I might have known

I was mildly excited as I drove down to Westward Ho! this morning. Was my optimism not already in a pre-existing state of crushedness after months of not catching anything, I might even have been very excited. It was, after all, a beautiful morning, sunny and mild. Low tide was at 8ish. I was thinking of getting there for then, but made it by 10... needed my lie in.
So I got down there, put my new rod together, tied on one of my new lures and began casting. It took me a few casts to get used to the new rod and technique, but before long I was able to push the lure out a decent distance.
But I might as well not have bothered. Two hours I was there, and not a bleeding bite. So what am I doing wrong? Can anybody help me with some sugestions? Does anybody read this or am I simply venting my frustration to an empty worldwide web? Is there anybody out there? Please leave a comment, especially if you're any good at fishing. No reasonable offer of help refused....
A small boy joined me this morning. He didn't say much, just sat about six feet behind my right shoulder. Fortunate really that I didn't accidentally hook his glassses and hurl them out to sea while casting. Even that seemed beyond me.

Will new rod be my saviour?

I fell upon the package and tore it open last night: a new rod. A spinning rod - the idea being it will give me more options to be able to fish when I'm out anyway, ie spinning while my beachcaster is cast and possibly even while out on family beach trips (that'll go down well...). Good for the daytime, the old spinning rod. Or so I read. Maybe that's the problem: I know little, except that which comes out of a book...
My wife asks me whether there will now be a procession of rods and whether I am now going to spend increasingly large amounts of money in my quest for the holy grail: a fish to take home and eat. I couldn't answer her, for fear that an honest response would simply have to be 'yes'.
I will update you after the weekend. Probably even over the weekend if I'm successful;. But then we all know how likely that is...

'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.

The Boathouse, Instow

We had been down on Instow Beach for a 'blow' (as my wife calls it with charming naivety!) and decided to grab a bite to eat. I'd liked the look of the Wayfarer last time I was in there for a quick pint, but that was packed. So Fiona ran into the Boathouse (which I'd assumed would have been packed) and they were happy to have children, had a high chair and had space. Excellent. I parked up while they went in, and then joined them, grabbing myself a pint of Sharp's Doom Bar on the way. Why anyone would buy beers like Adnams while in the Westcountry is beyond me. I'll always try to go for a south west beer, it somehow feels more supportive of local business... Anyway, enough of the sermon.
We ordered our food. I had the baked Lundy crab with prawns and salad while Fiona had the prawn and avocado bake. We just asked for another plate and a teaspoon for Hannah, which they were happy to bring us.
The food was nothing short of outstanding. My crab was gorgeous - it had a cheese and herb crust and was slightly peppery. It came with a good portion of new potatoes and peas, and a good salad of tomato and various leaves with a good portion of small peeled prawns - so despite the fact it was a salad (which I'll shy away from in lots of places because they will often be too small to act as a main meal for a gutbucket like me) it was really filling. Fiona also really enjoyed her food, although I didn't taste it.
Hannah turned up her nose at the prawns, crab and salad options, settling instead for a few of her mother's chips and practically all of the peas which came as a side dish with my meal... Eight months ago we'd have felt embarrassed by our daughter eating nothing but chips and peas in public. Now we're just grateful that she didn't have a screeching fit when we were being unreasonable and unkind - refusing to let her play with the salt and pepper, for example.
Anyway, full marks for the Boathouse. We'll certainly go there more often. The staff were really friendly and the food was fantastic. We were also lucky in that we arrived shortly before the place filled right up, so not only did we get a seat easily we also had virtually no wait for our food. It's the sort of pub food that you would really expect to get so close to the sea - but in reality is almost a holy grail...

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!