I started out the Winter with eight pots in pairs & end it with one liftable pot.
My nets seem to be catching large, mysterious holes as if from attack by sea-monsters, and little else.
The Autumn brought lobsters to my pots and fat fishes to my nets, where now there are shivering little crabs and lonely, limp whiting.
Out on the horizon there is a constant hum. A fleet of scallopers from away are calmly scrubbing out the seabed.
I have four of my pots back; a little stretched, but workable.
-I saw a Fishguard boat working near them and paddled out fast to ask his help retrieving them. They came up full of fine sludge and shells. It
was a struggle even for a hauler.
I baited them today with that lonely limp whiting.
I suppose its obvious that the sea’s temperature takes as long to respond to the Spring sun as it does letting go of the Summer’s heat in the Autumn.
Though that doesn’t make paddling in empty handed much easier.
Have just circumnavigated my Main Rock on the miniX bare of all fishing intent, just glad of her and a fine splashy sea.
She lives dangled about twenty foot up a cliff on a chain, secured with a padlock. I went there after that last mad storm certain that the key on a ledge under a pebble was lost. It is now part of the beach.
The other though I thought secure in a high niche, until I looked. Scrabbling around for it, I found a golf-ball tucked under the turf .
It only occurred to me hours later what had probably happened to my key. My shiny key.
Crows love picking up golf-balls and stashing them: a food-hoarding instinct.
They also love collecting shiny objects.
Like badgers after my bait, this seems one of the prices for living in a live world.
I resorted to a hacksaw this afternoon. The lock now dangles annoyingly off the paddle, so that’ll have to come home to an angle-grinder.
I nearly set a net, the sea looked so lively. But I think I’ll wait for a good blast of South-Westerly water to come in a raise the temperature first. My enthusiasm needs reheating.
