37>OK

Well Is It?

Fishing can be pretty shit.
Too often after my back aches and I'm on edge. Ratty.



There are probably loads of cultural and practical and domestic reasons for Exhausted Fisherman Spikes Syndrome.

-After Callum Robert's book, The Unnatural History of the Sea,(The price of a lobster from Amazon), showing how we have taken 99% of the sea's abundance. Something we already sensed.

-And does anybody value and want your surplus and do they expect to pay a respectful price for it?

-After checking tide and wind speeds and the state of the gear and if there is sufficient bait.

-Does it have a place between other commitments. You know those. Too countless to list.

-Oh, and is it worth it?

Last time the pots were empty and the net held one mackerel, two undersize spiders, and an array of marine vegetables.
And it rained.

-I drive seven miles there, and then seven back, often with only a wet and smelly wetsuit as a prize.



Just wonder sometimes.
You know.




The wind went West this morning.
A Great Freshness.

I decided to check & bait & move all my pots with no other expectation.

A twinkly sea.
Enough life in it to enjoy the moment: a freshening of the breeze would have made it difficult. A fine splashy place to be.

There were small sailboats braving it out far off Fishguard.

I juggled the pots about a bit. Mended a gaping pocket and tied two singles into a pair on a clean buoy. The weed-growth on untended pot ropes and markers is heavy enough to make them invisible. Measured out my bait. Housework.

There is a plague of winds forecast on Metcheck, so the rule was to move everything offshore a bit.



Two lobsters out of seven pots. (It should be eight, but one is stuck). Just size.
Nothing spectacular.


No gold medals.
Not Olympic, frontpage record catches.


Those have long been caught and eaten.


Lobsters are immortal. If they aren't attacked or caught or inflicted by disease, they can live for ever.

"Because, as best scientists can tell, lobsters age so gracefully they show no measurable signs of aging: no loss of appetite, no change in metabolism, no loss of reproductive urge or ability, no decline in strength or health.

Lobsters, when they die, seem to die from external causes. They get fished by humans, eaten by seals, wasted by parasites, but they don't seem to die from within. Of course, no one really knows how the average lobster dies. There are no definitive studies."


....... Maybe I have been catching and eating Gods!






Yfory.

The Welsh for Tomorrow. It is hopeful and dynamic.

There are always glorious moments. Twenty minute bits of Heaven.

That was one today.

It was OK.






In between you tend your gear and work your grounds.

That feeling of affinity, of connection
not medals, is what you are fishing for.

36>Tale of the Unexpected

I felt sick last week, shaky and sick.




I had come back from our last great social foray of the Summer, desperate to get back out there.

The sea seemed gentle, in a steady Southerly pattern that looked to last for days. I had begged some mackerel heads from Doug the Fish, but nothing like enough to get the pots back working for long in such warm and hungry waters.

Weeks of South and SouthWesterlies have pumped some Caribbean vigour back into things after those sterile Northerlies.

So I set a net that morning. I went down in the afternoon to that frightening roar that is a big surf, piling into the cove. I had forgotten my wetsuit anyway, but saw few gaps in the sets of waves that reared up at the mouth of it and crested in that attracted me to venturing out. My energy and with it my courage definitely fade with the day's lengthening.



I spent the night one ear open for the wind to change. It had only shifted from South to the South-West to invent that pile of surf; a thing I just didn't know about this coast. In Aber, it was a SouthEasterly that could raise a crashing swell from nowhere.
It came back round about 4am, so I went down after breakfast, ready I thought for all worst scenarios.

There is always one you hadn't thought of though.

The surf was muted, but the net was balled up close in on the rocks. The buoys were feet apart. I risked the boil there to try and pull it, but it was stuck tight.



I Hate Waste.
Of a net, and whatever fish had got in there, and whatever shellfish had gone in to feed on them.

That most sickening nightmare for a netsman.

I went the next day, and climbed out onto the rock to drag at it with better leverage. No way.
I will try again on the big low tides that will follow tonight's full moon.

I set another net. A more definite calm prevailed. I was listening more closely to the mood of the sea.



I met Paul from Fishguard at sea who said that most of the Spiders were gone.
But there no Bass around. He had taken a mate out with untold wealth of fishing contrivances who just just succeeded in losing some of his more elaborate lures.

I decided to sleep over in the van near the beach, and set another net. I wanted to be on the spot, determined not to be caught out again.
On the way out, my heart sank, as a young cow-seal was playing in the bay.
Sure enough that morning's net was empty, well-rolled and tossed into a tangle.

Having gone out there I just carried on to reset it and lay the other one. I put them just off the outer edge of the rocks.
The morning was rewarded with three good bass, a mullet, some small pollack (bait thus sorted) a size lobster, mackerel, and a big wrasse. The bass were in the closest end to the shore.





Persistence had prevailed.
That's not the first time going out early has beaten the seal to a catch.

I feel back in tune with the sea.

For now.

Until the next tale of the unexpected.