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Fort D'Auvergne 10th August 2001
Map Ref: 656,477
Tide: HW 10.39am 30.6ft / 9.3m
Weather Forecast: Wind West force 2 or 3, Dry and sunny
I’d arranged to meet Eddie from J.F.S.Sport, down on the Green Street slipway around 9am, in order that he could give me some tutelage on the finer points of mullet fishing Jersey style…..
I arrived much earlier than our rendezvous time in order to a) find my way around the area and sort out parking etc, and b) look the ground over as the tide advanced to get an impression of the venue and possible “hot spots” to focus upon in the future….
When I say early .. I mean early …. 7am …. And jolly lucky I did too ….. Jersey has a restricted policy on parking … single yellow lines are the equivalent of double yellows i.e. no parking at any time, and most roads seem to have them!!!!
Most of the available parking is thus controlled by the need to have parking scratch cards or discs as they are known which can be bought from newsagents etc…. Parking restrictions in designated areas, run from 8am to 5pm Mon to Sat, but any given areas may only allow 1 hour, 3 hours, or the full duration depending upon location.
As a result, available parking before or after these times in certain areas can be quite difficult as both locals and tourists can park their cars for free over night and on Sundays… and the Green Street area is one such place …… the slipway parking area was full, and would only allow 3 hours parking after 8am, the 24 hour parking area at the top of the hill towards Mount Bingham has only limited spaces and all were full … and so I eventually found my way to the car park at Cleveland Road which had a couple of spaces left…… (when I returned later in the day, there were a lot more…. If you stand around a car park at 8am, there is a mass exourdus, before the traffic wardens arrive .. about 10 to 15 minutes later …. You’ve been warned!!!!).
Anyway, having parked the car, I made my way to the slipway just after 7.30am, and sat on one of the promenade benches and proceeded to watch the advancing tide….. one of the striking features was the speed of the advancing tide which was quite considerable … and indeed there are many stories of people being cut off by the rising tide in this location and further round to the east towards Le Hocq and beyond, with drownings not being an uncommon outcome!!!!!!
The other thing of interest as far as the mullet fishing was concerned was the large amounts of weed that had collected on the beach and were forming floating rafts as the water rose… interesting stuff for mullet, but a potential nightmare to try and fish through…..
Just as I was thinking this my mobile went off around 8.30am …It was Eddie, who told me not to rush down to the slipway, as he would be a little late, at which point I had to laugh to myself and said I was already there, but that I’d get a hot dog from the street café that was opening up on the slipway…..
Eddie also said he’d looked at the beach already (somehow we’d missed each other .. probably too busy looking at the beach and not expecting to see each other at that time!!!!) and felt that the rafts of weed would make life very difficult, (to which I could only agree), and that we’d be better to fish off the rock just down from the slipway behind the Fort D'Auvergne hotel …… and that he’d meet me there just after 9.15am…..
I had my hotdog from the nice lady from the café van, and then proceeded down behind the hotels on the short promenade to the Fort D'Auvergne Rock and waited for Eddie to arrive…..
When he did, I was somewhat surprised to see that he had no fishing gear with him … I enquired as too why and Eddie informed me that he’d somehow done his lower back in, and didn’t feel able to fish .. but was willing to stay and show me the ropes…..
The Rock has a narrow gangway with a continuation of the parade railings, and is partly concreted in places… however once past the half way point it descends to a narrow series of steep sided platforms, the last of which is about 15ft above the basal rocks …. And is JUST about wide enough to sit two, although it’s probably easier (and safer) to fish one person above the other on one of the higher platforms….
With this in mind I tackled up on the parade with its benches, whilst Eddie prepared the ground bait …. Bread only, broken up into small pieces … Eddie suggested that in future the bread should be soaked overnight, as this aided in the break-up of the bread and would form a better cloud suspension whilst also avoiding floating bread crust which would attract the unwanted attention of the surrounding seagull population!!!!!…..
The rig was similar to the one suggested to me by Leon Roskilly, … I’d chosen to go with a size 10 kamasan B983 wide gape specialist hook (which I’d painted white with enamel paint), tied to a length (20”) of technofish flurocarbon line (5.5lb and 0.16mm diameter), linked to a carp rig ring and attached to my main line which was a 7lb monofilament loaded onto a small fixed spool reel with the clutch set really low (no chance of using a centre pin with the distance needed for casting….)….
