Friday The 13th......

Superstitious?.......I think we all are to a certain degree. With it being Friday the 13th I think we were taking a chance and pushing our luck tonight - there's so many things that can go wrong when you're afloat at night. As it would have it though, we were fishing an old mark that lives in the GPS under the name of 'Lucky'! Not intentionally - just the way it fell into place. Perhaps the two would cancel each other out....perhaps not.....and then again, perhaps we would get a bit of both!
With a bitter NE wind coming over the stern it made the -2°C air temp feel like -10! We were dressed for the occasion though (well I was!) and soon big squid and cuttle baits were wafting in the flood tide.
Three cups of coffee and tea later brought with it three lively congers around the 20lb mark, pout, dogs and a few half decent whiting.

Dave was at this point sat tucked up in the cabin out of the worst of the freezing wind keeping an eye on his rods and attempting to warm up. All of a sudden though he shot out, picked up the slack on his uptider and announced 'fish on'. Whatever it was, it was small and lively and we were both expecting to see a big whiting or a small bass come up but out of the gloom arrived a small cod around 4lb! Certainly not the biggest cod I've ever seen but a very welcome one all the same!

This only gave Dave a temporary 'warm up' and within 15 minutes he was shivering again. Unknown to me, he'd left his wind-proof top at home and was certainly paying for it! 

We agreed to see it out for another 20 minutes before heading back in to warm up and in that time we had a couple more whiting, a few large pout and another conger before it was lines up.

We'd had a bit of luck with the fishing so now for the balance in fortune then.....

First off - the anchor was stuck in. No amount of pulling and reversing could trip it out and without a buff on board tonight we had to cut the rope. Dave also sacrificed his water container as a marker in the hope that we might be able to return and get it back at a later date (this alone wasted over half an hour!).

Secondly, we had a mare on the retrieve - the first time the boat has gone onto the trailer and somehow jumped off a roller. Thankfully though with a good shove slotted back on.

And lastly - a knackered winch. All in all though things could have been a lot worse!
Arrived home at 20 to 1 in the morning (>2 hours after lines up) but you gotta take the rough with the smooth!