Folkestone

Folkestone Warren 30th July 2001

I’d corresponded with Shaun Kirby by e-mail during the previous day …. And he’d told me that he’d had a very exciting time down at the Warren on Sat 28th July with a large shoal of mackerel coming really close .. in fact close enough to be banging into his waders!!!! The week of sunshine and hot weather seemed to be doing the trick …. And if the mackerel were in, so could the bass….. and so I decided to drop my intended plan of fishing for Mullet at Chatham and decided to go down and give it one more whorl before I headed of for Jersey…..

The forecast was favourable with a variable wind of force 3 or less with sunshine and temperatures towards the 90’s…. HW was a little after 8 or so……

Well I found it difficult to wake-up, and then I had to drop into the petrol station, and so by the time I’d arrived it was 4.40am …. Some what later than the 4am start we’d arranged to meet!!!!
When I arrived at the Nags, Shaun was already there fishing .. and disaster had already struck!!!! ….. Shaun had ripped his new chest waders very badly on a metal strut coming out of the concrete on the buttress he’d been climbing over :-(

With the water still being rather shallow I decided to give a surface popper a go… and so started using a Chugbug …. Not easy with braid as there is very little sustained pressure on the retrieve and very easy to fluff the braid on subsequent casts …. Helps if one uses fingers to guide the braid and keep the tension but it’s sore on the fingers as the braid cuts in, coupled with the nagging thought that should a decent fish hit home, then it could be the last one sees of ones finger tips as the braid slices them off like cheese-wire!!!!

After a while I swapped over to a J9 … picked up some weed, but it slowly lessened with the rising tide… and eventually moved onto a J13 once there was sufficient water depth….

6-15am .. we were joined by Chap with Dogs (forgot to ask his name, and Shaun didn’t know), who’d been fishing with Shaun two days previous with the mackerel….. said he’s fished the Sunday morning… but it had been dead … no mackerel, no nothing :-(
Around 6.30am, I saw out of the corner of my eye, Shauns rod bend …. But he wasn’t 100% sure if he’d had a hit and miss or just a bump with a submerged rock … sometimes difficult to tell….

With the sun up over the cliff tops by 6.30am, I decided to play around with a dexter wedge, in the hope of either a bass or mackerel hitting home or maybe a garfish…. As it turned out…. A rock got it instead!!! :-(

7.30am … and the “doom bug” seemed to be hitting Shaun who swapped over to float fishing….

8.45am … had a take on another Dexter … but failed to connect with the fish .. as it was running so shallow, I suspect it was a garfish .. but who knows!!!
The other thing that occurred was the arrival of small fish fry which had been absent during the rising tide….. but still not in any great numbers….

I speculated with Jason that the down turn in the bass and fry could have something to do with Samphire Hoe being right next door, and was acting as a holding ground for the fish with its large artificial reef….. something I really hoped wasn’t happening, as I’d hate to see the Warren go down the tubes as I love to plug there so much during the summer……

By 10am we’d had enough ….. its alright when there are fish about and there seems a real possibility of hooking into something… but it gets rather frustrating when your not even that sure that there is anything about at all!!!!

I drove over to Dover to get some 8oz grip leads from Bills Bait and Tackle for my trip to Jersey….. spoke briefly to Clive and said I’d try and get down more often if work would allow….
I then popped into Channel Angling .. Roy wasn’t there, but the chap that was serving was very helpful …. Started talking about plugging for bass, and said he’d been plugging off of Samphire Hoe …. This reminded me of the chat I’d had not only with Shaun but also with Jason some two weeks earlier ….. the chap (I’m really sorry I forgot to take a name.. for the umpteenth time!!!!) showed me the type of float (Rogot (sp?)) used to cast out, and pull the plug (some 6ft behind the float) under rather than to the surface as would normally occur when retrieving from a great height, especially from a great height….

So I grabbed a couple and I’ll let you know how I get on….. He also said that the bass fishing off the Hoe was very poor at the moment, and had been over the previous 2 weeks … which although was not great news, seemed to suggest that my worries about the impact upon the Warren by the Hoe were some what unfounded …. Lets hope so :-)

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