Smashing afternoon.

Me and Smudge decided to sneak an afternoon session in and I'm glad I did. The weekend had been a nightmare. I was on nights Friday, Saturday and Sunday which is bad enough in itself, but Mrs Aitch wanted to take a dip in the shallow gene pool that is North Walsham Carnival. So I got up at 1130 Sunday morning, cooked dinner, took Mrs Aitch and Aidan to the Carnival, cooked tea, cut the grass and went off to work for another 12 hour shift. I swear to god if she ever moans she hasn't the time to do something...

I'd been up to Pete's first thing where the lovely Tina had an ice cream tub of crabs waiting for me which I swapped for a ripped bag with two spiders in, trust me it just sounds weird, they were frozen spider peelers I'd brought back from the Jolly's trip. Anyway bait sorted I got back home just in time for Smudge to pick me up. We've been planing a family holiday or rather Mrs Aitch has decided we can go to Spain if I can go on a Jolly Boys trip, so she booked flights, transfers and a villa which sleeps 6. There's only 3 of us? Ah but then my mum and neice are now coming and the mother inlaw! Spare a thought for me and Aidan while we are away on planet eostrogen.

We decided to fish to the right of the slip at Trimingham, only a groin or so but it looked ok and would make a change from going left up to the gaps. It can be a bit snaggy so I'd been told in the past but there was plenty of sand on the beach so hopefully any snaggy bits would be covered. As we looked down towards Heart Attack there's a really nice looking bit of beach where the revetment bends out from Trimingham heading towards Mundesley. The beach is in a corner and never got covered despite it being a biggish tide, the only thing being because you were in a corner it would've been a longer bung to clear the groins and get into the "zone", but still well achievable and a spot i'll try soon.

We got started a little after 1pm, setting up in what turned out to be the last shower of the day. There was a fair bit of tide on the flood but nothing major and some loose weed that again wasn't much of a problem at all, I would think with the high pressure and south / west / southwest breezes forecast this week the colour and the weed will drop out of it. Good news for the mackerel bashers on the shingle and the pier and hopefully there'll be a few hounds back too. I'd said to Pete that I fancied it for a hound or two, it's been warm and settled and the sea was fining down, I reckoned if they were about they'd be about in it today.

We both messed around with crab on one, fish on the other, a black now and again but somehow I found myself just fishing crab as high water approached. Right on the stroke of high water I had a slackliner, which I missed and the bait came back in reasonable nick, eels maybe I dunno, but as I was cleaning that rig there's a repeat performance on the other rod. True to form I missed that one too, I still suspect they were eels though the bites coincided with what tide there was easing.

The very next bung and no gentle slackliner but a thumping pull of the tip that shook the rest. At first I thought it was a bass as there wasn't a mega heavy weight and it often ran towards me. That was until the last 30 yards or so, then all hell breaks loose. I have to back off my drag a bit and find myself walking along the beach a little way, by the time my leaders showing and there's that familiar sawing motion through the surf its obvous it's a smut. Not a big one either just one that was thoroughly pissed off to find itself tethered to an ugly goon like me, either that or it had eaten three shredded wheat! Cracking sport these fish and supposedly good eating, I just think its a shame to eat them when they give you so much fun so after a photo I slip back a starry hound around 5lb.

Apologies for the photo quality, I'd left my camera at home so this was taken by my care in the comunity project on his mobile phone, still a nice starry around 5lb.

The honourable Abbott among others reckon I'll eat anything, including road kill, but great sporting fish like these deserve a bit of respect. I feel the same about bass so instead of just filleting and frying like you would for cod I do them differently, I get all Gordon Ramsay on their ass, I reckon they deserve it. Back to the fishing, my nice little starry was followed within a couple of minutes by a common, contradiction in terms really because I always seem to catch more starry's than commons, anyway a little smaller probably around the 4lb mark.

A common around 4lb. I actually said to Smudge I reckoned this was a better fish, what a muppet I turned out to be!

I was getting called all the jam strangling sons of whatsits under the sun by Smudge, who was still biteless, until one of his metalites bent forward and kept going. I swear it must have come as a shock to the rod, I did have a sneaky peak to see if the bending motion from the bite had cracked any of the high build, the rods aren't used to being moved by fish, but all was well and he soon had a nice starry around the same size as my first.

Smudge proving there must have been a shedfull out there, the advantage when your an Oompah Loompah is you make the fish look bigger!

That comment's going to bite my arse! I had another couple of starry's while Smudge went flattie fishing, using all his skill and dexterity he avoided the smuts like an expert and winkled out a flounder around 10oz. All this sport had happened within the first hour and a half of the ebb, I had four and Smudge one and the flounder. It went quiet then for a while as the water was leaving the beach rapidly by now and I honestly thought we'd had all we were going to get, then one of my rods went loopy.

I picked it up and you know its a better fish because there's weight and aggression from the off. A cracking scrap with it ploughing along the beach against the tide, then with it, then trying to run out again, mint. I managed to get it beached the other side of the revetment while Smudge ran round and grabbed it. Easily the best fish of the day and we reckoned it was around the 8lb mark, where's Genocide and his scales when you need him? I've asked him a million times where he got them from, for the sake of £20 we should all carry a set. It's the hardest thing in the world guestimating the weights of fish. The year before last me and the Leg End were calling all the codling we caught 2.5-3lb fish because thats what they were when we started catching them in October, come April and they were well over 4 yet we still called them 2.5-3!

A big old lump of starry and a fine way to end a top session.

So we packed up around 1700, I'd had five smuts, 4 starry and 1 common, and Smudge a starry and a flattie. As we walked back to the car it dawned on me that between 1430 and 1700 I'd had as many smoothounds as I'd had in 5 sessions over 3 days on the jolly boys trip, that's fishing innit. Unfortunately I have to work the rest of this week otherwise I'd be having another pop at them. The forecast is settled and quite warm, just the way they like it, the shingle could be a bit of fun fishing with crab for the smuts and chucking fluff for the macks but I reckon if you can go you should this week and hopefully you'll enjoy a bit of sport too.