The nightmare scenario was to have your newest gear wash up on the beach by a caravan-site. Easter would fill the beach with aimless campers and their dogs barking at every wave.
They were desperate for their first fresh air of the year, but it was too cold to swim.
I would sometimes patrol the local camps, peering underneath the vans for lost pots.
Anything found on a beach seems to be fair game to most people. Perhaps we inherit that instinct from an island race of wreckers.
Though amongst wreckers proper, there were ground-rules about what was fair game,
and local knowledge about who stuff might actually belong to.
Once I found a string of my pots with the meshes cut, where someone had wanted to take the catch out, but couldn't work out how to get them out of the entrances.
We are two days into a north wind now, and the pots will be either on their way in or stuck fast.
I have gazed out to sea like a lovelorn maid until my eyes stung with the cold and the salt and can see no familiar yellow markers.
Everyone elses' are on the move, which gives me a clue as to where mine should be.
Plunder is coming in too, like stray buoys and net, so a trip to the sea has its rewards.
But that's sparse comfort.
