Thin-Lipped Mullet from River Exe

Chasing mullet on River Exe with Isobel. The water level lower than of late but this could possibly just be a result of the tidal affect on this part of the river rather than low rainfall; I didn’t check the tide times. We were treated to blue cloudless skies and scorching hot sunshine even by 8am in the morning.

Mullet were feeding everywhere along the river in small groups but would scatter as soon as I got near. By sitting quietly on the bank and waiting patiently, the fish would return and continue grubbing around feeding on the river bed allowing me to sneak a cast or two before they would spook again at which point the waiting would have to resume.

As ever, the mullet were frustratingly difficult to tempt with a fly, with fish after fish simply ignoring the flies. I did eventually catch a thin lip mullet on a red tagged dial bach. I cast slightly upstream of the feeding fish and watched the end of the line as the flies drifted down through the feeding fish – a swift 6inch or so movement on the line signalled that one of the fish had grabbed the fly and I lifted the rod to set the hook. The fish put up a very spirited fight on the #5 rod in the shallow water. It was a slightly better fish than my previous one, so I was more than satisfied.. Flushed with success and starting to wilt a bit under the sun, we only fished for about 2 hours before calling it a day. Still – 2 mullet on a fly now proves it isn’t a fluke.

Fly caught Thin-lipped mullet

Thin-lipped mullet on fly

River Brue – Summer Roving

I met up with Jason at the river Brue; after yesterday’s solo fishing I was looking forward to having a fishing companion. Much like the previous day, the weather was quite spectacular. The wind had died to a slight breeze and with cloudless skies and blazing sun, temperatures were scorching hot. We started off fly fishing; searching out shoals of chub visible amongst the lilies & reeds. We caught a steady stream of chub, mainly on bead headed flies but some fell to dry fly. Nothing big graced the net but we did see some very large bream basking near the surface obviously enjoying the sunshine too. The larger chub were all very skittish and would inevitably melt away before we could get within casting distance despite our best efforts at stealth and the help of the verdant bankside vegetation.

A few hours of stalking chub in the sunshine was enough for us, and we moved along to the West Lydford stretch of the river Brue to try some more sedentary fishing. The glorious weather had brought people out bridge jumping & swimming, so we put as much distance between us and them as possible. We settled into a couple of swims and tried float fished maggot and bread baits but after an hour or two had little to show for our efforts. Some good chub were visible on the surface lurking under the far bank vegetation so with a lack of action on the float rod, I switched to fly fishing with a large wasp dry fly. Almost the first cast one of the larger chub idled over to the fly and slurped it down – somehow in my eagerness or possibly surprise I mis-timed the strike and pulled the fly out of it’s mouth..! Cursing my stupidity I recast only for one of the smaller fish to intercept the fly, which after playing and landing meant that every other fish in the vicinity had become instantly more wary. No more fish followed after that.

With evening approaching we jumped in the cars and headed to another section of the river hoping for some of the large perch we had encountered there several times previously. We arrived to find a section of the bank and a large tree had fallen into the river right at one of our favourite and most productive spots, but set up anyway on the basis that the tree would only provide the fish a nice bit of cover. I found I’d left my rod rest in the car and could face the trudge back to the car in the heat, so had to improvise with a conveniently shaped and proportioned stick. Who says you need to spend a fortune on fishing tackle?

Jason built up a swim opposite the new feature and had a steady procession of bites and fish; numerous chub, roach and gudgeon – & even a cheeky little brown trout not to mention a decent sized eel. In the meantime I float fished maggots at various spots and really struggled to get bites, eventually concluding with a small chub, roach and a solitary gudgeon. The days exploits were nicely finished off with a fantastic Chub that Jason tempted on a ledgered lobworm from beside the new submerged tree feature.

For me the evening ended with a half chewed gudgeon that was savaged by something with teeth on pretty much the last cast. Whilst not the spectacular end to the day I might of wished for, we could at least face the drive home with memories of a varied and fun days fishing.

Start of the Coarse Fishing Season 2017

The magical 16th of June arrived bringing excellent weather with it for once – the fishing gods must be smiling on me I thought. Seemed only fair to have a day off work to make the most of this unusually auspicious start to the coarse fishing season.

This year I decided to invest in an annual license for the Glaston Manor waters and had purchased my license from Thyers tackle shop in Highbridge before hand which meant I didn’t need to chase around trying to get a day ticket and could instead just crack on and go fishing from the off. I dropped the kids off at school and hit the road taking care to set my alarm to ensure I didn’t get carried away fishing and forget to pick up the kids.

Arriving at the River Brue I discovered that despite the cloudless skies and tropical temperatures, there was a pretty serious wind to contend with. Having only brought a couple of fly rods with me, I would just have to do my best in the windy conditions. The aim of the day was to travel super light and work my way along the river sight fishing for chub as I went. As it was the fishing wasn’t easy and there wasn’t masses of chub visible with those that were generally on the small size and easily spooked. Each sighting of fish would invariably give me 1 or 2 casts before they would make themselves scarce leaving me to continue my wanderings.

