Angling: Early catch is cold comfort

It was the last outing of the season with my local club on Morton Fishery and reports indicated that some good bags were coming to the scales.

With only a slight ripple on the surface and only a couple of boats out, I went with the floating line as usual with a long leader and single black dancer.

After a couple of casts I was into my first fish and thought I had cracked it. With my first fish in the boat in less than quarter of an hour I was on a high. At just under 3lb it was a good start. I was fishing on the dam wall and next cast I was in again but after screaming along the surface I felt the line go slack and it was gone. I decided to take a long drift and it took another hour before I got another offer.

Despite the water temperature being ok I thought that the air temperature dropped drastically as the session wore on. Changing to a fast glass and hot head damsel brought a savage tug, but unfortunately no lock on. Moving down to the bottom end of the big bay, I cast out and let the damsel go down a bit and it was fish on. It fought better than the first fish, though a little smaller – but it was a fish. By now I was chittering with the cold and decided to call it a day. I had a couple of casts on the way in to the pier and despite getting a couple of tugs, that was to be my limit.