The week started off badly. I had chartered a boat out of Clovelly for a wreck fishing session, but due to the westerly winds, this had to be cancelled. Fortunately, my son Lee, who had come down from Edinburgh to join the fishing trip took Sandy and I to Cornwall to a place organised by his girlfriend Jess – Newlyn - where she used to go as a kid.
Lee and I managed to sneak in a couple of travel rods, and after a walk around Newlyn we called in at a fish merchant for a low-down of local marks. With the tackle we had taken, we decided not to be ambitious and went a couple of miles along the coast to Mousehole where there were banks of rocks with deeper water beside them. We hadn’t taken any bait (Lee forgot it!) so we harvested a few limpets for bait and legered them adjacent to rocks with deeper water surrounding, and surprisingly caught a few Ballen Wrasse, a species I have never caught before. My luck held out despite the seal that came into my swim. Jess hadn’t seen one close up before so she was as delighted as I was frustrated. Still, it made a nice little interlude for an hour before dinner.
The next day we walked around St Michael’s Mount and had dinner in Mousehole before Lee and I sneaked off for a few minutes, just long enough to get another wrasse each.
A nice family holiday, with an opportunistic bit of fishing. We all had a great time.
Upon returning home, I planned a days fishing with Graham. The river was full and coloured, surprising as the weather in Cornwall had been great. So we targeted a stillwater, Stevenstone just outside Torrington. As with the sea fishing trip, our plans had to be hastily rearranged as the water was closed for maintenance, so we switched to Darracott, only a couple of miles away.
The day started slowly. I couldn’t catch a fish on corn, and after switching to fishing on the drop, I caught four little rudd. It was time to swap swims, again I had no success with corn. Fortunately I took a loaf and this worked much better catching snotties (skimmer bream), before catching a better stamp of rudd and roach. Oddly, loose feeding with corn improved the bite rate even though I couldn’t catch a fish it.
So two problem sojourns had been overcome. One of the joys of the sport for me is challenging yourself to catch different fish in different waters using differing techniques. I guess variety is the spice of life.
