Glorious Failure

My trip to Cornwall coincided with the arrival of yet another depression. The type that brings strong winds and heavy rain. The resultant cancelled boat trips could have brought on a diffferent type of depression.

My options were limited from the shore I could potentially target gilthead bream and three bearded rockling. However the rockling normally show during the winter so I decided to concentrate on trying for a bream.

Gilthead bream are a warm water species and at the right time can be found in numbers on the Fal and Helford rivers. As the tide floods, the bream run up the estuaries up to the top of the creeks where they feed on worm beds and peeler crabs.

Access to the Fal and Helford rivers from the shore is limited and this is one venue that is better approached with a small boat or kayak. I was aware of one definite mark towards the top of one of these rivers and decided to concentrate my efforts there.

I fished a number of tides, however with the heavy rain colouring the water and bringing in an influx of fresh water I was not confident. Unsurprisingly my paltry catch for all this effort was a single flounder. So far I have had four sessions after a gilthead bream without success.

A night session on Penzance Pier after a three bearded rockling was another glorious failure, resulting in pollack and yet more shore rockling.

One day, I will return to Cornwall and bag both these species!

Britain's Bonefish

Llangenith beach on the Gower Peninsula is a surfers paradise. Set between two rocky headlands this long sandy beach faces the full force of the Atlantic.

Although surf beaches are associated with bass I was after the rare golden-grey mullet for which Llangenith is famous. Golden-grey's are the smallest of our three mullet species and can be identified by the golden spot on the gill cover. They can be found between the first and second breakers in water only a couple of feet deep, here they feed on marine invertebrates dislodged by the backwash.

My research suggested that the first hour of the flood would be the best time, so my plan was to fish an hour before low water and through the flooding tide. Using polaroids I hoped to spot the mullet working along the water table, indeed I had been told that they often tail like bonefish. I headed left from the access point away from the surfers and holiday makers.

My barbel rod was matched to ten pound line. I had tied up some two hook flapper rigs with 15 inch hooklengths and size 6 aberdeen hooks which would be loaded with maddies. The first couple of maddies were threaded up the hook shank and the remainder were head hooked, so that the bait resembled a medusa's head.Using a light lead of an ounce or two would mean that the rig would only just hold bottom and occasionally the lead would shift in the tide.

Second cast in and the tip rattled resulting in a flounder which put up a reasonable fight on the light tackle. A cast just beyound the second breaker resulted in a more positive bite with the rod pulling right over. This fish zoomed all over the place at speed. I was surprised how hard a pound golden-grey mullet fights. These mullet really are Britain's bone fish, If only they grew larger.

As the tide flooded I added a further five flounders including a double shot, a pristine bass of perhaps two pounds and a second golden grey mullet, slightly smaller than the first. My final fish was a small turbot

I really enjoyed my first experience of fishing a surf beach, it is really exilerating standing in the surf with the waves crashing against your legs.

Search for a Sole!

The Thames estuary is the largest breeding ground in Britain for the common sole, often incorrectly known as the dover sole. Sole are a nocturnal flatfish but can be caught by day in the murky waters of the Thames. My venue was Grays Wharf in Essex, the home of the World Sole Championship. For once my other half Jacky came with me, not for the fishing but the shopping at Bluewater.

As planned we arrived just after low water and I walked the promenade looking for the soft mud  that these fish inhabit and any gulleys that might act as a food trap as the tide flooded.  Despite the industrial landscape of the area, the local council had done a good job on the promenade. However the local scum had already started to undo their good work, the base of the promenmade wall was littered with block paving and bits of railing that had been vandalised! These sub human scum must have been armed with an oxyacetylene torch!

Sole are bottom feeders so I made up some two hook flapper rigs with a difference. A small lead was placed at the top of the trace and the usual plastic rig beads were replaced by lead beads from my fly tying kit.

The snoods consisted of ten inches of twelve pound flurocarbon to a size six aberdeen hook baited with ragworm. A bb shot was used on each snood as a bait stop with a couple  of red attractor beds.





One rod was cast into a gulley behind a sandbar and the other onto a muddy bottom. As both rods were fished at a maximum range of forty yards, I needed to slacken off slightly to pin my rigs to the bottom.

One of the great things about fishing is the brotherhood of the angle. Total strangers can talk fishing for hours and I enjoyed a conversation with Bob, a local angler which stretched from the Royalty Pub to Mahseer fishing in India.

