MINE’S A COD
A reader fishes at a former pit village.
With the cod season well and truly underway, I’d fished several times with my friend James White and caught plenty of codling to 2lb – but we wanted something bigger. I decided to head out from my home at Bolden, Tyne & Wear, to try my luck at a mark called Cambois (pronounced ‘camus’), a former mining village near Blyth, Northumberland. It’s a clean to mixed ground venue that produces some nice bags of cod, but it can quite easily become unfishable if the swell gets too big. However, with the swell dying off to around 4ft conditions seemed perfect.
With James, who is from South Shields, for company, the journey north of the Tyne passed quickly. We arrived two hours before low water and made our way on to the mark as temperatures plummeted to well below freezing. Luckily, we found a deep hole at the side of a rock formation that we both thought should hold fish.
The set-up was fairly simple. I opted for the Sonik SKS Black 14ft rod with a Penn Fathom 15 loaded with braid and a clipdown Pennell rig made with Sakuma 3/0 and Tronix 1/0 circle hooks. James was using his Tronixpro Guerrilla 13ft with a Leeda Icon fixed-spool reel with braid and a Pennell pulley rig with same size hooks. We had a good selection of baits including lug, rag, black lug, cart, mussels, razorfish and squid.
POSITIVE KNOCK
The first baits went out, James trying cart and mussels, with me trying blow lug and black lug. Within five minutes my rod started nodding away, so I picked it up and felt a positive knock. With a little flick of the rod tip, I set the hook – I believe that striking too hard with braid can result in pulling the hook due to braid’s lack of stretch compared to mono. After a few turns of the reel the fish got off but, thankfully, it didn’t feel like a big one so I wasn’t too disappointed.
Soon James noticed his rod arch over and his line fall slack , so he wound down and struck, but he too missed the bite.
Seconds later we had both changed our bait and cast back out. A chap fishing around 30 yards to the left, but casting into the same hole, landed a nice codling of around 3lb, followed next cast by one around 5lb.
As he prepared a new bait, I had a very subtle rattle on the rod tip. I let the bite develop and soon the rod arched over, so I grabbed it, struck and met with quite a solid resistance. After a few minutes the fish was in my hands, a nice clean cod of almost 6lb which fell to black lug and cart.
We reached low water and the bites died off, but we decided to stay another hour into the flood. It proved a good decision, because James landed our second fish, which went back. As the tide started flooding the weed started to show so we decided to change marks. By this time the temperature was well down below zero and my waders were
making my feet extremely cold. Our next move was to a local pier where, with the incoming tide, the swell had increased to around 6-7ft... perfect!
The change of venue meant a change in ground, too, so I switched my set-up slightly and fished with my Reelsport Blue Thunder, which is a capable rough ground rod, while James stayed with his Guerrilla.
SLACK LINE
From the first cast we were into bites, but they were so tentative that we struggled to connect with the fish. As a result, we scaled down the hook sizes in the hope of connecting, and it became apparent that to get any real positive bites we had to use large rag baits. The cod only seemed to take confidently when rag was put in front of them.
With the temperature being so low it got to the stage where I couldn’t feel my fingers, so I got lazy and, instead of taking off the old bait, I just added to it, creating a huge worm bait. But it worked! I started hooking into codling. The fish weren’t the biggest, around 1lb 8oz, but they kept us busy.
As we were thinking about packing up, I had a very slight rattle on my rod tip. Thinking it was just a small rockling, I decided to leave it, but the rod arched over. Lifting into the fish I knew it was sizeable, but this happened to be the one rig I put out without a rottenbottom. Yes, the weight got snagged. I tried pulling it free, but it wouldn’t move.
Keeping hold of the rod, I let out a load of slack line, but to no avail. After around 15 minutes with the fish still on, I decided I had to pull it out, so by winding down tight I straightened the rod towards the snag and fish and walked backwards, holding the spool of the reel. The line snapped at the rig clip – I was gutted.
A new rig and fresh bait resulted in a rockling, and James managed a couple more codling, but by this point I couldn’t feel my fingers so we decided to pack away our gear. Rest assured, next time we drop on that mark I will be using rotten-bottoms. ■