HSAC Cley April 19th

By Robert Ford & Dene Conway

This week’s match was at Cley and before I begin talking about the monsters of the deep and the one that got away, the club would like to thank the Norfolk Wildlife Trust – Cley for using their car park. A much more pleasant experience compared to last time we used this part of the world. The weather wasn’t great but I have seen it worse. It was a cloudy day with a south-south easterly breeze coming of the sea taking the temperature down with it. Some of the passes by uttered words like “winter” and “freezing” most anglers would have said simply “fresh”.

In the car park before kick off the notion of a good size bass was possible with a good chop on the water. Would it be a walk to the wreck or off to Tony’s hot spot on the left. Many of us hadn’t put any thought into it at all because today’s fixture clashed with derby day. Norwich needed to get at least a point from the Suffolk mob and just before half time the ref gave a controversial penalty to Ipswich which put them 2-1 up. Mean while back to the fishing the hunt for a good size bass carried on. After the first hour things looked promising, with a fish every chuck if it was sizeable or not is a different story. There had to be a few sizeable bass behind the waves and guess who caught the first one… Yep you guessed it, Nicole Conway. She managed to show us how it is done. With a 20-30 yards cast and a bit of rag she poached a 38cm bass right under Dene’s nose. A huge cheer went up across the beach as she wound down to the start of her rig and lifted the bar of silver high in the air for all to see. She clamed that she didn’t want to drag it across the shingle but I think she was just showing off.

Once the excitement of Nicole’s fish had died down the tide stopped running and so did the fish. Also the news that Norwich lost 3-2 helped to deflate sprits too. Crabs were out in force cleaning baits off hooks in minutes. Again tipping off with some fish bait helped to keep the worm on the hook. It didn’t really matter because fish just weren’t there. As soon as the tide started to pull again the fish came back on. Lots of basslets 20-30cm long grabbing baits on the way in. It was nice to see lots of them about, is it a sign of things to come?

The day went to Tony "Yoda" Thomas with an impressive score card, 17 fish mainly dabs with a 38cm bass. Second was John Neave and 3rd was Conway. That’s Mrs Conway I might add.4th place went to myself Robert Ford and I must say i tried very hard to catch Nicole but she is always one step ahead of me, and about two mile ahead of Dene, one day maybe I will win a match….
Back on home turf next week and until then…keeeeeeeep fishing!