I caught a good few chub in the course of the afternoon, struggled with the wind and suffered in the heat, and generally despite the adversities thoroughly enjoyed myself. I guess thats what comes from being able to fish the eagerly awaiting start of the season whilst others are working..

The fishing was difficult but that just made the capture of each fish all the more special. I found that the most successful fly today was a scruffy gold bead headed fly which would invariably be grabbed as soon as it hit the water. If an immediate response wasn’t received it generally meant no fish. A couple of chub were tempted on the dry fly, with a wasp pattern being their downfall. I only used the wasp pattern because it was big and bright and easy to see rather than for any other reason. The chub didn’t seem to mind no matter how small they were.

Whilst not spectacularly successful in terms of numbers of fish caught or their size, the day was hugely enjoyable and also proved a good opportunity to scout the river in anticipation of the following days planned trip.

Emerald Ponds

A short session at Emerald Ponds near Highbridge in Somerset produced a few fish for My daughters and me. A match on the pond we had been hoping to fish meant we had to make do with one of the other ponds – a much smaller and shallow one that we hadn’t fished before. We set up the pole and fished with worm and spam and had a steady trickle of fish from a spot tight against the reeds of an island feature. We landed a couple of small tench along with a few good sized roach, rudd and skimmers. Isobel was delighted to catch her first ever tench along with a skimmer / roach hybrid?.

Sadly the session was cut shortchanged by the need for the small people to use the toilet combined with the fact that neither of my daughters or wife would use the toilet on site. At 3 against 1, I knew the odds were stacked against me so beat a hasty retreat to a local pub for a first class Sunday roast and pint.

 

 

 

Quality Smoothhound and Plenty of Ray

This months boat trip out of Minehead supplied plenty of Ray as well as some quality Smoothhound for Mike and myself. The 5:30am start did nothing to dampen our optimism, and we were into fish as soon as the first baits hit the bottom… dogfish of course; and boy did we catch a few of them this trip! The doggies were present in near biblical plague proportions, with any fish bait gobbled up within moments of settling on the sea bed.

In amongst the spotted devils there were good fish to be caught, with both Mike and myself having some good smoothhounds, in fact everyone was nudging double figures if not just over the mark. We had around a dozen hounds, both starry and commons; We also had more than a dozen ray between us, mostly Thornback Ray but also a few Small-Eyed Ray. The skipper, Marcus who also fished this trip for a change had a couple of Small-Eyed as well before calling it quits once he’d had enough of pulling up the dogfish.

A couple of small congers graced us with their presence as well, although the smallest of which could have easy passed for a large green eel, size wise… Other than that – the dogfish ruled the day! The only way to not catch them was to fish with hardback crab for the smoothhounds!

The early start paid dividends as we up-anchored and headed for the harbour, watching some of the other boats just heading out – just as the heavens opened and the rain lashed down.

 

 

 

Going off Script

Sometimes you can go fishing and everything just works out perfectly; the fishing is easy and it just all works. I love those kind of days…. Saturday was an example of just the opposite!

I’d promised Rhianna that we’d go fishing. We had the bait, the tackle, the time and some ok weather. Rain was forecast later in the day, but we’d be finished before it arrived so nothing to worry about.

We jumped in the car and paid a trip to a fishing shop I’d never visited before in Crediton, before heading over to Harpers Lakes near Tiverton Parkway. What with the detour to the shop it took quite a while to get to the lakes and when we did we found it pretty busy, but worst of all the parking places were full. Undaunted we tried the nearby car park only to find that the ticket machine was only taking cash and the card payment wasn’t working – we didn’t have enough cash which posed a problem…. All the road nearby is double yellows so the only other option would be a very long walk or to park illegally. By now I had a slight nagging feeling of frustration tinged with paranoia that maybe things weren’t going our way. With that at the back of my mind I chose not to tempt fate by parking without a ticket or on the double yellow lines and decided to head off to another series of ponds – Newcourt Barton. We’ve fished there numerous times before and knew we could count on the carp there to put a smile on our faces. Just needed to get there now…

We left Harpers Lakes to find the North Devon Link road and M5 Junction 27 solid with bank holiday traffic. Not a problem, we’ll head across country around the back roads. This did the trick and whilst it did take a while, we got to our destination at Newcourt Barton ponds without further mishap or any lengthy waits in traffic.

Several other people had also had the same idea and the top ponds we usually fish were busy so we opted to fish the bottom pond. We set up a pole, our chairs, landing net and all the tackle, food, bait etc. I plumbed the murky depths to find the swim we’d chosen was no more the 8 inches deep. At this point before I could even utter any expletives, the first drops of rain fell. We hastily stuck up the umbrella and huddled underneath as the rain steadily grew more intense.

We ate our food whilst watching the rain and weighed up the options – brave the rain, cart all the tackle to a different swim and try to get our fishing mojo back or alternatively to throw the bait in, pack up and scarper back to the car.

We chose the latter option and drove home – all without so much as baiting a hook.