Guys, this was written for another forum so has all the fishing bits mixed in...but there's some SI pics and video there...
Blimey, there’s no end to my dedication. Saturday morning’s session was looking like a lot of fun – inshore forecast had force 7 southerly building up Friday evening to drop down to a force 4 westerly by morning…Amos may or may not be coming up at some point or other either that evening or early morning and Jason was planning to be on the beach about 4-4:30am and Paul and Tim would both be along at some point. Oh well, what the hell, I set my alarm for 4:30. I figured that it was really only 5:30 because the clocks changed the other week
I needed an early night anyway so read about cod until I nodded off.
Up I got, drank a coffee, grabbed my bait and donned my old drysuit and headed off to Hopton. I arrived about 5am as Jason was about to launch and wandered down to say hi.
With Jason anchored in the usual spot I prepared myself for launch. I’d borrowed some shiny toys from work as I wanted to see what the bottom was like here and got it duly rigged up before heading out through the shore dump. I had a full cockpit on the way out – not uncommon there – but with both scupper holes blocked with transducers it took a while to drain.
I paddled out just offshore and north of Jason and anchored up on some rough ground. I knew it was rough ground from previous sessions but I confirmed it by looking – and this time I was looking properly…I was looking with Side Imaging. I’d signed out a demo Humminbird 798c SI Combo and had the transducer on a piece of tube through a forward scupper hole. Although drag and tracking were a bit of a pain it was worth the effort. I could see where the rough ground started and how extensive it was, I could see what it looked like and I could see why the fish were so localised. I dropped anchor and started fishing.
First up was a whiting that came off at the surface – bugger. It didn’t take long until the rod nodded again and I reeled in another fish – a doggie. I was well happy as I love them…back it went after a quick cuddle.
More whiting followed, some retained and some returned and then the tide started to ease off onto slack water, daylight also having made an appearance by now.
I’d been waiting for slack water – it was my intention to go for a paddle around looking for places of interest on the Side Imaging. The plan was to get an increased knowledge of the extent of rough ground and also to pinpoint a small wreck nearby. So, anchor in the tankwell I made a move.
Gotcha! Pinkfoot had passed over this the day before and had id’d it (I think) from the chart – it’s a charted wreck and so I moved the cursor and pinpointed it for a closer pass on my return journey.
Closer investigation showed more detail:
It looks to me to have been an old wooden vessel that has been broken up over time into a patch of debris.
I carried on and started tracing the edge of some rough ground. No idea what this was:
There was quite a bit of rough ground to be found, more than I was expecting to be fair.
A small drop off too:
Then, another wreck I think. Not a lot left here as the ground appears to have built up and covered most of it but some debris about. Quite a stark contrast with the surrounding area.
More rough ground and something going on in the water column (no idea what):
Now that is all well and good but these were snapshots taken here and there. To get a real idea of what was going on the best bet is to look at the recording. Now this can be played back on the unit in any screen – ie on the chart, showing Side Imaging or conventional sonar soundings. I’ve rendered this as an SI plot at 10x speed to give an idea of what the ground looks like between Hopton and Gorleston in the particular area I went over. I wasn’t sticking to a particular course as the swell was pushing me a bit and I was aiming for charted features as well but it does give an indication…now, it is worth staying through to the end as the last part is the best and the place I was aiming for…the wreck of the White Swan...if you look closely there are fish to the port side.
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This is where I’d first fished in the sea from a yak 3 years ago…I’d swam on the beach there regularly as a kid and decided to have a good look at it. An old Swan Line Ltd collier completed in April 1903 by the Blyth SB Company Ltd (Yard No.113) and owned by J. A. Dixon and T. N. Sample of Newcastle, the single screw White Swan was en-route from West Hartlepool to Liverpool when she went down on 17th November 1916…93 years ago. Measuring 287.3ft long with a 43.2ft beam and weighing 2,173 gross tons, she dragged her anchor (it’s not just me!) and ran aground. It took 13 hours to get the twenty-strong crew off by Breeched Buoy. Their only steamer, the loss of the White Swan put Swan Line out of business.
The morning after she ran aground:
Parts of her are still visible at low tide and I remember seeing what looked like an old boiler at the surface as a child, but that has now disappeared.
I was rocking and rolling a bit from the swell, the sea being a bit confused over the wreck, and it lies at an angle so I had to alter course to get a good look at her as I went over for a second pass on the offshore side to get a still image. I also had to alter the chart speed to suit the boat speed and this took some experimentation so the actual dimensions are compressed.
Paddling back up against the current with the Heath-Robinson designed transducer down was getting taxing so after about my sixth pass so I made a last pass from the inshore side and headed back to Hopton for some fish. I was quite pleased with this pass:
I should have gone up there on the ebb really
I pulled up alongside Jason on arrival and tried to steal his brace of cod before dropping anchor slightly north and drifting down towards him. I managed one after a while, nothing major but a nice size for a meal at around 3lb or so.
Tim was a hundred yards south and brought in a better one and I saw Paul get one too. It went dead for a while then, the current really screaming through, so I decided to use some more energy and paddle against it to re-anchor further north on one of my marks…that was hard graft! I was making between 1 and 1.4 mph and after 15 minutes dropped down and waited. Tim’s Scupper started swing around as it drifted down to mate with my yak so we ended up attaching ourselves to each other and having a good old chinwag. I had the odd whiting during this time – none so odd as this one:
Soon enough it came time to head in. Not so much fishing time devoted to the morning for me but the smoked whiting pate went down a treat and the cod is in the fridge maturing
Finally played with Yellowfin today - bloody brilliant bit of software! These are extracted from the recording:
September 02, 2011, 12:34:45 PM
