Wattsy Dog Victorious At Dunwich

With the forecast of a rare dry day, I set off to fish Dunwich with Turdster and Wattsy Dog, the legendary Wrabness based wildfowler. Due to his propensity for travel sickness, he kicked me out the drivers seat and insisted on driving. After picking up Turdster we were soon hurtling down the tiny lanes leading to Dunwich, with Wattsy taking the paint off both sides of my car as he ignored the usual protocol of slowing down and pulling over when meeting oncoming traffic.

 From left - Turdster, me and Wattsy (modelling his wife's culottes)

It was a very mild, sunny day with a brisk offshore wind, making for a calm sea. It started very slowly, with nothing for the first half hour over low water. Turdster started his usual "it's crap, we're going blank" moaning, but as soon as the tide started to run the bites started. Many were missed, but we started to catch whiting and dabs regularly.

Most of the fish were caught fairly close in, maybe 50-70 yards out, just the other side of a sand bar that was partially exposed at low water.

First blood to The Watts Dog

Turdster in extremely unusual sitting pose (and what's he got in his hand )?

We continued to catch regularly, all the way up to the top of the tide. Somehow, we were missing the majority of the bites, despite many of them being real rod rattlers. Wattsy Dog's tactics of pretty much ignoring the bites and winding in every quarter of hour seemed work the best and he ended up winner with over a dozen fish to his single rod.

As an aside, Turdster passed on a beaten and battered, but still functioning, Daiwa 9000C fixed spool reel to Wattsy today.

This reel was originally my Dad's in the late 70's. He passed it to me, I gave it to Big Shane, who gave it to his son Elliott. Then it was given back to me when they emigrated to Canada. The Turdster then used it for a couple of years and now Wattsy Dog is the proud owner.

Not bad, over thirty years service and still going.

After dropping the lads off, I caught the end of a Joe Strummer tribute show on 6Music and ended up singing along to "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" with car radio volume cranked up to 11. A fitting way to end an enjoyable day