The last few weekends have been spent in accessible places in Rebel Runner, installing the wiring for my new capstan and other things. Now that’s pretty much done I decided to go fishing again. I had heard rumours of the occasional plaice being caught so this weekend I headed out to find some for myself. I have found that frozen black lug tipped with a strip of squid is the best bait for early plaice but the shops were out of stock. Luckily, right at the bottom of my freezer was a very old and sorry-looking packet. The plaice don’t mind what it looks like as long as it is smelly, so I was in business!

First stop was The Blocks, which looked very busy. I anchored just north of the crowd and set out some lines with plenty of bling. Within half an hour I had my first plaice of the year. The next couple of hours were bite-less but the weather was lovely so I didn’t mind too much. As the tide increased the anchor decided to trip so a move was an easy choice to make. I headed over to Hayling Bay and with half an hour another two plaice were on board. They were all small so I filled a bucket of water and put them in it while unhooking, to reduce stress and aid recovery. I made an interesting discovery, they all sicked up lugworm in the bucket so it is pretty obvious why lugworm scores.

I soon ran out of bait so I practised a SAR mission on an abandoned life-ring I had seen float by half an hour earlier. It is surprising how difficult a bright orange life-ring is to spot on a clear fairly calm day. Eventually I spotted it and won myself a new life-ring and about 15 metres of floating rope.