Chatham (Rochester Civic Centre Esplanade) 15/09/02
GR:
HW : 8.00am (ish) Sunny spells with light winds force 2/3

Tony Swain arrived at my house around 4.30am as arranged, and we wasted no time in transferring his gear to my car, and set off for Rochester …… about an hour later we arrived in the semi-darkness that was pre-dawn, and started to get ready for a days worth of mullet fishing, by preparing a couple of bread bags that could be placing strategically around the slipway wall and steps….

I have to say it was noticeably colder, or felt like it than the previous weeks / month, but still the calm misty morning was a pleasure to experience…. If only for the excitement of anticipation of what lay ahead…..
Tony and myself set up a float rod each (Tony using a light weight fly rod and centrepin for the job), to fish about 20” or so below the water, and I also decided to try out a self-hooking rig, based upon my estimates of where the fish had been feeding in the corner of the slipway steps two weeks previously, and where there were fresh lip marks to be seen today, as well as along the second and to a lesser extent the third bays…..

We had to wait a little while for the tide to rise sufficiently, and the light to be good enough to see our floats, but just after 6am, we managed to start in earnest …..
For the next 2 hours or so we had numerous bites, especially Tony, although I suspect that as we pulled up a couple of shore crabs, that these were the main culprits , rather than mullet … but who knows…..

High water came and went, but still with no fish on the score sheet……. I was starting to worry if I’d brought Tony down on a fools errand, and that the change in temperature had put the fish off the feed……..

8.45am ….. I was just talking to Tony who was now fishing above me from the retaining wall, about the possibilities that the fish were not about, when suddenly the line from the dangle down self-hooking rig (which was between us) moved off at 45 degrees along the edge of the steps ….. my first thought was that the increased tidal flow / eddying that occurs in the corner was responsible …… that was until the fixed spool stared to scream as line was torn from it, a fish powered away from us……..

Both Tony and myself leapt up, and I spent a few seconds (that seemed like hours) taking off the budgie strap that was holding it….. the fish continued to move off, and I had no real option but to let it, whilst tightening the front drag from its looser set-up prior to hooking ……. The fish then turned in towards us, and I managed to regain most of the line that had been lost….. the fish then set off on a number of diving runs, down around the sunken wall ….. this caused me to worry considerably about loosing the fish, should it manage to snag the metal weighted swimfeeder in the masonry work below…… luckily it didn’t ….. but it did manage to find its way into the racing current that flows into the main channel, and combined with its weight / power, I had no option but to let it go that way …… but I realised that where I was standing on the slipway steps would soon mean the line brushing against the wall, if the fish went to our left ….. so I ran up the steps, across the wall, and past Tony, all the while trying not to let the tension in the line drop……

I was so busy focusing on not loosing the fish, that I caught the twine that was supporting the closest breadbag, and by doing so, severed the twine, as it rubbed against the brick work…… I had to just ignore the loss, thank God I’d not tripped and gone in head first, with a 12’ drop, and started playing the fish high up from the front of the retaining wall…… it was obvious to both Tony and myself that I was never going to be able to bring the fish back against the flow from the steps section, and there seemed nowhere else I could bring it in to use the landing net……. I grabbed my car keys out of my fishing vest, gave them to Tony, and asked him to grab the drop net out of the boot of my car (an item I had forgotten to remove (or just too lazy to do so) since coming back from Jersey) …… in the mean time I continued to play the fish, but just to add to my wows, with the receding tide, the lower sunken wall on the front edge was starting to become visible, and would soon act as a barrier to trying to land the fish even with the drop net……

Anyway, Tony returned and sorted out the droplet, and waited for me to bring the fish in …… it came to the surface a couple of times, and looked like a nice fish, but not the monster that it felt like… the tidal flow was making it difficult to judge it’s true weight….. got it over the sunken wall on a couple of occasions (with my heart in my mouth, expecting to get snagged at any moment), only for the fish to power off, every time it drew near to the net…….. we just had to play the fish out to exhaustion, so we could control it’s approach ….. but every second seemed like an age, not knowing if we would land it, or it would get off at the last moment….. eventually however and with only a few feet of water (if that) covering the lower wall, Tony guided me blind (due to the height of the retaining wall), so that the fish slipped into the drop net, and Tony hauled it up, and passed it over…… it felt like I could actually breath for the first time in about 25minutes, and took the fish to the top of the slipway to unhook it……

Once on the unhooking mat, it became apparent that the fish had taken the hook down….. it proved very awkward to remove using my pencil disgorger, and unfortunately nicked one of the gill rakes in doing so….. luckily Tony had a pair of surgical forceps that proved vital for the job of getting the hook out ….. I placed the fish in a recovery bag, just to make sure it could swim off OK, and allow me to measure it, and take a couple of pix……. The fish seem to recover quickly, measured 21”, and came in at 3lb 11oz ….. slipped it back, and settled down to a nice hot cup of coffee, and watched Tony float fishing….

Whilst I sat and drank my coffee, and relived the fight in my mind, a number of things occurred to me ……
1. the fish had been hooked at a lower depth than we’d been fishing with the floats …. Possibly due to the temperature drop????
2. the swim feeder was a potential liability, but in this case had paid off … but would one be so lucky next time…
3. any decent fish hooked from the slipway at that stage of the tide, would have a very good chance of being drawn out into the main channel, and would require a drop net landing ….. perhaps for practical reasons this makes the venue a two person one!!!!
4. I need to purchase a pair of forceps……

10.30am….. Tony and I watch a small eel come swimming around the base of the steps in the now very shallow water….. but no mullet to be seen for our continued efforts……

Just before 11am, the bread bag that I’d lost earlier became visible on the sand, lying in about 8” of water …. And to our amazement a small bass of a pound or two, kept swimming up to it and taking the bread that was seeping from it …. The water being so shallow that its dorsal fin was clear, as it bellied up to the sack across the sandy gravel….

Tony and myself stopped fishing and waited for the tide to drop and allow us access to the outer sunken wall…… once we were able to do so, just after 11.30am, Tony set up on the corner, whilst I moved about halfway down ….. Not long after that, Leon came down and set up between us……

12.00pm ….. Rob Ness turned up, just to watch and have a chat, having been fishing at Chatham earlier in the day and had a 3lb’er for his trouble.
The next three hours proved to be VERY QUIET…… and by 3pm Leon had to go…..
Soon after we had to moved off the front wall and back onto the slipway……..

By 4.30pm, the water had risen sufficiently to allow us to think about fishing from the steps into the flow at the front of the slipway……
As the water increased we could start fishing into the gap between the retaining wall and the sunken wall ….. but still no more mullet :-(

6.00pm ….. a couple of young angles turned up to ground fish, and although they got snagged a few times, Tony and myself felt they probably had a better chance of catching something than we had …… 1 mullet between two anglers for the over 12hours fishing, was not great ….. by 6.30pm, the doom feeling and tiredness got the better of us, and we decided to call it a day …….. in reality due to the subsequent weather and work commitments it would mean the end of the 2002 mullet session for me :-(

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