Amble 23^rd – 24^th August 2003

 It was time I headed back up to Amble in Northumberland to see Walter and fish with him again. It was an interesting and tiring long weekend. Walter had acquired 5 lobster pots for his boat and had made some respectable catches of codling, ling and pollack recently, not forgetting lots of mackerel.

 We rose at a respectable time on Saturday morning, grilled three mackerel fillets each for breakfast and then fished from 8am to 1pm. Our first task of the morning was pulling up his 5 lobster pots. 10 lobsters, very good!
Leaving Amble Harbour   Cap'n Ahab hisself  Walter and 7lb pollack
Then the real work started. Fishing feathers, we filled a box with mackerel catching 4 to 7 at a time and also had a few coalies and Walter had some pollack to 7lb. Apart from a handful of joeys, the mackerel were all big and in superb condition. The shoals of baitfish were vast, hundreds of metres long and twenty to forty metres across.
Mackerel everywhere         Saturday morning's catch

We had three lobsters each for dinner and another three grilled mackerel fillets for breakfast next morning. Then off at 7am with Stevie (I’m a dab hand), Wal and Bob for another session.

The lobster pots were close into Coquet Island, with seals lounging on its extremities. I've seen some catches before, but this time we had 20 lobsters, eight of them in one pot! On both days, we did not catch one crab.
    Amble Harbour           Pulling in the pots  

My arms were still aching from yesterday, so with Wal and Walter, just fished for codling with jelly worms and mackerel fillet. I tied on a three hook Hokeye rig. After loads of tiny coalies and mackerel I finally got a codling. It was about 1.57 kg (3 ½lb), then Wal caught another around 2lb. By 11am, no more were caught. All this time, Stevie and Bob were murdering the mackerel, we switched back to serious mackerel fishing with 'Daylight' rigs.

By 5pm we packed up and returned with 22 stone (about 136 kilos) of mackerel. The boat looked like an abbatoir with blood and scales all over it and all over us.
Sunday's catch   Wal and I with codling  Stevie and his tea
Apparently the mackerel were late coming this year and more bass have migrated up there too this year. Maybe that's why they were scarce in the South.

So, no fly fishing, but it was nice to catch a lot of fish for a change. What did we do with the lobsters? We curried six of them with a big pollack fillet. Obscene? Who cares, decadence can be exceedingly tasty.