Autumn Equinox

I was busy last week.  Busy fishing and bait digging. Couple of crappy sessions on the beach where we were plagued with small whiting. My mate Dave did catch something very unusual though....a red mullet. I've never seen one caught locally before.

A couple of half hour sessions on the river yielded three sizable bass, best 3lb ish. Making the most of the bass now before they depart for winter.

Bad moon rising.

I never tire of this place,
On Saturday, "Hungry Boy" John Sait invited me out in the boat. Lovely day in the sun, fishing steady rather than spectacular. I ended up with a couple of nice codling to 6lb, plus three skate and heaps of whiting. Hungry Boy had a similar catch. Take a close look at the photo below, you'll see John's fifty plus years of experience has been put to good use on his bespoke rod rest.... secured by rubber bands. The man's got class.

Two Go Mad on the Beara

The Mighty Turdster and me arrived at the tip of the Beara peninsula in County Cork with the clear water bathed in sunshine.

Our B and B had an amazing sea view and was a couple of hundred yards from the rocks. Perfect.

In the evening we had a quick session on the rocks. However, it being Ireland, the weather had changed and it was pouring down with rain, driven in by high winds. At dusk, with us absolutely drenched, the fish went mad, many casts resulting in two or three decent sized fish on the feathers. I had mostly pollack and coalies, with The Turdster hammering big scad on the float.
Luckily the weather cleared up after a day or so and the rest of the week was generally fine with the odd shower. The fishing was as good as we hoped, every session resulting in fish of one sort or another.

The first few days we mostly lure fished and had countless pollack to 6lb plus, with a good number of coalies on bright spoons or feathers. For some reason the coalies never took soft plastic eels.

We had some cracking mackerel too.

I love makkie bashing.

Later in the week we did a bit more bottom fishing for huss and conger.

We tried maybe lots of different marks and all produced in one way or another. The hussing was fantastic.

The best bottom fishing session resulted in 19 huss and two conger between us in a short evening session.

Turdous was the top conger catcher of the week, having a dozen or so to just under double figures.

I had a nice mullet one day at Dursey, we had a shoal of forty or fifty feeding before a seal crashed into them, sending them scattering everywhere.

I also managed to catch a near 4lb wrasse on my mackeral head, cast out for conger. First time that's happened.

All in all, a great week.The Turdster was hungrier for fish than I've ever known and we ended the week happy, knackered and totally fished out.

The Times They Are A Changing

Got up at 1.00 to go fishing with Whittler on Saturday morning.

Lovely night, lots of whiting and pouting. Nothing decent. Didn't get light until well gone 5.

Good to be back on the beach again. That's all.

Foraging

First day of September produced a bass of 2lb ish and a hat full of mushrooms.
I lost touch with bass over the weekend and ended up kicking myself, as a dawn session that I'd pencilled in as a cracking tide, with low water co inciding with dawn "didn't happen", due to me not getting out of bed.
The Whittler went and had three decent bass in an hour.

Smelling The Flowers Along The Way

A walk early this morning along the Grange, the lovely late summer smell of the the damp, musty, woods in my nostrils. The overnight rain had passed, so I was looking for and expecting a few mushrooms, but I surprisingly found nothing. In a few days, perhaps ?
Later, a  bike ride round the tiny lanes towards Manningtree. Hedges now full of ripening blackberries,hips, haws and elderberries. And totally carless, Yes, in good old Essex. In a Britain full of them.

Cloudtastic day, eh ? Warm too, so I had a quick session in the evening at my bass spot, which was, for the first time this year, devoid of bass. Still, plenty of time yet, and I'm expecting October and November to produce the best fishing of the year ( and maybe the best fishing for years....we'll see )

Still, a gorgeous evening and end to a beautiful late summer's day.

Hats Off to the Boy Shakespere

I was googling "scepter'd isle" the other day, can't remember why, one thing leads to another on the interweb ( stop sniggering Baines ) and came across this.
If I was a formally educated man, I'd be familiar with it, but I went to Brightlingsea Comprehensive in the 70's, where learning to read and write was classed as a success.
Anyway, I reckon that bard bloke ain't half bad sometimes.
I nicked one of the lines for a blog post title too.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England

From Richard II, Act 2 (Shakespeare)

It's Culture, Innit ?

For your delictation and perusal, I give you my latest cultural recommendations. The comments of BB and TT are especially welcome.

Listening.....

My mate Tapas Nigel introduced me to this, he said it was "awful shit" but he loves it. Me too.

Love the photos from the sixties on this video and what a fantastic song. Judas Priest do a good version too. Currently my favourite song ever. Till my next discovery.

Marc Riley on 6Music had a great session from Alternative TV last week. Sound better than they did in the old days in the punk wars. Listen here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0649615

Riley has the best show bar none on radio at the moment.

Reading.....

Currently reading "As I walked Out Through Spain in Search of Laurie Lee" by P.D.Murphy. An interesting read of a bloke going through his own crisis, whilst tracing the steps of Laurie Lee's own journey through Spain during the civil war in the 30s.

The Laurie Lee book itself is one of my favourite ever and this is good too.

Prior to that, I'd raced through a couple of Tony Parsons novels, "Men from the Boys" and "Starting Over". Yes, they're all similar, but good page turners and he's about the best in that genre I think.

Note clunky grammar in last sentence. Hideous.

Along the same lines, David Nichols "Us" was good in a....I can't say it...."chick lit" kind of way. Bit different to my normal Hitler/Stalin/WW2 stuff, but a great yarn anyway.

So, let's have some feedback and some recommendations from everybody.