When you have children family life takes priority over the fishing, there have been many times where I have had sessions planned and I have had to cancel or move my fishing time later. Sometimes this means missing the best tides or having to change to a lesser productive location, this weekend just gone was no exception, a day planned on the beach had to be completely rearranged to only 2 and a half hours… we wanted dabs but would we find them close to home?

With some black lugworm being left out to go stinky and sticky and some other baits sorted I was ready for a nice winters day on the beach chasing dabs. The weather was looking spot on for a day chasing one of my favourite fish on the UK coastline and the excitement was building for a little bit of dab bashing. Then it happened, the afternoon of the day before we were meant to go we found out it was Willow’s pantomime the next day in the middle of the afternoon. This meant that my proposed dab hunt on a very prolific beach was off, luckily the pantomime was at felixstowe and this gave me the 2 and a half hours it was on to try and see if me and Thomas could find some closer to home. I knew they would not be in the numbers or sizes that the other beach holds but even if we could find a couple I would be happy.

After dropping Willow off at her panto Thomas and I made our way to the viewpoint beside the world famous Felixstowe docks. These docks accept many enormous container ships into their berths each week meaning that there is a deep channel that runs fairly close to the beach, this then shelves up to create a lovely clean sandy bottom close in that is perfect for flatfish. This beach also holds some great bass when the fish are running in spring and autumn. Upon arrival we could see that a thick layer of fog was rolling in, the tide was nearing bottom and without any wind in the air the water was flat calm, almost glass like. We made our way to the left of the car park about 150 yards and set up camp. We would both be on 2 hook flappers to size 5 Jinza hooks with gutted lug as bait, first casts were sent out and we sat back and waited.

After about 10 minutes of being on the beach Scott turned up and set up beside us, we soon got nattering as we had not seen each other since before xmas and it wasn’t long before Scott had his lines in the water too. First cast produced nothing except a few little crabby looking rattles so the next cast’s were sent out and it did not take long for Thomas’s rod to show positive indications that a fish was interested, my rod on the other hand still looked very crabby!! With Thomas’s rod showing these fishy signs he decided to wind it in and low and behold he not only had 1 dab he had a double shot, brilliant to see and the smile on his face said it all. Me…. well I also had a double shot but these were big fat shore crabs, and this carried on for the next couple of casts with the crabs munching their way through my baits.

With the light rapidly fading and the fog becoming thicker time was quickly disappearing for us, Scott had caught a dab but I was still getting mangled by crabs, no matter what I tried they found my baits and left me dabless. The temperature had dropped dramatically very quickly and Thomas was now starting to get cold, we had half an hour till we had to leave and he was keeping warm by walking up and down the beach. We decided to have a wander over to a snaggy structure which becomes uncovered at low tide to keep him warm and also to see if we could find any leads that may have become snagged up by wayward casts from unsuspecting anglers. Alas there were no leads or rigs we could find so we wandered back over to our rods to reel in and change baits. I was first to make the beach and yet again I had a double sot of juicy crabs hanging off my snoods, Thomas on the other hand had another dab…. This is where the mickey taking started. He has reached 10 years old now and is starting to get banter, a little too much for his own good if you ask me!! From this minute on he kept coming out with comments along the lines of “ha you write for fishing magazines you are rubbish”, “how many fish have you caught dad??? hahahah, how many, oh yeah none and I’ve had 3” and the best one that came out of his mouth “is your hair loss because you can’t catch anything”…. To be honest I would rather he was like this than quiet, he can certainly give as good as he can get.

With the clock hitting 5pm it was time to pack up, the local beaches are proving very unproductive at the minute but we set out for dabs on a beach that wouldn’t have been in my top 5 choices and we found some… well Thomas did, he wandered off the beach happy as larry and even though I was playing up to his banter to make him laugh I was just as happy as he was, even though I hadn’t caught I was not bothered in the slightest. I would much rather see the kids hooking into fish than both of us blanking. We picked the girls up from their panto and as soon as they got into to car he was on it again telling them how rubbish I was and how he had “wrecked me”.. Kids of today eh.

So with a quick 2 and a half hour hit we still found the target species, hopefully if the weather is right for next weekend we will hit the beach we had originally planned to, the boys staying at home for this one though, I might actually catch something if he isn’t there to “wreck” me.