I remember a specific winter when I was heavily into my bait fishing and I was fishing the extensive River Tamar a lot for winter cod especially. To those of you who don’t know, don’t let the word “river” fool you, because the Tamar is a great big river and estuary system that can throw up all manner of freshwater and saltwater species. The British record conger eel came from Devil’s Point at the mouth of the Tamar, and at low water if you cast out only a little bit it’s over 100’ deep………….

That winter felt much like this one does - ridiculously wet and depressing. At the time I had (peeler) crab traps which I would check every other day to try and keep me going with cod bait, and I was fishing various Tamar marks a hell of a lot. I can’t prove it of course, but my belief was that we had so much rain over a few months that it essentially ended up flushing the system out. Not very scientific I know, but there ended up being virtually no sign of any peeling crabs, the cod became almost a distant memory, and eventually there wasn’t any sign of the bycatch species such as dogfish and pouting as well. I know that freshwater lays on top of saltwater and all that, but I firmly believe that there comes a point where there can be so much extra freshwater in a system that the whole thing is kinda flushed out.

The fishing eventually came back of course as the winter rains abated, and the local shore crab population started to peel again, but that winter now reminds me of this winter. I am not out there bait fishing so I don’t have any personal experience to go on, but judging by the persistent colour of my local estuary waters and the sheer amount of sodding rain that continues to fall from what feels like perpetually leaden skies, I reckon it might be a while until a lot of us might find any meaningful estuary bass fishing.

I know there’s this really interesting theory starting to take shape that the creature bait thing might be some sort of “solution” to nailing bass in coloured estuary water, but there’s mucky and there’s mucky. It feels like we are at the extreme end of the mucky scale at the moment, where fresh has almost completely mixed with salt and we need a proper break from this never ending rain. I am looking forward to those spring signs of a strong peeler crab moult when I am convinced that the smell of those crabs shedding their shells permeates through the water and brings fish in. The crabs need certain conditions to moult though, and this sure as hell ain’t it at the moment. I was corresponding with a mate who regularly turns his crab traps over and he is literally tearing his hair out at the moment.

What does seem to be interesting though is the open coast. I don’t personally subscribe to bass needing a specific water temperature to move inshore, not with how different areas of the UK and Ireland can fish at different times of the year. I would obviously rather have warmer early season water than very cold though, this goes without saying, and I note with interest the water temperature figures above. I can only grab the information I can find online, and I guess it’s only some sort of average or best-guess approximation, but at the very least it confirms that we have had a relatively mild (and ridiculously wet) winter down here.

If the water really is a whole degree warmer right now than it was at this time of year then this suggests to me that I had better get out there and have a good go at some open coast stuff. What have I got to lose, and especially when I don’t think there’s much chance in any of my local estuaries for a good while. When this sodding weather relents I might add, because it’s howling out there again today and I got bloody soaked on an early morning dog walk. You all have a good weekend and roll on an epic Saturday of Six Nations tomorrow. I am going to have a couple of dog walks and a decent run all before lunch to get my exercise in before three games in a row tomorrow afternoon. Does an England rugby supporter dare dream once more?

With so much extra freshwater in our estuary systems, I wonder how long it might be until things kick off?

© Henry Gilbey 2023