It felt as traumatic as leaving a child for its first day in school.
There is no storm beach there, so I have to haul the kayak up onto a bit of a ledge and attach it to a chain.
My first launching from there was exhilarating. After the Prowler, the MiniX feels like a Mini Cooper. More to the point, she seemed pretty stable as I cast out my first net from her. Some meshes caught on the handle rivets, but there was no major snagging.
(By the way, I took the foot-rest racks off the Prowler in the end, and have just tied a rope across, which serves the purpose and doesn’t foul the net. Simplicity is best.)
I have had some shorter nets made up, in case the net gets swamped by seaweed, as I don’t think the MiniX would take the weight.
33 yard multimono nets only worked out at about 40 pounds each, delivered, from Advanced Netting , which will make their loss or deterioration more bearable. In some seascapes they would look tiny, but they feel a perfect length for these small coves.
So I’ve started. Windguru has been a godsend in this fickle weather. As long as the winds are not in the north, I can fish.
My first haul was some fat pollack, a bass, a codling, and the biggest mullet I’ve ever caught.
The skin was like leather but she fed eight of us, and two cats and a hoover of a dog had a look-in afterwards.
Yesterday I set the net but caught nothing. I hadn’t set it very well, as neither the wind nor the tide were running strongly enough to help. Its impractical to pay the the net out, untwisting it, and paddle a straight line, so I try to judge the drift before I start setting it.
Last night the wind was roaring from the south. I knew it was coming, as it was bright red on Windguru, but that didn’t stop me imagining the worst. It howled all morning, and I went down not expecting to get out. The wind had slackened, but the beach was matted with great rafts of kelp. My heart sank. The buoys were not where they should have been.
I paddled out anyway. My heart sank deeper. The buoys were very close together.
The sea seems to take pleasure in balling things up before it spits them out.
I hauled at a rope. The kayak sank down to the gunwhale. A mass of net, stuffed with kelp fronds loomed below the boat. I had to decide fast whether to try and get it on board. If it was too heavy, I would capsize or swamp. The glint of fish in amongst the tangle spurred me. I got it in. The boat wobbled a bit, but felt stable enough. I paddled carefully back to the beach. I had three pollack and a few hours of net sorting futures.
The MiniX though had excelled.
I have to think out what happened. My bags of stones were obviously not sufficient.
The net was loose-set, which probably helped it pick up the weed.
The tides are growing, so the rafts of kelp on the beach are a potential invasion force for any net I set if the wind is offshore. Also. I don’t know what wallops of weed are hanging around in the bays.
The wind forecast is good, with some choppiness to cloud the water, but no nasty Northerlies.
Should I set another net tomorrow?
I suppose there is only one way of finding out....