The first fish was a flounder which was soon followed by a bootlace eel. I must admit I absolutely hate catching small eels, but with their numbers having reduced by over 90 percent over the last decade it was nice to see that this little eel was lip hooked and would hopefully someday return to the Sargasso Sea to breed. With less than an hour to go before being picked up I was relieved when the next bite produced a slip, the term for an undersized sole. My final bite of the evening produced a decent sole

Silver Tourists at Wareham!

For the first time since 1998 I was able to have a day off work on my birthday. The trip did not start well, due to heavy traffic I arrived in dorset a couple of hours later than expected, only to find that the tackle shop in Wareham had run out of maggots,  necessitating a trip to Poole to pick up some bait. To top it all a bitterly north east wind had caused temperatures to plummet.

It was two o'clock before I finally set up on Wareham Quay. I set up a couple of quivertip tip rods hoping to entice a specimen roach and hopefully bonus sea trout.

My feedered maggots soon attracted the attentions of series of salmon parr. These thumb print markings are also present on immature brown trout. Hopefully the presence of so many parr bodes well for the future of salmon on the Frome, in it's heyday fish in excess of forty pounds were recorded on this small river.

Eventually I hooked a better fish which turned out to be a small sea trout of perhaps three quarters of a pound. A trio of decent dace and a postage stamp sized flounder (literally) completed my catch. Due to the biting cold I packed up an hour after dusk.

My original plan was to spent a couple of days fishing the offshore banks out of Poole hoping for a Blonde Ray or spurdog, unfortunately because of the weather the trip had to be called off.

My plan B was to travel to Viaduct Fishery in Somerset in search of a motherless minnow or sun bleak as they are more properly known. These alien fish have colonised a number of the drains and stillwaters in Somerset. The fishery owner advised that if I fished here in August it would take seconds for me to catch one but that they didn't really show up much in winter. So not such a cunning plan, I only managed to catch a dozen or so small roach during the course of another freezing cold day. I will be back during the summer.

Flatties Galore and Science of Tides!

A last minute change of plan saw me return to Cley (pronounced cl-eye) in search of another flatfish, the flounder. The tide was too big apparently to fish my intended venue, Humberston Creek near Cleethorpes. Hopefully the barn owl that I spotted at first light would prove to be a good omen. The weatherman had predicted that the day would be cold and overcast with the wind coming from the north, with rain likely.

Following a little research I decided to fish the ebb down from mid tide and the early part of the flood. My two hook flapper rigs were tweaked to include four small yellow beads on each hooklink with size 4 and 6 aberdeen hooks baited with lugworm. For anyone in the area I must recommend ordering your bait from Brights of Sheringham as on both trips bait quality has been excellent.

I decided to fish closer in than on my last trip as flounder can often be found between twenty and forty yards out.

Despite the fact that at least one common seal was patrolling the area, most casts resulted in either a dab or a flounder. By low water I had taken eight dabs and two flounders with the odd pin whiting.

Interestingly the flood tide produced only one dab and an undersized bass, but as the tide grew in strength pin whiting became a decided nuisance. I cast around on one rod but to little avail. I also failed to get a decent photo of a seal despite one popping its head up and doing a "song and dance" within twenty feet of me!

Amazing to think that tides are created by the relative positions of the moon, the sun and the earth and the gravitational pull these celestial bodies exert on the sea. The spring and Autumn equinoxes see the sun, moon and the earth in alignment and the combined pull on the water leads to the largest spring tides of the year (that is when the difference in water level between high and low water is at its greatest).

The moon travels around the earth on a twenty-eight day cycle and a couple of days after the new and full moon sees the monthly spring tides. At periods of half moon the tidal range is at its least, these are known as neap tides.

High tide will occur around 50 minutes later each day as the moon travels around the earth. Surely a case could be made for reorganising time to fit the natural cycle of things!

The rate the rise and fall of the tide and therefore the speed of the tide is not constant. Gradually the tide flows faster until half tide and then gradually eases off again before falling slack as the tide turns. A quarter of the rise occurs in the first two hours,  half in the next two hours and a quarter in the last two hours. The period of slack water when the tide turns is also greatest on a neap tide.

Enough on tides, how can you tell flounders and dabs apart? Dabs are a small flatfish rarely weighing more than a pound, whereas flounders are sometimes caught at weights in excess of three pounds.

Both fish can be variable in colour and the dabs I caught today varied from a light brown to a darker brown/green mottling. The easiest way to tell the difference is to rub the fish along the back from tail to head, the dab is rough and the flounder smooth. In addition the lateral line of the dab curves around the pectoral fin in a semi circle.