It was 4-15 am and I was enjoying a snooze on my favourite window ledge when I was rudely woken up by grumpy clunking around loading his tackle into the van. I carefully positioned my self in the hall and managed to grab his attention by tripping him up as he went back for his rods. So while he was filling my bowl with Whiskas he explained that he was off to fish Cley at sunrise. Having abandoned all attempts at daylight fishing he was optimistic that he would at least catch a bass that time of the day.

He arrived at 5-45 and set up quickly and was feeding the crabs and catching sea weed by 6-00. Now he did grab a nice shot of a misty seascape and at 6-30 was joined by two strange humans who felt that it was good time to have a swim. Arriving at the beach in rather smart white dressing gowns they promptly disrobed - Reggie Perrin style - and leapt into the sea ! Now twitchers are a weird breed as I have mentioned before and they all started to arrive at 7-00 but these two swimmers were clearly in a league of their own.

Well to cut a long story short , the wind picked up , the swell got up to six foot and by 9-30 the old fool was cold and wet and just for a change without fish.

I was enjoying my second nap of the day when the old fool arrived back home at 11 and once again disturbed my sleep. Ever hopeful of a fish snack , I patiently listened to the usual excuses of having his casting distance cut down by the wind and the tide running so hard he couldn't hold ground only to come to the realisation he had blanked yet again.

So with a flick of the tail I turned around, flashed him my butt eye and went back to my second favourite window ledge.

The met office forecast was sea state smooth to slight with 3mph winds at 1pm.

Sea Palling was 15mph Easterlies with serious breakers and harsh waves at high frequency (how articulate in nautical terms am I ?)

Grumpy and the Jimmy launched OK and had a soaking on the way out and by the time they got to the sea side of the reefs it was becoming apparent they weren't going to anchor up in that chop.

So they headed north in to the final bay - which I might add they were unfamiliar with. Now that bay was more like Hawaii than Norfolk and it was very shallow , so the waves were forming 300 yards out. You can guess the rest, the old buggers got to 30 yards of the shore and a massive wave descended on them and they both got dumped simultaneously. Jimmy's last words were something on the lines of "look behind you" - any idea how I sniggered when grumpy recounted the tale.

So back they paddled , getting narky about the number of nets that had been dumped in the bays and were stopping them fishing the shore side of the reefs. They gave it a go in the first bay but in truth 15 minutes chucking a lure around really wasn't ever going to produce much was it.

So back they came and the highlight of the day was a toffee fudge ice cream at the hot dog cafe. Or was it maybe two middle aged men trying to impress the attractive female human at the jet ski cafe with their limitless knowledge of kayak fishing. Had she asked them what they had caught , I rather think the bubble would have burst.

My fishing forecast for June is , catch rate slight to non-existent and angling morale - dull and overcast.

George

For some reason my human seems to think a photo of me behind bars is somehow funny.

Once again we have no fish coming home, so clearly the flounder from Horsey was a blip in his long line of blanks !

With The Jimmy laid up with a wonky knee the old git had to go solo and with a choice of any beach producing fish he choose to go back to West Runton. Methinks the bee in his bonnet is buzzing rather loudly.

Basically it was a nice surf launch, 3 hours tied up to a crab pot buoy, chuck all your bait out to feed the crabs (probably why they put crab pots in that area) and back to shore. A bit of rain thrown in for good measure and that was it.

He was muttering something about losing a large crab he caught just as it reached the surface, not that I'm bothered cos I'm not a big fan of the smelly things, but he seemed quite upset by losing it.

So the photo gallery this time is one shot of an idiot grinning after catching nothing and a wooden Kayak that was owned by another chap he bumped into on the shore. Apparently this was a very well built piece of kit that cost it's owner £400 to make. I do hope he hasn't got any daft ideas about making one as he seemed very impressed by it.



George

The old saying, says that if you put enough chimps into a room with typewriters and an infinite length of time they'll write the works of Shakespeare. The same goes for Grumpy and his fishing.

The old git left the house about 7-30 all tackled up and started fishing Horsey about 8-45 with a high tide of 11-30. As is usual he spent hours throwing worms , peelers and squids into the sea only to feed up the local crabs.

Now this is where it gets different ! About an hour after high tide he reeled in the light rod , which he was fishing off the edge of the groyne into the gulley that he's been dripping on about for weeks now. The expectation was that he would be catching lots of bass today but instead he caught the worlds second smallest Dab (see picture) - he actually caught the worlds smallest Dab last year !

Now OK this was a fish and he has blanked the last four trips, so I guess there's a positive in there somewhere. So hopes raised he kept on with the casting and a few minutes later the long distance rod (80 yards is his idea of long distance , bless) gave a very small waggle.

Having been dragging in bits of weed he gave it no further thought and reeled in to change the bait. There was no fight, just a bit of a dead weight, and guess what ? I have Plaice for tea - awesome. Now grumpy has trouble with identifying fish and in honesty he's pushed to tell a bass and cod apart, but I just checked the Aquarium Project and a plaice has a bony ridge on its head as does this beauty ! It weighed in at 20 ounces apparently , which may not be huge in Plaice world, but hey there's anough meat to fill this cat's belly.

I'm sure you're all wondering where the usual disaster is in this story. Here it comes - the beach was empty, like seriously empty (see photo) and there was one dog walker along a two mile stretch. Grumpy was tucked in by the groynes and there was a five foot drop from one side to the other.Now this dog walker could have gone round the back of the groynes, but no he had to scale a five foot groyne two feet from Grumpy at the moment he was packing his rods, at the same moment he dropped his big rod onto the sand. Only on this occasion it didn't hit the sand it landed on the dogs head. Now as a cat I really appreciated this story and if there are any anglers reading this I'm sure you will as well !

Must dash my Plaice is calling

George

Grumpy has had a bee in his bonnet about West Runton for quite a long time. With all the rock pools and crabs he is convinced there are Bass out there. He has also been curious about the sea bed out there as the crab and lobster pots in abundance would indicate a fertile sea bed.

So he met up with his Kayaking buddies , The Jimmy and The Tim and set off to anchor up amongst those pots. Now there are lots of Bass coming out of the sea around Cromer Pier so he was hoping for one that might have gone walkabouts.

The Tim had arrived earlier and was out there waiting for them. After a while they realised that they were wasting their time, so The Jimmy went back to shore and tried to drown himself while The Tim went our a bit further. Grumpy shew some out of character enthusiasm when The Tim radioed in that he had caught a nice 3lb bass. With my lunch in his sights he moved to join The Tim and whilst The Tim caught a nice dogfish, Old Grumpy had no joy.

So while The Tim went home to spend time with his family, Grumpy moved East and clipped up to another buoy and continued his fruitless pursuit. Finally he got bored and in need of a bacon butty so he headed back in and met up with The Jimmy again, who despite hurling himself off his boat a dozen or so times , he had both failed to get back on board or drown himself.

I'm glad they had a good day and enjoyed their butty.


Like fuck I am - where was my ruddy fish ? Four blanks on the trot , take the hint dude and do something you might get good at , like knitting.

George (rapidly losing weight)