That’s got to be the most stunning sunrise I have seen in my life. As I rarely get up early enough to witness them that can be taken as no exaggeration.
I dropped the girls off at nursery and school, wearing my mukluks and with the Trident on the roofbars, and set course for Geldeston on the upper Waveney. I was after species and figured that this was a good place as I have had perch, roach, dace and rudd here and have seen carp and heard of tench from here too, all target species. The launch point is next to the Lock Inn, which is itself next to the limit of navigation for powered craft. I wasn’t the only person fishing here today:
Not him. There were a couple of pikers on the bank who said they’d had one jack. The water was coloured and the very high – it was also flowing strongly, both a legacy of the week’s rain.
Still, I wasn’t going to let that stop me and paddled against the flow for a few minutes until reaching my first mark, where the river branches off to shallow water but has a decent sized hole at the confluence:
Maggots, sweetcorn and blue cheese were the baits and I’d made up a load of groundbait from breadcrumb, oats, Shreddies (the kids weren’t eating them), maggots and sweetcorn, lobbed them in and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And stopped waiting and went upstream another mile. It’s quite desolate out on the marshes at this time of year, not as green and lush as in spring and summer (when the water here is gin clear) but Norfolk marshland been a part of my life for nearly 30 years so even when it is like this it’s still pleasant.
And waited.
And said bollocks, went back to the launch point, tried in the backwater there and then loaded the yak on the car and headed for Beccles again.
I launched down by the quay and paddled past the dozen or so pole fishermen with their keepnets, past the piker on the corner and out into the river proper. The flow was pretty fierce here too and the anchor wasn’t gripping so I tied off to a fender again and fished the mouth of the boatyard.
And waited
My mate Digsworth phoned up for a chat which was a welcome break from the boredom of blanking and we nattered away about nothing much for a while and then I hung up. I’d got my first bite you see.
I struck it and in came in my ninth skimmer of the year - a Common Bream.
It wasn’t really struggling much on the line but once I unhooked it it started to play a bit more
Sit still you bugger
Nothing was doing in the next half an hour so I tried the bay by the bridge but the current was pounding the hell out of this area and so I only stayed a few minutes. Next stop was a dyke out of the current and both lines went down.
I missed seeing a bite and was reeling in to move when I felt a fish on!
Skimmer
Half-decent though, around half a pound
Got the hook out and popped it back to swim away, rebaited, cast and reeled in the other rod. I’d also missed seeing that bite (Bream can be very light biters). A bit smaller but reasonable.
So then, a hat-trick of juvenile Common Bream.
It was time to move again and see if I could find anything near another boatyard
No. I decided to spend the last 45 minutes seeing if the roach were in the quayside basin where the bank anglers were and went and tied off to a mooring ring.
I had the lines in the water for ten minutes when I got a good bite. I missed it.
Then 5 minutes later a shake. Which I also missed. I downsized the maggot baits.
Shake. Nothing.
Bite. Nothing.
Rattle. Nothing.
I missed 8 bites from memory, of varying strength, and all had sucked out half of the maggot concerned. I reckon tiny roach were the culprits. Next time I’m in Beccles I’m going to try for them and maybe a big pike on the corner with a bait as I heard an 18 lb’er came out today and I want to get a twenty again this year. Ah, it’s nice to have targets…
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