'You couldn't fail to catch a fish.' Couldn't I?

'If you're really such a rubbish fisherman, then go to Bucks Mills, a few miles the other side of Bideford. You can't fail to catch a fish there, you'll be pulling out dogfish after dogfish,' or so they told me.
So I dutifully drove over there on a Thursday night when high water was due for 11.30pm. I got there for nine, and fished for three-and-a-half hours. And I didn't catch a thing. How crap is that??
I wasn't at all happy. I tried all manner of different size hooks, and switched my bait between mackerel and squid. All my bait was nicely tied on. Dare I say it was so carefully and nicely presented that there were times I felt like eating it myself. I did have a few bites (from fish, not of my bait) - it felt like something was banging the rod, rather than pulling on it. But could I get anything out of the water? Could I eckerslike.
We were having to pack up at half-twelve, as my pal had to be back in time to give his baby a night-time feed, and we saw these lights come down over the hill and down to the wall. It was a bunch of blokes. A bit random really, as this place really is in the midedle of nowhere - and suddenly there are five men in their forties and fifties...
'Caught anything?' they asked. As you do really, when you meet someone with a fishing rod on a small pebble beach in the middle of the night. I suppose I should have asked whether they had managed to successfuly burgle anybody or smuggle any drugs over the evening, but I was far to polite.
I replied in the negative.
'What, not even a smooth-hound?'
Restraining myself from suggesting he do something exotic and probably illegal with a smooth-hound, I managed to reply: 'No, not even one of them. Nothing.'
He continued: 'Oh. I don't beachcast myself, I can't cast far enough. But I got a few bass off feathers from a kayak the other day.'
Great. Even the local crooks are better at fishing than I am.