Codling and smalleye

[South hams hunter 8,921]

Finished digging; raced home to grab bait and Mills and off we go. So the forecast said slight offshore wind and a 2 -3ft swell ... beautiful. When we arrived you could hear the waves from the top of the cliff; we thought with the mark being 8ft or so off the water it would have been fishable but as we climbed down we could see the the swell was washing over the top on every third or so wave and had to change mark for our own safety.

So the only way we could fish tonight was to take advantage of one of the many harbour walls east Cornwall has to offer. Even this wasn't particularly comfortable, the wind was going from left to right creating a swell but the tide was pulling from right to left. So the rods just had a continuous up and down movement.

First cast Mills managed a pin whiting 'I'll have it', this went out on a pair of Avanjas on a nice long trace hoping to pick up a bass whilst the other rod had a 2ft pulley made from Limitless Sea Fishing LTD  components (80lb rig body, 50lb  trace using #4 megapower swivels ) with a 3/0 Avenga partnered with a 1/0 chinu on the business end.

The fishing was really slow and all the baits were just being stripped, Mills left rod was going slightly slack and then tightening up in a similar fashion to how it had been in the tide but slightly more exaggerated then the others. Turns out this additional movement was being caused by a plump little codling playing silly buggers.

After an hour or so I finally had a fish on, I lifted a decent doggy onto the wall but the second he made contact with the floor he released the bait and flapped his way back into the sea in a nano second .... fantastic.

The next couple hours saw shaun catch a few small dogs but mostly an untouched prime whiting bait that was sat lovely in the surf and every other bait coming back completely stripped.

To combat this I decided to put a triple sandeel on and mummify it in elastic. Both rods were bobbing up and down in time with the waves but then one rod didn't come back up; I could feel weight but wasn't certain what it was. As it was coming in it kept diving  and was scrapping really well. Once on the surface we could see it was a smalleye  and it looked a decent size, always great fun when on a high wall without a dropnet. Half way down is a steep slope and we managed to get it landed. The small chinu (as quite often the case) was perfectly in the corner of the mouth and the Avenja had also managed to penetrate the top lip. I was truly gutted when it only went 6lb because it looked so much better but she was just a thin fish.

We both whacked out more baits but before we knew it 3am had arrived and it was time to go digging again which was another laugh in itself. Another enjoyable evening and more fish on the board.