Sat 31st March - 210 miles, 1 Dogfish

Leigh Holman and myself set off from Crawley at 3am Saturday morning, (Should have been 2am but I overslept, sorry mate!) our destination? The Isle Of Sheppey in Kent. Our target species? The mighty Thornback Ray.
After some very kind advice from a guy I met through the World Sea Fishing forum who had caught a few lately, we were headed to a beach mark near Leysdown-On-Sea.
Normally this would be a drive of an hour or so, but as my car can't go above 4th gear at the moment, I had to take it easy and we arrived at the mark for around 4.45am.
After setting up in the dark we managed to get our rods out fairly painlessly and sat back to await the results.
Once the sun came up we were able to get a better look at the venue, and it was definitely quite pretty, fishing from a small strip of shingle before the sloping cliffs of 'London Clay' behind us.

We fished until 9am when the tide started to run out at quite a rate, and the only action we had was a slow, trembly bite to one of Leigh's rods, but nothing came of it. It was possibly a crab stripping his Bluey fillet bait.

Not to be deterred, and with the whole day ahead of us, we decided to venture further south to another mark that had apparently thrown up a few Thornbacks lately, Deal Pier in South East Kent.

The sea conditions did seem more favourable here, with plenty of colour in the water and a very strong North Easterly wind blowing.

I initially tackled up with Ray rigs and Bluey/Sandeel baits whereas Leigh fished one rod for Rays and the second rod with smaller hooks and worm & squid baits to see what else was about.

Before long Leigh connected with a string of small Pouting, followed by the cutest micro-Dab I have ever seen!

It didn't take long for us to realise why this Pier has a reputation for being 'a bit snaggy', I lost 3 sets of end tackle in 3 consecutive casts, and before long Leigh had lost a set too.
Despite being expensive, neither of us liked the idea of leaving baited rigs littering the sea bed, nor of adding to the already enormous amount of gear that must be lying out there, just waiting for the next person to get snagged on.
With this in mind, we upped sticks and moved onto the arm of the4 pier itself, and Leigh was quick to latch into a few more Pouting.
Despite my best efforts, all I seemed to be able to catch on my Ragworm baits was Whelks, 3 of the bloody things in a row!!

Even with lots of layers of clothing, the biting North-Easterly winds were really starting to get me down, and so I made a yomp to the car to stick on an extra pair of jeans and pick up some hot food for us.
After the hot grub and the little walk had warmed me up a bit, I persevered with the Ray tactics with a renewed vigour.
One young lad I spoke to on the way back from the car did mention that a Ray of 5lb + had been landed earlier on, and we since found out that it was caught by the guy next to me in the first spot we were in!
It's always the way, but i'm pretty sure if we'd stayed put, we would have run out of tackle sooner rather than later.
With that in mind I wasn't particularly hopeful when I thought I saw a bite develop on my new SALT Travel Rod (Thanks Leigh!)
But sure enough, after clearing a jammed leader knot Leigh helped me swing up my first Lesser Spotted Dogfish of the year!
Not exactly what we had come for, but as i've said before they are one of my favourite species so it was most welcome.

We fished on in hope until just after 8pm, until eventually, cold and tired after such a long day, we called it a day and made the long drive back to Crawley.
It wasn't an easy day's fishing by any means, but that definitely made the one fish that I did catch all the more welcome, and we definitely learned a few lessons.
Number 1 being, don't fish Deal pier unless you have a truckload of spare gear and a lot of patience!!!