A Bed Time Story
A lot of years ago I was a member of an angling club in Newcastle called the Novocastrians – in fact I was the Chairman. We used to fish both shore and boat matches and have trips to exotic places like Eyemouth, Scarboro’ and even the Heugh at Hartlepool.
One weekend we booked a trip on a boat out of the Tyne. Once aboard, the skipper headed down towards Souter Point. Now, I had two Penn Squidder reels … one with a plastic spool for the shore, the other metal for the boat, but in my hurry I put the wrong one in my bag – the plastic spool - not the metal.
We went on the drift about three miles off and started picking up a few fish. After about half an hour my rod was nearly torn out of my hands and I could feel whatever it was … it didn’t want to come up.
Everyone pulled their lines in to give me a chance with whatever this thing was. After a few minutes the spool of my reel imploded and the side plate opposite the handle flew off. But the “thing” was still on.
Reduced to hand-lining, I could feel the “thing” still putting it’s head down and swinging about. After a while one of the lads said he could see this huge shape deep down. Soon, two or three of the lads started shouting “it’s a common skate … it’s huge … look at the size of it”. Two of the lads grabbed gaffs and stood by. A couple more minutes went by and the two lads with the gaffs told everyone to move back to give them room to try and swing it on board.
Reaching over, the gaffs went in and they heaved the “thing” onto the deck.
… And there in front of us all was a 4 foot 6 inch Dunlopillo Mattress.
From then on for some time I was known in the club as Sam, Sam the mattress man.
