Report - Benjoma

Date - 18/12/08

Jumped on Benjoma again today with a few lads from work. Conditions again were against us, with the wind blowing a steady force 6 westerly. Luckily Penarth is sheltered somewhat from the Westerlies, and the trip was on, and we locked out at 8am.

We steamed the short distance to our 1st mark, and our went the uptide rods loaded with lug, rag and squid cocktails. After 10 minutes or so, my rod tip bounced a couple of times, and the gripper released from it's position, I wound down into the fish, but it was not on!

With the tide flooding, the mark became too lumpy for a few of the guys on the trip - so we moved to a more sheltered mark. We managed a couple of whiting here, but soon became too choppy to stay there! A codling of around 3lb came up as the anchor was being pulled!

The next mark was again slow, with only a few whiting to show, until the novice downtiding on the stern pulled in a codling of around 2.5lb. This was followed by another quiet spell, so the skipper decide on one last move. Again as we were in the process of pulling the anchor - I pulled in a codling of around 1.5lb, which was returned to grow bigger.

The final mark was not that far off shore! We had moved there hoping that the codling in that area would not be feeding on the sprats. With only an hour or so of the trip to go - we had finally found the cod. Around 5 or so good cod bites were missed in no time, but we managed to pull in another 3 fish, with a 3lb'er to myself. On gutting it - it was stuffed full of tiny crab.