Not the day I was looking for

Chuck was busy with some unexpected admin this week so he couldn't join me on the tubes, but he didn't miss anything. I decided I'd have a go on the marsh. Given the weather front, I was in high hopes. If you can stick out the weather, the fishing is generally pretty good. And despite the rain it wasn't cold or overly windy as I pumped up the tube and launched as the light was coming up. I got fully buoyant and headed out to some timber structure about 300 yards from shore, unfortunately when I was about halfway there the weather decided to go for it. The rain started in earnest and the wind got up to the point that I was trying to paddle into whitecaps while actually moving back the way I came. Not ideal, so I decided to drop my little anchor and wait for things to pass. It didn't work, I was still being blown to the shore, just very slowly. After about ten minutes of that I thought I'd head to shore and take a bit of shelter.

 

As soon as I lifted anchor I was getting blown along like an empty crisp packet and once I started kicking it was more about steering than propulsion as I broke the unpowered craft world speed record on my way back up the marsh. Getting to shore, I dragged up and hunkered down. There was a slight lightening of the sky it to the east and I, ever the optimist, thought I'd have a short wait for things to improve so I could get out. Things didn't improve. 

 

I waited maybe half an hour in the pissing rain and just as I was considering packing up the decision was taken for me when the thunder started. Quickly broke the rods down and threw the tube on my back and headed off to the put-in.  By the time I got back at about half six, I'd been out of the house for about 3 hours, but had actually fished fished for zero minutes. In some respects I was pleased to be done and go back to bed for a couple of hours, but I was also a bit disappointed. The weather was worse than forecast and it was hardly what you'd call a great day's fishing. Maybe next week..