stevetheangler

Not so much a ‘fishing’ thing but it did involve lines and baits…

Liz and I set off for a long weekend camping from Saturday 19th until Tuesday 22nd August near St Asaph in North Wales – and discovered the Welsh version of the M25 – namely the A55/North Wales Expressway LOL! To be honest, the Saturday trip to St Asaph on it was slow albeit not stationary but on Sunday, Monday and for the Tuesday trip homewards it was more free running….

We camped at Penisar Mynydd Caravan Park – a super site, all clean and very tidy and quiet. Just loos and showers on site, no shop nor clubhouse, nice views, etc. A nice chilling site which suited us well in our 4-man air tent with just air beds, a single burner camp stove, kettle and coffee and tea … for all meals we eat out, mainly in a Wetherspoons LOL. In fact, in the 3 days there we visited 4 Wetherspoons for various meals…

Sunday, we headed off to Rhyl for the day taking our crab lines and a pack of bacon for bait for the resurrection of the Liz And Steve International Invitational Crabbing Championships – something we’d not done for a time – but we’d no buckets with us so first purchase in the town was a pair of the requisite containers.

Firstly though we wandered around the town exploring and towards lunch time, as we were passing a Greggs we bought the usual sausage rolls and Liz had a cheese melt wrap and myself my usual a cheese’n’onion bake along with bottles of drinks … and then wandered on to a street bench to sit and munch AND I only got to take one bite of my bake before it was swooped upon and rudely snatched from my hand by a seagull!! Same seagull was later spotted trying to grab a pizza slice from a young lad with his parents who luckily protected lad and pizza well! And I managed to consume my sausage roll without further issue.

Next on the agenda we headed off to Marine Lake – a salt water lake – that the guides said was good for crabbing. Well, there were a good few crabbers there … both ‘fair sporters’ like Liz and myself using traditional baited crab lines (mesh bag with bait – hence crabs had to hold on to bag and bait whilst being lifted from the water and landed) and the ‘catchers’ using drop nets (no escape). As usual for me it didn’t start well … I needed to put water in the buckets and we were located on a walkway about six feet above the water and so I tried to tie the bucket to the crab line and drop it down … however, with the weight of water the  knot slipped and the bucket went adrift … I then managed to drop the crab line’s 4oz weight twixt bucket and its handle and attempted to drag the bucket along the wall to a launch ramp further along … worked so far but then the lead pulled free …. along came a couple of young ‘catchers’ who used their nets to steer the bucket across to the ramp … I climbed down the edge of the ramp in order to grab but then got struck and the young lady catcher had to climb down to help me back up!! And after all that my crab line had gotten itself into a right tangle which took some time to resolve! ANYWAY, Liz then went back to the launch ramp with her bucket, walked down it and just dipped the bucket in to fill it at her feet!…. HO HUM!!! And then we finally crabbed for an hour or so… and I am CHAMPION CRABBER 2023 winning 18-14 LOL!

After we finished there we wandered along to the Rhyl Miniature Railway which is on the bank of the lake and we took a trip around it. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7hhILj18Wc for the video of the circuit….

The rest of the break was ‘touristy’ visiting Colwyn Bay and Llandudno and exploring the shops – charity shop visiting being one of our main pursuits on hols and breaks – Liz exploring clothes and me fishing books and videos mainly.

PLANS

Getting the gear ready at the mo hoping to visit the Mike Day Fishery (aka the club’s bream/tench pool) on Monday 28th …. and a couple of medical appointments later in the week, another steroid injection to a left thumb joint on Wed 30th (last done 2016) and a podiatry appointment on Thurs 31st….

Liz is away Mon 4th to Fri 8th Sept at Burnham-on-Sea with a friend so I’ll have the car for fishing Tues, Wed and Thurs and possibly at least early Fri too depending what time she’ll arrive back as I’ll need to collect her from the station probably.

Oct 2nd to 9th we’re away in Cornwall at Parkdean’s White Acres site with 13 fishing lakes – already got my week permit for that!