Sea Fishing by daveonawave

This story is true and happened at the beginning of December last year. George was 70 years old he loved his sea fishing and had built up a great collection of gear. He came home and realised his garage was slightly open. On going in he saw a thief trying to steal his beloved gear he shouted a challenge and was assaulted by the burglar who then picked up what was lying around and started to beat George to a pulp, he broke both his wrists and numerous other bones. The thief then laid in with his feet, 70 year old George was down on the floor by now and fighting for his life as the kicks rained in. Not satisfied with this the burglar picked up a Stanley knife and tried to cut George's throat, severing minor veins. Andy was in intensive care for a couple of weeks but sadly died on the 21 of December 2008.

What’s this got to do with this blog then? Well as most of you know I am a member of a sea fishing forum www.worldseafishing.com. The members of the forum decided to start an appeal for George and his family whilst he was in hospital.

The South Wales section of the forum decided to hold a memorial meet to raise money and show our support for such a worthy cause.

The meet took place at Oxwich on the 18 Jan 2009. It was a misty 8:00am start but nearly 30 anglers turned up. We set up on the beach starting at the slip way and spreading out along the beach.

Fishing was slow, very slow. Only 2 fish were landed! a dab and a flounder. Why so poor? well things weren’t helped by the hoards of surfers who turned up!

There were 'millions' of them, they came from all over and didn't show much regard for other beach users. Check out this fella comming into range.

Unfortunatly we were fishing 'catch and release' on surfers so if I did manage to get him in I would of have to release him unharmed. We stopped the fishing early due to the surfers putting them selves in danger, and got on with the raffle. Lots of prizes had been donated and even I had managed to get rid of my german 'Christmas wine'. Karen came up trumps and won the top prize....a lttle knitted fisherman. LOL

And heres a shot of the group. Quite a few had already left but these are the hard core!

All in not a bad little morning session. Shame the fish never turned up and shame the surfers did but hey, thats fishing for you. We raised a few hundred quid that day which went into the total forum appeal bucket which came to about £4200. Well done to all involved I say! George Thornleys family have heard about the meets and fundrasiers we have been doing and I'm sure it has but a bit of faith back in there lives. Their wishes were for the monies to go to a few different charities icluding the RNLI, this has now been done.