The forecast for the weekend was wet and windy which meant that Saturday's boat trip was blown off. Shore fishing would be difficult as the wind would mean weed problems.
Plan B was to fish for mullet. Thin- lipped mullet travel further up river than the larger thick lipped mullet. My choosen venue was the Sussex Ouse at Southease. My plan was to fish the tide up from low. Six hours and several hundred casts later my baited spinner had failed to elicit even a follow and I left Sussex deflated and tired.
So tired infact, that I had to pull into a service station for an hours nap. After dosing myself up with caffeine I returned to the car to find that I had a flat battery, I had left the lights on! A friendly RAC man gave me a jump start, even though I am member of Green Flag!
As usual I spotted the pub I was staying at too late, so I turned round and pulled into the car park. I went into the pub and introduced myself and was shown to my room. What a farce, I was in the wrong pub and they thought I had booked the function room! If you ever go to Whiteparish please note that there are two pubs right next to each other in this little village.
Sunday I woke up more optimistic. Wrong, on going to pay my bill my credit card was declined. Luckily I had enough cash on me. I then had to drive the by now familiar six miles to find a signal, whilst all the time assuming my card had been cloned. My bank's computer system was down hence the problem.
Rather than return to the Sussex Ouse I decided to travel over to Wareham to fish the tidal Frome for the large thin lipped mullet that hunt these lower reaches. I arrived a couple of hours or so before high tide. After trying several swims I saw a mullet follow my bait in. Every couple of casts from then on, a mullet or two would follow the spinner in and I even had a couple of taps on the end of the ragworm.
Eventually right at my feet I had a take. On such a short line the mullet couldn't get up a head of speed, but could only thrash around on the surface and consequently was quickly bundled into the landing net. Lucky as there were a lot of mooring ropes around and mullet are fast fish and can change direction in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately sport was short lived and as the tide turned the mullet disappeared back into the sea.
At 3lb 13oz this was a big fish, thin-lipped mullet do not grow to the size of their thick-lipped cousins. The trials and tribulations of the weekend were put behind me and it was one happy angler that drove back up the M27 towards Peterborough.
