Cod of the Weekend

My dad hired a boat to go fishing in the Thames Estuary last weekend, and so half a dozen of us arrived bleary-eyed at the dock under Rochester Bridge at about 05:00 to cruise out in the buffeting wind and driving rain for a day of rods, hooks, worms and fish guts.

Once the sun came up and the weather calmed down it turned out to be a whole lot more fun. We all caught our fair share of dogfish and whiting, although I managed to blag what felt like a whale when I hooked it. When I eventually pulled it up to the surface it was apparently a large (for the season) cod. Large enough, in fact, for me to win an award in a competition that weekend that I didn't even enter, and get my photo in the local paper!

Cod of the Weekend! And a new nickname: "Mick".

Note: There were no other codling caught on the trip. Graham East is telling porkies.

Anyway, once I got that little fella home (the cod, not Graham), I filleted him down and made some nice fish and chips and home-made tartare sauce.