In the right Plaice

Easter bank holiday Monday and I had a free pass for the day. The forecast was for Easterlies, fresh at times, so the East coast Cod bashing was on hold.

Cumbria is only a couple of hours away for me so with a few lug left from yesterday's outing I made my way over to Allonby on the South side of the Solway. Early April heralds the return of the Plaice and although they're thin they're usually numerous and more importantly....... ravenous.

It's a beautiful location and even on a warm sunny Bank holiday like today it was almost deserted.

It's a long haul down the beach with the Yak, nearly 3/4 mile on a spring low. Today I timed it to perfection, the tide was rushing in to meet me as I made my way down the beach.

You have to paddle a long way off here to get any depth of water but don't let that put you off. Four to Ten feet of water is all you need to get amongst the fish. Once you get over the ten foot mark the Dab to Plaice ratio starts to change in the favour of the Dabs. First fish today was a cheeky wee Dab, these increased in size as the tide came through, infact I thought about nailing a couple for a fry..........

Once the Dabs took over I upped anchor and made my way closer to the shore. When I was trollying the kayak down to the LW mark I passed a nice depression with a gutter running parallel to the shore. I stopped and saved a waypoint into the plotter with the intentions on anchoring over it once it was covered with water. Now was a perfect time to try it out. When I got back inshore over the mark it was only lying in three feet of water but the tide was now flooding at full flow. Within Ten minutes there was Four foot, time to get some bait in the water. This was more like it, it was a Plaice a chuck, none of them huge but even the small ones give you a run for your money in such shallow water......

I even managed a couple of double shots before I had scraped the last of my bait from the bottom of the tub.

I couldn't honestly say what the final score was, into the high teens of Plaice and probably a dozen or so Dabs. Makes up for some of the blanks of late........