I've just come back from a short break, 5 days, in a fabulous area. There is water everywhere in Christchurch, fresh, salt and in-between, with the Stour, the Avon, the estuaries, harbour ands sea, but I was there on a holiday from fishing rather than a fishing holiday. I'd packed one rod, one reel, a few floats and two liquidised loaves, and I was hoping to snatch a couple of hours and catch a mullet, a fish I'd never seen, much less caught.
At the same time, it was interesting to spend a few days nosing around a small corner of the country with so many angling landmarks crowded together, like Throop, the Royalty and Christchurch harbour. We were pretty well-placed for the Stour, 50 yards from a picturesque length. Anyone fishing there that I chatted to spoke of lean pickings with scarcely a barbel caught, so I kept my mouth shut, mostly, about the difficulty of avoiding them on some of the water I fish. I was shocked to see the intimacy, comfort and accessibility of some of these legendary waters. This dude is fishing the Bridge Pool at the lower end of the Royalty, ensconsed in a punt. Just beyond the manicured lawn of the bank, the ruins of a Norman manor house and the beautiful white-stone Priory. We stood on the bridge looking upstream and watch two giant chub lying sideways to graze on the the stone walls of the bank.
I'd imagined nipping out for an hour or so every day in pursuit of a mullet, but with day tickets for estuary and harbour coming in at £11.25 a time, I had to re-think that idea. First time I tried, the man in the TS directed me to a section where it took a long walk to find a space where there was a break in the long chain of boats roped together. That wasn't really what I was looking for, and I didn't see a mullet of get a bite on my bread fished at various depths. The second time out. I followed advice to try the Quay. No long walks, and as pretty and easy to access as a park lake. But the huge amount of swans, ducks, gulls and people brushing past your elbow made it a bit of a headache to fish with bread, and together with that I missed the better stage of the tide.
I'd given up on the mullet when, on the last morning, with the car packed, we stopped for a coffee and a walk along the harbour. There was a guy fishing - float rod, crystal waggler, breadflake - and I stopped and told him my story. Just then a group of mullet swam into view. He gave me his rod, and said, Go on, catch one of these. So I did. It was one of the smaller ones, but took some line off the drag (4lb straight through) and it put a nice little end to the holiday.
I guess it was fairly typical of efforts, or at least my efforts, to catch fish in new, distant places. By the time you've worked out where to go, where not to go, what to do and what not to do, it's time to go home. Still, I can imagine going back again, a little bit wiser.
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