My daughter Vickys boyfriend Jamie came on the scene. He was keen to go sea fishing so we planned an early outing one day when we were down at the caravan. I got up at day break, went to the loo, got back in bed and went back to sleep (I’m not daft!). Hours later at a more decent hour we readied the boat and took it down to the slipway.

           We went out of the bay and along the coast to Porth Dafarch where we dropped anchor and cast in our lines, opened our cans of the amber nectar and sat back and waited in anticipation. Half an hour later Jamie pulled up a dog fish, I reached for a towel and grabbed hold of the fish to remove the hook. Big mistake! The doggie was pretty upset about losing its lunch so it wrapped itself round my arm and commenced removing the skin bit by bit! We decided to call it a day after that as the wound would need to be treated in case of infection so we abandoned the fishing and returned to the caravan empty handed( this fishing lark could turn out to be pretty dangerous without a healthy respect for the sea life in the area)

           In order to locate the massive shoals of fish that I reckoned must be in the area ( just waiting for me to drop in my line) I decided to purchase a fish finder. I set It up with the transducer over the transon (back of the boat) and we set out to find some serious fish stocks. After a couple of hours we had found nothing so we went over to Mackeral Rock near Porth Dafarch and dropped our anchor. Immediately the fish finder started beeping and there on the screen were fish! From the surface down to the bottom there were fish! We dropped our lines in excitement and waited for the expected rush for our bait.- Nothing! The fish on the screen were gone! After an hour we pulled in the lines and hauled anchor but as soon as we lifted the anchor the fish finder went beep and I stared in astonishment as fish filled the screen.Either the fish had more intelligence than I gave them credit for or there was a reason for the phenomena. It suddenly occurred to me that it was the anchor going up and down that had caused the problems! I dropped down my line with some bait on the hook and watched in wonder as the the fish finder tracked my bait to the bottom. Pretty impressive but now we needed some sightings of fish to catch which wasn’t happening.

           The best way to find fishing grounds is to talk to a ‘local’ so after we returned to shore I talked to one old geezer that I’d seen fishing on his boat and he told me that the week before, a trawler had been in the area and had almost swept the area clean of stocks - Niiiiiice!..........

…………….The day came that was too good to miss for fishing. A beautiful clear warm summers day. The sea was like glass and perfect for launching the boat, except for one problem. There was nobody to help me launch it.

A few weeks previously I was given an idea of how to launch the boat single handed and that entailed filling 3 empty 5ltr paint cans with cement and before the cement set embedding a galvanized wire loop into the cement in each to form a handle. I then threaded a length of rope (about 20 ft) through all the loops and tied both ends together onto a float (I used a domestic ballcock 60 pence). Under the float I fastened a shackle.

The idea was to reverse the trailer into the water, wade out as deep as possible behind the boat and drop the weights down to the bottom. Next tie a rope from the cleat on the rear left of the boat. through the shackle under the float back to the cleat on the rear right of the boat forming a loop. I then loosened off the ties holding the boat to the trailer making sure that the boat was free and then drove forward. The cans of cement acted like an anchor and the boat slid off the trailer and was held in place in the water while I towed the trailer up to the car park. I came back, waded out to the boat and climbed aboard via the ladder that I had remembered to put in place before launching. I was then able to ready the engine and boat at my leisure without worrying about drifting onto the beach.

I started the engine let it warm up then unfastened one end of the rope and pulled it through the shackle back to the boat. I put the engine into gear and moved out to sea leaving the float bobbing in the water ready to tie up to again when I returned. – Everything went like clockwork!

I decided to try Mackerel rock and use my GPS as an exercise to find It. I had already set in the co-ordinates so I switched it on and followed the directions It gave. After 15 minutes it told me that I was nearing my target. I looked up and there was Mackerel rock about 200 yrds in front of me! Not bad.

After I dropped my anchor I settled down for some fishing and caught a couple of doggies and some whiting that I dropped back into the water and a couple of hours later I decided to up anchor and move to another spot. Something strange had happened, I was no longer near Mackerel rock but in the next bay!

I pulled on the anchor rope and it came up minus anchor! Just 75 ft of rope and 10 ft of chain! It’s recommended that a weak link be put in place between the chain and anchor in case it gets caught in rocks and can’t be retrieved, the idea being that the weak link breaks when you pull and you can at least get your rope back. I used two hefty plastic ties but obviously this wasn’t enough to stop the boat drifting so I’ll have to think of something else and buy yet another anchor.

I returned to the beach and moored up to my bouy in the same way that I left it. The tide was flooding so I let out more rope through the shackle which allowed the boat to move closer to the beach so that I could disembark to get the trailer. I retrieved the cans of cement and set off back to the caravan, a good days boating and fishing except for the anchor. >