Like others I spent the week doing a bit of holiday dangling down the coast even if it was not as often as I would have liked. The first trip was a reccy as I couldn't wet a line, I did find an inlet where the tide rushed in and it was flat calm like a millpool despite the currents, there was mullet to be seen and the odd bass and smaller surfaces everywhere perhaps Mackerel. It was beautiful.
It wasn't until the next evening that I could get down there and I had barely an hour before dark and it was a bit more choppy but fish were still rising, I had an assortment of lures and tried them all- Dexter wedge, Mepps spinners, feathers, Sabikis, Jelly lures, jigheads and mullet flies each one tied straight through with decreasing optimism. I think I had a couple of takes on small red tag flies but the end result was just seaweed each time, still I learned my limitations regarding lure fishing although a couple of other guys suffered a similar fate there, more importantly I learned a bit more about the area which I could use on my proper fishing day to come. There was worse places to spend an evening.
Two days later and I'm geared for a proper day down there with 'er outdoors. This time the weather wasn't as good, the locals would call it a fresh sou'westerly whereas us land lubbers would call it proper blowy or words to that effect. I was determined to run a float through though and I was armed with two loaves of bread and some prawns
On went a heavy waggler but this zipped through the current at a pace I'd never fished before, even rivers like the Severn or Wye couldn't rip a float through like this, so suspecting the ebb would fish better than the flow I took my time and changed to a heavy avon bobber type float. Even sitting there battered by the wind we drank coffee and soaked up the scenery whilst different birds flew by, Dunlin, Curlews, Oystercatchers and many I couldn't identify. A spitfire flew by too cutting through the breeze with that distinctive sound echoing round the valley.
After an hour trotting prawn with no success I saw that there was a slightly calmer area where bread would work, by now I'd been there two hours and it was time to attack it, plough a line regardless feeding every cast. I was still fishing the flow and It took surprisingly little time at all to get a bite, even if the first fish always takes you unawares, the float zipping sideways across the chop looked weird so I struck half expecting more seaweed only to be greeted with the smallest mullet I'd ever had. Despite being barely a pound it was comical how I couldn't get it in the net on 6lb straight through, mullet sometimes do this and maybe it's the ones that have never been caught. I was determined not to lose it and at the umpteenth time of trying I finally netted a pristine fish.
I was over the moon and after lunch the tide started to ebb and it went out as quick as it came in, the wind was now effectively downstream so I continued to fish close in as I knew the mullet could be seen close to the bank and every now and then a couple darted over the gravels in water around a foot deep, when they did this as the sun came out it was beautiful. I sat on the deck using a towel on the wet gravel as I was so engrossed in the fishing as the odd fish could be seen taking the bread, it wasn't long before I was bent into something better - another prisitine mullet this time 3lb
By now I'm in mullet heaven and there was time for one more and like the last time it was bigger, hooked a few feet from the bank in a foot of water, what could be more exciting?
It went some!
Finally another lovely mullet this time just over 4lb to end a cracking day
The Spitfire returned to do a few circles of the area as we headed back a bit windswept, I was still on a mullet high and will be for a while
