, with little expectation.
The wind has gone southerly which is offshore here.
Offshore means dead fishing.
It was in a cove that I feel is special. I went back to it this morning.
I had caught two wrasse, three bass, and a doggie.
I send my thanks to the cove.
The dogfish is welcome as bait. They look weird in the net, their mouths forced open like gargoyles.
I kept one wrasse, for fish-pie, and let the other go. I regard them as caretakers of a place.
The bass are culinary silver bullion.
I sacrificed some meshes to get them out. If there’s any chance, try and squeeze them through rather than take them back. Loads of net can bunch up in their razor-sharp gills.
I wonder whether to set nets again in duplicate conditions.
(Offshore calm/waning tide/overnight/before a forecast blow. I must get organised and write notes of catches and conditions on my tidetable)
Am wondering as well about those prodigal pots.
If I let them wander further, where would they end up?
South of Aberystwyth, there is a trench in the seabed they called ‘The Gutter’ that absorbed a lot of lost gear. A fleet of pots would get bunched up by a storm, and then drop into this deep gully.
They eventually came in as tightly wound as footballs
Does Dinas host a similar black-hole? Where does the stuff from it get cast up?
I need to go and find my fisherman guru.
My fingers are cold. My pots wander.
Perhaps I am losing the plot.
It doesn't take long to do so with the sea. Things change so fast.
That's why you feel so good when you get it right.
We had a bass for supper tonight.
I remind myself,
that is the real plot.