A friend had been asking me for ages to go out fishing in my boat for over twelve months and although I had promised him a trip for a long time it just hadn't happened mainly due to bad weather, having a regular partner for fishing at weekends and due to the fact that he WORKS. What a dirty word.
However, on Monday night he phoned me to ask could we go fishing on Tuesday. My first instinct was to say NO due to the fact that I hadn't prepared to go. At 11pm that night after looking at the weather forcast, which was predicting a long sunny day with force 2 winds I rang him and said YES we will give it a try. So next morning he came to my house and helped me load all the gear, including all the extra gear we take JUST IN CASE. We picked up the boat, juiced up and got to New Brighton at about 11am and launched about 11.30.
I thought that first of all we would try for some mackerel and then he could at least say he had caught some fish. We caught 12 between us on the drifts. We then moved and anchored and rigged up hopefully for smoothhound which I explained to him were like small shark. He caught the first fish which weighed between 7-71/2 lbs. He couldn't believe the fight it put up and when netted and landed couldn't believe how small it was. He thought he had caught a whopper but it was a picture to see the joy on his face.
We carried on fishing and caught 21 smooth and starryhounds between us [ 11-10 to me] That was close. Plus a couple of flatties. The best days fishing for a long while.
It just goes to show that you can prepare for everything except for the unexpected.