Winter in the UK can be a grim affair, cold and windy, but occasionally we get a short period of settled weather. I spotted a likely looking opportunity on the 5 day weather forecast and took a gamble, booking the day off work. Things were still looking good the day before my planned launch. A 5am start saw me peeping out of the bedroom window - to my dismay it was really foggy. I was disappointed, but not put off. The 3 hour journey to Devon was not fun, visibility was only a few feet in places. Eventually I got to the small village of Hallsands. A ghostly place - the village was washed into the sea about a hundred years ago after a big storm, and only a couple of ruined houses remain. My friends Tim and Mark soon arrived, but the weather was still not looking good - we wanted to paddle out to a famous sandbank called the Skerries, where we hoped to catch some early plaice (flatfish). We decided to launch, and stayed in close in the hope that the mist might lift, allowing us to get out to the Skerries bank.
I managed to catch some mackerel which is almost unheard of in the UK at this time of year - the seasons all seem to be a bit topsy-turvey at the moment - global warming maybe, who knows.
To cut a long story short, we managed to get out to the skerries and we caught a lots of tasty plaice...
I managed to catch these two on a single wishbone rig...
Final tally...
A short video, just to show how clam conditions were (this is very rare in the UK !).
More info on the blog, if you are interested...
http://dizzybigfish.co.uk/kayak-fish...skerries-bank/