With autumn now coming into full swing the shore anglers thoughts are taken away from those summer species we have been catching, focus changes to the winter species that will be hitting our shores and one of the favourite fish we all love to target is the humble cod. With the winds blowing hard Matt and Steve decided to head into the local estuary to see if they could find a Suffolk cod in amongst the whiting.

 

With Ste spending the last week fishing the mighty Chesil beach and the others fishing the teams of 5 matches on the Sunday I thought I would be flying solo on Saturday nights session. Ste had some bait left though and despite being all fished out from his mega fishing week away he decided to join me on the beach for the night. The weather leading up to this session was looking worse and worse, massive Southerlies were blowing up meaning that it was either going to be a case of sitting it out in the teeth of the wind at a venue or finding a sheltered spot. Luckily we knew the cod were starting to run up the estuaries and this made our minds up, we would head to an isolated spot we know to see what we could find.

 

 

Saturday evening came and I had soon made my way to Ste’s house, loaded him into the wagon and we were on our way. Winding our way through the country roads that lead to our spot conversation was about the last week Ste had experienced on Chesil, it sounded like he had caught a lot of different fish and I think the Chesil bug has caught him now. It wasn’t long before we had pulled up, unloaded our tackle and we were making our way across boggy marshland soon reaching our venue of choice. The massive winds were certainly blowing but the water in the estuary itself was flat and full of colour, it looked perfect for a fish or 2. I opted to fish with 2 rods tonight, those of you that know me and fish with me will know that I normally always only use 1 rod but Steve had convinced me to get on 2 rods tonight to search more water and try and find those cod. Both rods were being fished on braid with an urfe attached to the end, attached to both these urfes was a simple flowing pennell rig, these would be both be baited up with squid, the further out rod was going to be baited up with head and guts (one of, if not my favourite baits) and the inside would be a small squid flesh wrap.

 

 

First casts entered the water and the tide was nailing it round to the right as it ebbed, letting out a big bow in the braid helped the lead settle perfectly and we were soon fishing. Not a lot happened for a while but then on my outer rod I saw a couple of bangs followed by a slackening, the culprit showed himself to be a lovely little school bass who was promptly returned to fight another day. Out went another juicy lump of squid head and guts and I sat back and had a cuppa, watching both tips my inside rod rattled slightly followed by a lovely bang and complete slackening, it took me a couple of seconds to catch up with the fish and I could tell this was  a lot better stamp, the fish travelled up-tide and was giving some lovely thumps down the rod, it couldn’t be, could it? As I got the fish closer it revealed itself, it was a lovely looking cod, not massive at around 3-4lb but it was a cod, then disaster struck. Literally yards from the shingle the fish gave one last shake of its head and the hooks pinged out of its gob and the fish was gone. I cant say what I said on this blog but I think the expletives must have gone on for around a good 5 minutes at least.

 

 

Well we knew they were there now and with just whiting and dogs since that fish we both knew time was running out, low was fast approaching and with the big Southern winds out on the sea the tide was holding up a lot higher than usual. Out of nowhere my out rod walloped round and kept going, no thuds just a solid power strike, lifting into it I felt weight for a split second then nothing… cue round 2 of the expletives coming out. Maybe that was the last chance of a bonus fish for the night and I had missed it, checking the rig I could see nothing wrong so just put it down to being one of those things. Slack water came and the tide was already starting to back up meaning that once it started running we were going to have to make a sharp exit to avoid being cut off. In fact once it started running it was surging up extremely quickly, so that was it we packed our stuff away and scarpered back across the marshes.

 

 

Once back at the car we both started working out our next session, both happy in the fact we now know the fish are in this bit of water we will probably be back in daylight to try and snare a fat juicy Suffolk codling.