Still nothing...

To begin at the beginning, as someone who famously lived on the other side of the Bristol channel once wrote... it would seem I can't catch a fish for love nor money. My wife bought me a starter kit of all the hardware nearly a year ago and I have spectacularly failed to land anything in all that time. In fact I've spent a small fortune on bait and tackle that would have more than paid for plenty of bass had I gone and bought it on Butcher's Row in Barnstaple. But that's not the point. My mission is to go fishing and catch stuff to eat. Frankly my desperation is at such levels I would seriously have to consider a non-return policy on an undersize carrier bag...
I went out on Tuesday night to Westward Ho! rocks. I'd made up some new rigs using a combo of 4/0 and 2/0 hooks and had bought some squid and mackerel with which to bait them. But of course when I got there at 8.50pm (high tide was 9.30ish - I'll come back to this klater) my reel wasn't working. The ratchet wouldn't work and althought it didn't render the reel unusable per se, fishing with a reel trhat didn't lock would have meant not being able to put the rod down for five seconds..
Fortunately my old mucker and partner in fishing, Matt, (who went and broke his duck just days ago by attracting a young pollack to some feathers he was trailing from a kayak)offered to lend me his. So after picking that up in Appledore I decided to go down to Northam as that was closer. It was a spectacular sunset and, as I cast out with the mackerel, I weas feeling lucky. I'd just caught my breath when some bloke popped up to tell me he was closing the gate and I'd have to clear off. I was getting thoroughly peed off by this point, as it felt like a conspiracy, but back I went to Westward Ho!
Those rocks are a bit daunting on your own at night, but my head torch came into its own as I could easily pick a safe route out across the rocks - and with the tide on its way out, there wasn't the worry about being swept off by the tide. It did occur to me though that had I gone for a burton into the water and bashed my head my wife was unlikely to think I was late until some time after 3am if she happened to wake up.... by which time I'd be crab food...
Anyway I spent a couple of happy hours there and had several nibbles. Sadly I didn't manage to get any of them hooked and I came home about midnight, my bag empty of anything but the leftover frozen bait I'd taken with me.
The next day thought I had a stroke of luck: I went into the fishing shop in Westward Ho! and explained the problems with my reel. The chap behind the counter suggested that it could be down to a build up/dmage done by salt. I had to confess to not washing the reel every time I came back from a trip - and did in fact admit that the malfunction was clearly my fault. But he was still good enought to replace the reel for me. Amazing service that made me determined to shop there more often.
Also, the really exciting bit, was that I had been wrongly fishing Westward Ho! rocks at high water because, at some point, among the hours of advice I've had from different people, someone told me to fish a couple of hours either side of high tide. But, said the chap at the fishing shop, this was not the case for all marks - Westward Ho! among them. The rocks there should be fished around low water - meaning you're not constantly having to cast out across rocks that are likely to snag your tackle every other time! Hallelujah, another piece in the thousand-piece jigsaw.
Next plan is to go out to Clovelly or Bucks Mill - apparently you can't fail to catch something here and I could do with a confidence booster. I hear it's mainly dogfish. I don't really care and, were I to catch one (he added hesitantly, because I believe that it can fail at fishing where others have failed to fail) there's a decent recipe in my old Rick Stein British seafood book for dogfish with a thinned garlic mayonnaise-based sauce. Anyway, best not to get ahead of myself!
Will get back to you on how I do!