Shake Down

A week of strong Westerly winds left the sea settled and clear. Although it's still early March, if you can get afloat, there's always a slim chance of catching a fish. Today's venue was to be Coldingham Bay. Parking at the car park at the top of the hill, a short carry takes you down to the the sheltered sandy beach of Coldingham Sands.This is a good launch for strong Westerly winds but check the swell heights before you go. Coldingham is one of Scotland's premier surf beaches. Even a small ground swell approaching the shore here will quickly increase in size and make for some interesting paddling. Our main objective today was to test out some of our winter modifications and check that any newly acquired gear was up to scratch and ready for the forthcoming season. I had a new GPS/Sonar combo to try out, a Humminbird 787c2i . After a few early programing glitches It seems to be working ok and it certainly shows a clear depiction of the sea bed, in this screen shot the lack of fish is also evident. We paddled South and threw a few fire-tails around the shallow reefs that held a good head of Pollock last summer. Unfortunately they were not in residence yet, infact the bottom looked a very baron landscape with nothing showing but the usual rocks and tangles. Our next plan was to throw the pick in and anchor up in the bay. I put three lug baits down into 30' expecting to see a small Dab or two to rectify my impending blank. Unfortunately they were also in hiding. Things were looking dire! An hour spent at anchor in the cold wind was enough for us so the decision was made to throw the towel in early.

This gave us a spare hour so a perfect opportunity arose for a bit of early season re-entry practise. Brian had finally parted with his thirty year old lilo and invested in a state of the art 70n Palm Kaikoura buoyancy aid.

Re-entry drills complete we then went on to see just how easy it was to scratch a composite kayak on barnacle covered rocks...........

So for the second trip in a row we ended up fishless but with the fishing being poor at the moment anyway, I think we made good use of our time by covering some essential safety drills.