Eddie picked out one of the straight white wagglers that he’d sold me the previous day, which needed 2.1/2 swan shot to cock the float, and was attached to the mainline with the aid of a free running float adapter (which popped out as the float was first pushed in, but quickly fixed once we realised what the problem was…). The swan shot was added very close to the rig ring , and a powergum sliding stop knot tied approximately 3 foot above the shot.
Eddie felt the float needed to be this large in order to combat the waves and swell of the beach and to be able to cast out a sufficient distance to where the fish would be… approximately 30ft out, and not helped any by the prevailing crosswind!!!!
He also explained that whilst many would favour a clear float, that he felt that being white gave better visibility to the angler, whilst at the same time being the same colour as the bread ground bait being thrown in, would if anything stir the curiosity of the mullet rather than spook them!!!!!
Speaking of groundbait, I’d brought along a large flat ladle spoon (I’d found the previous day in the pound shop) to flick the bread slop out to the fish, as Eddie had suggested to me a few days previous …. This Eddie did every 10 minutes or so, and with the aid of my polarised sunglasses could see the fish hit the cloud of bread fragment from the moment it hit the water … so much for timid wary mullet .. these were up for a full on banquette ….
Eddie showed me how and where to cast.. almost straight out about 30ft or so, onto the clear sand beyond the rock platform on which we were perched …..
I found hitting the right spot very hard to start with.. The cross-over from 6-8oz beachcaster to match fishing coarse gear was going to be a slow and painful affair, especially for Eddie having to watch my rather pathetic attempts to control the direction and distance of the cast, followed by some equally pathetic mumbled apology as it sailed off in the opposite direction!!!!!
Well about the 3rd cast in and suddenly the float went down, I acted on instinct and struck, just as Eddie had told me …. “with mullet fishing, if in doubt strike… if you think about it you’ll probably be too late… the worst that will happen is that you’ll have to rebait the hook!!!!”…… and sure enough I was into a fish …. Not a very big fish …… in fact it turned out not to be a mullet at all but a 7” Shanny!!!!!
The cross-wind made life difficult both in casting but also in trying to reduce the bow effect in the line and maximise the rate of strike .. and as for bite detection, well if it so much as bobbed slightly out of the ordinary I struck …. Which seemed to meet with Eddies general approval on most occasions…. As the tide rose so we adjusted the depth of fishing with the float to around 6 to 8ft in depth…..
11.05am …. The float bobs, I struck low and with the bow, and the line went taught, followed by an equal and opposite force that suddenly shot off towards the sea….. it wasn’t a big fish at all, and soon bobbed up towards the surface.. a small mullet.. yes…. Only problem was that Eddie had to scramble down the side of the rock to get into a position to be able to net the fish…. However by the time he’d got to the bottom, I’d managed to loose the fish… being a small fish, I’d found it very difficult to maintain the line tension, and as the fish started to tire, to the tension became somewhat erratic as I tried to compensate for the fishes sudden surges of power, as it crash dived every so often … the result was that it managed to throw the hook :-( BUT at least it was an improvement in that I’d managed to actually hook into a mullet this time, rather than my previous efforts at the Sun Pier in Kent!
12.00 noon….. my mobile went off, so I passed the rod to Eddie and told him to have a go, and so he baited up and cast out as I scrambled up the rock to get to the phone… just as I answer the phone and start to take to Karen and tell her what’s been going on, than Eddie gives a shout…. He’s in!!!!!
Said a hurried good bye to the wife, and rushed down to help, grabbed the landing net, and tried to make my way down …. Not easy, and Eddie had to pass me the net once I’d got down ….. Waited for Eddie to guide the fish to the net, and scooped it up for him .. I was forced to pass the landing net back up, before I could climb up and join him ….
Not the largest mullet … around 12” or so (I’d left my tape measure and notebook further up … but I did manage to take a picture….. and then Eddie returned the fish, which swam off none the worse for its encounter….
As the tide dropped so it made seeing the mullet easier as they hit the groundbait.. but each time swam back down and away rather than staying in close proximity…. And just as fast as the water had come in, so it drained away, and by 12.30pm we were forced to call it a day and pack up … and although I’d lost a fish, I was still really happy as I’d learnt so much more with Eddie sitting beside me giving me advice throughout the 3 hours…