HSAC Trimmingham March 29th

By Robert Ford & Dene Conway

After a week of strong Easterly winds we were concerned if the venue was even fishable. If it wasn’t then try Weybourne or Kelling. Trimmingham is one of the types of places you don’t want the swell to be to big because you won’t be able to get on the beach. Even if you can, you still have to cast well into the horizon to even to get a sniff of a fish. The aim was to hit the gullies that lie about 50-60 yards off the ends of the groins. Hope that a few spring codling are still about and the weed wasn’t going to destroy the fishing.

We arrived about half way down on the afternoon tide and the beach was starting to fill up with pleasure anglers. There was a good swell on the water which created a little white water but also helped to show up the gullies.

The first few casts were difficult to hold bottom with the tide ripping though and some weed going with it.

It seemed that the majority of the weed was in the breakers and if you left your line in them it would soon look like a washing line and be pulling your gear on the beach.

One usual Lucky HSAC angler, Golden Bollox’s, managed to hold bottom on the first cast and was rewarded with a 39 cm codling.He managed to hold bottom on his next two casts and was rewarded for them as well, yes, more codling and bigger ones at that – the largest 50cm codling. So at the end of the first hour Mr Ives was 6lb odd up on the rest of us.

As the matched progressed, reports that John Neave had also achieved a similar looking score card filtered through but he was 1oz behind golden bollox’s. At this point our thoughts turned to Mr Thomas who had gone way left from the car park, as you see from the results he just went for a nice walk.

Meanwhile I had landed my first codling at 47cm and had great enjoyment parading it round the Conway HQ further down the beach. A little while later I was pulling in my second 47cm codling when I heard a scream from Conway HQ, well Mrs (I will show you how its done dear) Conway pulled in a 49cm codling. She also took great pleasure in telling me “mine is bigger than yours”. After asking members of the public to wind are-sole man up I thought that picture of him would sum up his day… cheesed off or what!

But good things come to those who wait and Dene managed to pull in a codling the same size as his wife. To mine and every one else enjoyment Nicole only went and pulled in a second. What’s that I hear you say Dene, “I must be a good teacher!”

Meanwhile Richard Ives had lost a few sets of gear (so had a few other club members) and a couple more codling in the surf but managed to land one more before the day was done. When we got back to the cars and weighed in it was 1-2/3oz that separated Richard and John with four codling each, I was third with two codling and a rocking and fourth place who else… Mrs Conway with two codling.

An excellent day for all with good numbers of codling and it made a change from one or two dabs. I very much doubt that next week is going to be the same but there is no harm in trying… until next time fishing fans.

The results

1st: Richard Ives 4 fish for 8lb 1 2/3oz
2nd: John Neave 4 fish for 8lb 2/3oz
3rd: Robert Ford 3 fish for 4lb 8 2/3oz
4th Nicole Conway 2 fish for 3lb 13 1/3oz
5th Russell Barber 2 fish for 2lb 10 1/3oz
6th Dene Conway 1 fish for 2lb 6 2/3oz
7th Colin Howard 1 fish for 1lb 8 2/3oz
8th Tony Thomas 1 fish for 0.4 oz
9th Henry Randell 1 fish for 0.2 2/3oz
3 members blanked

HSAC Kelling April 26th

By Dene Conway

Greeted with a flat calm sea, 11 anglers took to the beach at kelling this week, with the league table being wide open at the top and results varying each week no one could predict or even hope to guess at who would be in the frame today.

Mattew Lawes our latest new member decided to follow Tony T ,along with Robert Ford and Peter Loke up to the blockhouse area in search of big flounder or possibly an elusive in size Bass.

Meanwhile myself, Nicole, Ray, Henry and Richard went down in the direction of the wreck with Richard walking just past and Henry sitting in front of wreck., John and Sam hit their usual spots just down from the carpark The field was spread out and an hour into the match, it was nice to see Dennis Hunn and wife join the match in a hotspot to the left of the carpark although just pleasure fishing for an hour or so it shows the determination of Dennis to get back on the beaches after his illness, so good luck Dennis and lets hope you get back on form for the winter season mate.

Back to the match, Flounders and Dab seemed to be the order of the day , along with the odd bigger sized Pout, Myself and Richard were trying big baits at distance in the hope of picking up a good Bass, Doggie or maybe even an early Smooth hound, this was to be our undoing as Nicole & Henry stayed in close on small baits and bagged up, both ending up with a very good 10 fish each, luckily a late change of tactic for me managed to find a good flounder of 30cm and a last double shot pushed me up enough to secure 3rd place.Nicole managed a triple shot on her last cast and left Ray and myself wondering what we were doing wrong.

Back at the carpark, it became apparant that we had chosen the better end to fish , with a first place and a first ever victory to Nicole Conway, closely followed by Henry "is it time yet" Randell.

Everyone caught fish which is always a good thing,congratulation to Mathew on his first match and managing a great joint 4th place with John Neave, full results are listed below.

As there is no official match over May bank holiday weekend, the next match at Cley should produce Smoothhound and the better sized Bass, we can only hope.

Current Standing in the Summer Accumulator have also been added to the league table page, please click the link in the menu for current standings.

Match Results

Results

1st: Nicole Conway 10 fish for 2lb 11 1/3oz

2nd: Henry Randell 10 fish for 2lb 0oz

3rd: Dene Conway 6 fish for 1lb 13 2/3oz

=4th: Mathew Lawes 6 fish for 1lb 2 2/3oz

=4th: John Neave 4 fish for 1lb 2 2/3oz

6th: Sam Attew 4 fish for 1lb 1 1/3oz

7th: Peter Loke 4 fish for 0lb 15 2/3oz

8th: Tony Thomas 4 fish for 0.12 1/3oz

= 9th: Ray Ward 3 fish for 0.11 2/3oz

=9th: Richard Ives 2 fish for 0.11 2/3 oz

11th: Robert Ford 2 fish for 0.11oz

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!