,Made another trip to the old quay again. On setting up my old Ambassadeur 6500 CS Rocket had a problem. The spool, even with the brake adjustment knob taken completely off, the spool would not free spool properly. But decided to make a few casts, and it was soon it’s old self.

Well…not quite. After a few casts I had a spectacular birds nest. I will come back to that as what happened next was that my fishing buddy pointed out that the surf rod was nodding. Sure enough, I was in to fish, and a small codling was winched unceremoniously up onto the quay, photographed and let go again. Then I baited up and cast out.

Okay, back to the birds nest. Slowly got that sorted. But now even with the brake knob fully engaged, my 40 gram lure simply dropped to the deck as soon as the spool was disengaged.

Did a field strip of the reel, but could see nothing amiss. So I simply got better at using my thumb to feather the spool for the rest of the session. And soon winched in this little saithe.He made a brave fight of it. And since I have not had time or opportunity to make my drop net yet, I had to walk him into the beach.

Saithe have quite weak mouths, so on hoisting him up on the quay deck even this fellow would have dropped off the hook, ripped off by his own weight.

By now it was time to check the bait on the surf rod. So hauled in to find another baby codling had been hooked. If the little fella had the sense to let me know he was there by tripping the bait clicker, I would have had him off of there bit a sooner…

Anyway, by now it was getting dark, and my fishing buddy had long sinceleft for home, mumbling something about the weather, and this old, abbandoned quay is a bit eerie at night, so when something made my neck hairs stand straight up…I packed up and headed home.