Salt Marsh

Went up the salt marsh with Furry Chops to look for mullet as the tide flooded up the creeks. We didn't see hide nor hair of  them, but a glorious morning unfolded all the same, with curlews crying out in the distance as the sun burned the cloud off.

I dropped the rod and rucksack, reached for the camera and immersed myself in the scene.

So long then, Summer

So long then, Summer. And hello, you must be Autumn. Nice to see you again. After a few weeks off fishing and a few you should have been down here tonight, they were well having it texts, I decide it's time to hit the road again.

I read about some big perch being caught on the big river, so I packed a few little rubber bits and pieces and headed down there yesterday. When I got there, there were people in nearly all the swims on the stretch I'm guessing the article was about.

I get chatting to a couple of old boys who are up on holiday and one tells me he's seen a couple of big perch chasing fry around the marginal lillies.

I went back this afternoon, had a few chucks in the right swims and lo and behold spy the author of the angling column in question.

"Oh no mate, that wasn't here," he chuckles, looking at my lure rod. "That was on the Middle Level."

To the south, the sky is darkening menacingly. I eye up the approaching storm and wonder if I can get to the right bit of the right drain before it arrives. 

Having only brought a light rod and small lures, I decide to forgo a soaking and hit a little stillwater on the way home instead. Carp are swirling around on the top. I wonder idly whether one might take a tiny 1" shad as I swop the wire trace for a fluorocarbon leader (no pike in the water...).

A few swims in something swirls behind the lure. Did I spook a carp in the margins, or did it come after the lure..? Next cast, I hook into something that tears off half way across the lake before the hook pulls as I try and turn it. Sorry Mr Carp.

RIP Ken Wallis

Wing Cdr Ken Wallis has passed away, aged 97. I met and spoke with this truly incredible man a a few times over the years. He flew Wellington bombers and Lysanders dropping agents into enemy territory during the Second World War. He also invented the Autogyro, which he flew as a stunt double in a James Bond film. More on him here. 

A story of our times in the Fens

They dredged the Old Bedford at Salter's Lode last winter - so how come it looks like this a few short months later..?

Flag rush is growing across the centre of the channel. And water levels are down at least two feet from where they should be judging by the marginal mud and exposed sill.

When I last looked at it a few days back, they were letting muddy water in from the tidal Ouse, presumably to top up levels to make up for water lost to abstraction.

This is  surely how the lower end of the drain silts up. I've no idea how much money the Environment Agency spent on dredging it last winter, but I'm guessing it didn't come cheap.

Yet at around the same time, the water levels were so high on the Welney Washes that the EA were deploying emergency flood barriers to protect the village.

Could we not apply some joined-up thinking here, somewhere along the line - and find a way of diverting some of that winter flood into storage, to tide farmers over through drier months..?

The Old Bedford's in mortal danger unless a solution can be found. It throws the odd big fish up, but the pyramid of pike of all sizes looks to be long gone in its lower reaches - along with a lot of the other fish this culturally-important fishery once held, bread and butter species like tench and perch.

Culturally important..? Because it once inspired a generation of pike anglers who were fired up by the writings of the now-departed Rickards and Webb.  If they saw it today, they'd probably be turning in their graves.

Are our waterways really just there for convenience and the odd PR exercise on the part of the powers that be - or are they the lifeblood of our landscape, vital arteries worth preserving..?

When dredging began last winter (right..),  to undo the previous summer's damage, I thought the powers that be had seen the light.

The Old Bedford lives on - just. It would probably be cheaper in the long run to just save it for posterity, along with several similar smaller drains, by finding ways to capture winter run-off for use in the growing season.

Answers on a postcard...

The blades on your mower need sharp'nun Trevor

Rockfalls show dangers as Hunstanton cliffs erode

The hop across the rocks isn't quite the same, but I don't realise why until another angler points it out to me.

"Fresh rockfall," he says, pointing to the tonnes and tonnes of chalk and carr stone which have come down from the cliffs at some point over the last couple of days. "Look, you can see all the dust still. I wondered when that lot was going to go."

There are large cracks up in some of the rocky overhangs. The cliffs are gradually eroding inland, as the elements eat away at rock strata which took millions of years to lay down. The edge of the cliffs has moved around two metres in the last decade, by my reckoning.

Hawkeye reckons he's heard the cliffs creaking and cracking as he's walked along the beach, while I have pictures showing the cliff edge being 20 yards from the wall around the light house - it's less than half that now and another good fall or two will probably see the path on the seaward side lost, as the council move the safety fence back.


People hunt fossils as well as bass at cliff base - like these fossilised ferns I found the other day. Some holidaymakers clamber up the rubble, others sit and picnic underneath - despite the warning signs.

