A week at Westward Ho! - Part one.

I've just returned from a weeks holiday at Westward Ho! in north Devon and being a sea side village it gave me a chance to go back to my fishing roots and do a spot of sea fishing. The weather last week was a bit 'hit and miss' with a couple of wet day's through the week and an unfavourable change in wind direction at the beginning of the week making fishing the rock marks unsafe. A heavy swell was already rolling a good surf onto the beach pleasing the local surfing community, however, for the angler this heavy swell had also torn lots of weed from the nearby rocks and reefs and this was being carried in the tide. The first evening was spent at the mouth of the Taw/Torridge estuary learning about this weed, moments after casting out my rig it was brought in covered in the stuff and rendered useless for catching fish with and after a few more casts I gave up.

The nearby rock marks were the next days target spot but a local match meant that the best spots were taken. One angler was kind enough to put me on a spot that would catch me fish but the whole of this part of the coast is heavy on tackle and a good cast of 80 metres was needed to put a bait on clear ground away from the tackle thieving rocks, the weed was also another problem. A couple of casts later I did manage to catch a couple of Dogfish which put a smile on my face, I only had one sand eel on as a bait but with a pennel hook arrangement, one dog had taken the hook at the bottom of the bait the other the hook at the top.

During the morning the tide turned and brought with it a fresher, stronger wind and as the tide rose the waves started to turn over and roll across the rocks, as other anglers began to leave I called it a day.