Anger ? On a fishing blog ?
Well, yes. At the moment the river is stuffed with thin lipped mullet of all sizes and is looking pretty healthy, so on my walk yesterday I was just a bit pissed off to find that two blokes had staked out a gill net across the entire river, which at this point is extremely narrow..
Mullet, like bass are extremely slow growing , so if they're hammered, as the thick lips were last year by one one particular commercial ( "just earning a living" ), you can forget about seeing numbers of them for a very long time.
I rang IFCA and spoke to a woman who took down all the details and said it was useful info and they'd keep an eye out for them on their patrols.
Now, I walk the river almost every day and have never, ever seen IFCA "patrol" here. I told her that the netting was going on right now and if they could, they really should investigate immediately. To be fair, she made the necessary calls and they were on the scene within an hour. Excellent .
I don't know what was said, but I watched as they chatted for five minutes before leaving without even taking a look at the nets.
But....within an hour the two blokes were gone , as were the nets, so a real result.
To celebrate, I grabbed the fly rod and stuffed a few flies, line and scissors in my pocket, donned the wellies and made my way to where the fish often congregate just before the tide pushes up.
They were there, just below the shallows, tails and dorsals out in a few inches of water. I'm no expert, but I know when you see this you've a real chance of catching.
I'd only been fishing a short while when the indicator slid away and a decent mullet bolted off, scattering it's shoal mates in all directions. I beached it after maybe four or five minutes , a real scrapper this one.
The fish had moved twenty or thirty yards downstream, re grouped and were still feeding.
The flies were cast a yard or two out and fished static. No twitches or movement at all. The indicator moved off again, a strip strike and a very large thin lip thrashed helplessly in a few inches of water. The pressure of the rod combined with the fish trying to swim off resulted in it beaching itself.
An unceremonious way to catch a very big mullet, but what can you do ? As I attempted to pick it up I got absolutely covered in creek mud as the crashing and thrashing continued. Did I care ? Not a bit.
How big was it ? I'll never know, because I didn't have my scales, but it may well have gone around the 5lb mark. Incredibly broad across the back.
After the commotion, the fish disappeared and I never saw another one. A great session,maybe forty five minutes fishing and two fish in the bag. Both took a flexi worm, with the legs cut down. My first mullet on this fly.
I usually catch on shrimp patterns, but good to see another type work.
One of the best things about this style of fishing is that you can and really need to do it with minimal gear. You're constantly moving, so the less you carry the better. The mud gets everywhere, you can't really retain the fish for a photo ( unless you're with someone ), so you just have to make do the best you can.
I'll be down there fishing again very soon.