Christchurch Harbour Mullet Fishing

A good friend of mine, Dennis, who I worked with, invited me to fish from his boat in the Estuary at Christchurch. I am not sure which of the two great rivers, the Avon or the Stour it was, but I think both rivers entered the sea very close to where we were heading. Dennis told me that the place we were to wet a line was just past the Christchurch Yacht Club.

I sat in the little car park at 5 am having got up in the middle of the night and traveled down from Salisbury in Wiltshire. Tried to keep my eyes open and looked around, expecting to see his car and trailer, with a boat loaded on it. That didn't really happen. I did not have to wait long before I spied his car entering the car park by the river. The car was minus the trailer and most important, it was minus the boat that we needed for fishing.

I needn't have worried though. He drew up alongside and opened his back doors and the boot. He then proceeded to extract two oars, two rowlocks and a small heavy little anchor with a chain attached to it. It all became clear when we carried the stuff into the small marina by the riverside. Dennis pointed to a small boat which was lying overturned on the bank. I suppose it was left like that so it would not fill up with water if it rained. Dennis unlocked the chain which was securing the boat to a thick cable attached to a concrete bollard. We turned the boat over the right way up. Dennis attached the rowlocks to the boat and fitted the oars into them. After stowing the anchor onto the back end of the boat, we carried it to the riverside and dropped it into the water, taking care to tie it up so that it did not float away. We then went to fetch our fishing tackle from the cars and stowed it all onto the boat.

 I sat in the back, in charge of the rudder, while Dennis manned the oars. I was glad about that because I had done little in the way of rowing and there was a bit of a current flowing. I had expected him to have an outboard motor to fall back onto if we got into any sort of difficulty, but no.

He told me that the species we were after was mullet. I don’t know which type, only that they went up to about 4lb in weight and gave a good fight on light tackle. Dennis had managed to get a couple of packs of ragworm for us the night before. How he got them and how he had stored them I didn't know and didn’t particularly want to know either. He had told me to bring a light leger rod with me and a couple of small silver spinner spoons with small trebles on them. He showed me how to apply the ragworms to the spinners so that they trailed behind when you reeled in. The ragworms were savage little creatures with little nippers that came out of their heads when you handled them and stabbed you on your fingers if you weren't careful.

Dennis rowed us along the estuary and we anchored the boat just past the yacht club on the opposite side. The idea was to cast across towards the pontoons outside the club and to let the current pull your spinner round slowly. The spinners had to be tried at different levels to locate the shoals. They seemed to be deeper if it was sunny, but higher in the water if it was cloudy. Obviously it was something to do with the light levels and the fishes eyesight. For the first hour we didn't have even a nibble, but Dennis told me to be a bit patient as the tide was soon to change. After a while we began to see fish following our spinners in but then shying away at the last minute. It was exciting to see the little submarines appearing behind our baits. All that was missing was the big dorsal fins sticking out of the water, like sharks, but then I’m fantasizing again.

I decided to change my spinner to one with a little red eye shape on the spoon and that seemed to spur the fish into attacking it. We were pleased that the shoal had chosen to be there for us and I found it exciting actually being able to see the fish have a go at my bait. We found the answer to catching was to fish at one depth for a few yards and then to change depth, therefore covering more water on our retrieves. We starting hitting into fish, but unfortunately, because the mullet had bony mouths, we would lose half of the fish we hooked before we could net them.

We had loads of strikes at our baits and even though we lost quite a few fish we had a hell of a morning. The fishing gods had really shone on us that day. The mullet ranged from a couple of pounds to the biggest weighing around the 4lb mark. By lunch time I had caught 15 fish and Dennis had 10. I think he caught the biggest on the day. It was in our minds to keep the fish and put them in our freezers for eating over the next few months. We really felt good when we rowed back to the marina. We decided to split the catch in half and placed them in black bin liners ready for transporting them back to the cars when we docked.

Just as we were climbing out of our boat feeling very proud of ourselves at being able to bring home the bacon as it were to our respective families, we told a bloke on the bank of our good fortune. He looked at us and said “ Eat them mullet at your own peril me mateys”. “There was a sewage leak a few days ago upstream and some others who have eaten fish from here have been very ill”. Well. What can I say? What the fishing gods have given, they had decided to take away.

We were absolutely gutted. Was the bloke lying because he was jealous or was he indeed, telling the truth? We just couldn't take the chance of all our families throwing up all over the place could we? You would have thought that the harbour authorities would have put some sort of notice to warn us about the pollution. I suppose they didn't want to put people off and give themselves a bad reputation for pollution. It was a pity though, as if we had known we would have put the fish back to fight again rather than having to throw them into car park dustbins.