The latest rockfall graphically shows the danger, with lumps of carr stone landing around the high water mark after bouncing their way down the slope.

There were grockles sitting there the other night, I tell the guy who pointed out the avalanche. "They might be under that lot now," he shrugged.

Rock slides apart, the last few tides have been dead.

Sunday night - sea choppy and coloured, large regatta in progress a few hundred yards offshore. Fished next to one of the more consistent local lure anglers. "You will catch 'em when it's like this," he said. We didn't.

Monday morning - high tide at dawn. No sign of any fish, but terns diving about 150yds off the beach.

Monday afternoon - went to try a little stream where I've seen some perch and Hawkeye swears he saw a pike. Few silver fish and - amazingly - bream about in a deeper run beneath an old bridge, but water very clear and no sign of perch.

Monday night - back on the bass. Sea coloured within 50 yards of beach, terns diving move out into a gathering squall, surf building in the gale, got soaked to the skin within half an hour and cleared off.

We have two runs of decent tides left between now and September, so improving on my bass total's going to require a concentrated effort - and one eye over my shoulder looking out for rockfalls waiting to happen.

***It's hard to guage scale without anyone in the pictures. The two flat rocks, sitting on top of each other, are around the size of a small hatchback. Which you obviously wouldn't like landing on your toe...

Making skull jig heads

Genius...! Hat tip Paul's blog, which is a bit like Blue Peter goes lure fishing - ask a grown-up before you heat up the tin, use the oven or the sharp thing *linky*. 

If you've got time, read his brilliant writings about living and fishing on the island of Erraid *linky* which I guess is where he got the making things bug from.

Mullet - blast me, you won't catch them

Mullet..? Cor, blast me - you can't catch them. This has come close to being the soundbite of the last few weeks for me, having decided to test out this old Norfolk adage. And they were right.

That's why I've been so quiet - I've been trying hard to catch one of these things.

It all started when I looked off this bridge somewhere I'd never, ever think was worth fishing, and I saw a swirl. A gull dived and the surface erupted with fish bow-waving off in all directions.

What on earth are they, I wondered. I took a walk up the bank and found a chap sitting in the rye grass watching the water through binoculars. When I asked if he was bird or fish watching, he said: "A bit of both."

The water heaved as a shoal of mullet chased and swirled on the top. I've never seen anything like this, I told the man with the binos. "Me neither," he said.

He beat me to the spot the next day. We fished but there was no sign of anything. Mullet can be a bit hit and miss like this, apparently - as in they come and go, there one tide, gone the next.

I went back a few days later, having by now read up and tied up some spinners with a fluo trailer to bait up with worm, hit the place as the tide turned at the start of the flood and the mullet were back.

I crept alongside a shoal that must have been 40 or 50-strong, fins and black backs breaking the surface as they nosed along kicking up puffs of silt.

Three or four casts and they were gone - 20 yards down the bank. I squelched down through the mud and lobbed the lure well past a group of fish I saw on the top.  Three or four of them followed it in to my feet and turned tail in a muddy swirl.

Then a tractor towing a monstrous piece of farm machinery made the banks shake as it clanked and thumped its way over the bridge. I never saw another mullet that tide.

I read up and decided to try the mashed bread approach. Mullet apparently respond to this, although there are two kinds of mullet  - thick and thin-lipped - whose habits vary.

You need to know what kind of mullet you're fishing for, apparently, to tailor your approach. Are they of the thick or thin-lipped kind..? Until you actually catch one, you can't be certain. And that's mullet fishing's Catch 22.

One or two of them swirled at the crusts which floated up from loosely-squeezed balls of bread. Sea gulls make floating crust a no-no. When the gulls started diving after the bread, the mullet melted away.

I must admit, I thought a few of these would be an easy steal. Location being 90pc when it comes to catching them, etc etc. I went back and tried tiny spinners rigged with Isome worms on light leaders to a Size Four trailer and you wouldn't have thought mullet had even been invented.

I've been totally side-tracked by these things I'm clearly in no danger whatsoever of catching. I've tried bubble floats and rag. I've tried spinning for them, jigging little grubs and tiny plugs.

You get the odd follow doing this, but they drift away without taking. Five minutes later, the surface erupts down the bank when a bird spooks them or they munch into something on the surface.

I've also had them grubbing about right under my feet and just watched them as they probe the mud.
As soon as you make a move, they shoot off.

The picture is a mullet (not sure which type, as in thin or thick-lipped..) I took in the Sea Life Sanctuary a few years back.

What a fascinating fish, although time's running  out fast when it comes to chasing them.  As I give up (for now...) to return to trying to catch more bass, I decide I'll chase the mullet next year.

Just imagine catching one of them, I said to someone yesterday. "Mullet? You won't ever catch one of them," they replied.