Away Days at Christchurch

I've been over in England this week visiting family and friends. It has been a pretty hectic schedule but I'd left time to fish Christchurch for two mornings on the weekend of the National Mullet Club's National Rover fish-in.

The tide timings weren't great with an 8 a.m. high water yesterday, on Rover Saturday. I was out and fishing by 6.30 a.m., specifically legering at Grimbury Point with one rod fishing the edge of the main river channel slightly to my left and one fishing further into Grimbury Bay slightly to my right. 

All was quiet till just before high water when I had a couple of healthy plucks on the left hand tip. I struck and found myself playing a small mullet. The fight had a slightly different feel from normal and I had an inkling what this fish was before seeing it clearly - a lovely little golden grey of 1lb 9oz, a rare capture this far up Christchurch Harbour, especially mixing with the coarse fish on a neap tide when the water is almost fresh.

There wasn't long to wait for the next bite; about ten minutes later I was off again on the same rod as I struck into a gentle drop-back. This was a much stronger fish and gave a good scrap all the way in and after a few minutes I landed a well-proportioned thicklip of 3lb 8oz ...

Now mostly I've come to regard thinlips as a bit of a nuisance at Christchurch, where they have acquired a taste for the bread baits intended for much bigger thicklips. Yet now I found myself really wanting to catch one to complete my mullet-slam of all three species in one session. Everything was quiet for an hour till the ebb tide started to pick up strength, and my right hand rod fishing in the bay suddenly heeled over. This one came in easily then fought it out in the edge - typical thinlip behaviour - and it did indeed prove to be a thinlip, a respectable one at 3lb 2oz ...

So I'd got a mullety full house of goldie, thicklip and thinlip with my first three fish of the day ...

Half an hour later, the water level was dropping noticeably. I had a drop-back bite on my right hand rod and struck into a much more powerful fish than any of the previous. Soon it had moved out of the bay into the river channel where it made full use of the ebb flow. When I first glimpsed the thicklip I thought it was not that much larger than the 3:08 I had earlier, but when I finally drew it into the edge after about ten minutes and tried to pick it up, I realised how thick it was across the back and how deep. I began to think maybe it was a "six" but the scales settled out at 5lb 8oz ...

After this I started getting rattly bites and landed a few dace. I could have stuck it out and fished the low water and start of the flood at Grimbury but I decided instead to move about 400 yards down the Harbour to a spot that sometimes fishes well over the LW slack. As it turned out it wasn't hectic. I missed one good pull and landed two further mullet, a chunky 5:00 on the last of the ebb and a little 2:05 on the first of the new flood tide ...

Today, on Rover Sunday, I intended fishing a shallow creek further down the Harbour with Alan Butterworth. Alan had also had a decent Saturday landing three 3lber thicklips at Lymington but losing two bigger fish under the pontoons. But when we arrived at the car park this morning we were greeted by a stiff south-west wind and rain threatening. We decided on Grimbury again so we could get our backs to the weather (in my case behind a brolly - Alan is made of sterner stuff clearly.) I let Alan have my favourite swim that I fished yesterday, and set up a few yards to his right fishing further into Grimbury Bay.

It was a slowish start again but before too long I heard a "yesss" to my left and looked out from under my brolly to see Alan into a fish. It was a nice little thicklip of 3lb 10 oz ...

Soon after there was a little feeding flurry in front of me, with three good pulls in quick succession all on my left-hand rod. Unfortunately only the middle one hung on, the other two fish both throwing the hook well into their fight. The last one felt a bit better than the one I landed, a chunky 3:06 ...

Then I lost another fish; this one wrenched my right-hand rod over in a fierce take that bent out the Kamasan B983 hook! We had a quiet spell after that then Alan and I were both into fish almost simultaneously, Alan's a 3:12 thicklip and mine a 4:01. It was quiet after that as we began to run out of water in the bay. Then a final take for me on my right-hand rod that, in keeping with my day, came off about two thirds of the way in. We packed up about midday.

I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers of fish about: I had six mullet yesterday of which four were thicklips and with better luck could have had another six today (all thicklips, I think.) Clearly Christchurch is still capable of providing good sport, so it's slightly surprising and a little disappointing to see how lightly it is being fished at the moment. I had the place to myself fishing-wise yesterday and today Alan and I shared it briefly only with a couple of (unsuccessful) thinlip spinners.

The place seems to have been largely deserted by serious mullet anglers. It's difficult to know why, but the ticket prices now £8 per day or £70 per year don't help and undoubtedly the fishing has declined from its peak due to the pernicious level of legal netting in the lower parts of the Harbour and some illegal netting higher up. A particularly bad incident occurred in April 2014 when a netting gang up from Plymouth were caught in the act but over 2 tonnes of prime mullet were dead in their net. Certainly the chance of a really big thicklip is now much reduced ... it was 2009 that I caught my 9:03 PB that brought to an end a run of six 8lb+ fish over four seasons.

Those were good days but I'll always being happy catching 3, 4, 5lb mullet with an outside chance of something larger. I hope to be back at Christchurch before too long.