‘I marvelled at the size and power of the breakers born two hundred yards out in the blackness, their creamy crests just visible in the glow from the steelworks behind’
The tide was brimming in the bay, the sea full and shimmering in the late spring midday sun. We pressed our noses against the warm glass of the windows, eager for a glimpse of our destination as the Number 77 bus travelled the elegant sweep of the bay. Often likened locally to the Bay of Naples, the comparison is a fair one as the bay at Swansea nears the Mumbles through its scenic Western approaches. Then we could see it through a distorting heat haze, the pier reaching out into deep water, full, we hoped, of fine fat fish. Yes, we were off fishing with the added frisson of a new venue.
The old ‘Routemaster’ snorted and shuddered to a halt on the rise above the pier, spilling its motley cargo of excited day trippers, elderly sun-seekers and two eager young anglers. We stopped briefly at the “Apple” kiosk for essential supplies and hesitated even more briefly at the cluster of wind- sculpted hawthorns where the tree sparrows had built their cosy,domed nests this time of year. ‘No, not today…’ we agreed and, deeply inhaling the heady breath of salt, seaweed and ozone hurried down the damp and mossy steps and over to the pier entrance, paying our pennies for a ticket to fish, then strode out onto the salt-bleached planking pointing seaward.
The two piers at the eastern end of the bay were none too attractive in appearance, rather workaday functional structures, a good fit for their immediate environs of rusting derricks and towering, ugly gasometers. Not so the Mumbles Pier; built late in the Victorian period it displayed fine design and pleasing proportions, finished with ornate cast iron supports and gaily painted railings. Of course we harboured no prejudices on this front, we were here for one thing only and when we reached the halfway point we could see we were in good company as the railings supported more and more rods the further we walked.
On the left a little knot of anglers were watching a stoutly-built, aging chap slowly retrieving his tackle; a proper ‘Old Salt’ he looked, in his ancient serge overcoat, his wooden rod and reel reinforcing the image perfectly. Eventually he swung an ancient, brass paternoster over the railings, a hefty, studded watch-lead on the bottom, and on the middle hook, a beautiful ‘flattie’; a fine plaice of about fifteen inches. The fish slowly rotated in the air,showing first a gleaming, translucent, white belly then a tan-coloured topside with large vivid red spots. The gathered audience were most appreciative, Jess and I were transfixed! We’d seen such fish on the slabs in the town’s market, the colours in death dulled, the spots faded; this was altogether different and we wanted one for ourselves.
Of course it turned out that we weren’t really up to the task, our experience thus far geared towards snatching blynn (pouting) and ‘pin’ whiting in the river mouth between the other two piers. Our catch this day was no different, apart from a tiny pouting-sized codling to Jess’s rod. All these tiddlers showed great enthusiasm for our sixpenny-worth of fresh cockles, rattling the tops of our solid glass boat rods and ringing the peg bells merrily!
The sun continued to beam down on us as the sea dropped with the afternoon ebb. Despite the huge Bristol Channel tidal range, the pier, situated on the bay’s western headland, enjoyed wet feet year around, ensuring its popularity as a fishing mark regardless of time or tide. However, when the tide was low, winching a nice catch up through thirty feet was a tense affair and sometimes ended unhappily.
Nevertheless,that afternoon we frequently witnessed traces retrieved with prime dabs on each hook, particularly right at the furthest end of the pier, a concrete landing stage for the White Funnelfleet’s ferry to Ilfracombe. This part of the pier exhibited a less salubrious aspect, particularly to the nose as the remains of over-ripe mackerel and blown lugworm, in addition to crushed shore-crabs, gave off a rather unsavoury odour.
It was the place to be, though, if you wanted the flatties because out here a decent cast put your bait on a sandier bottom, the fishes’ preference. It mattered little to us at the time, neither of us being able to fling our gear more than twenty yards!
Still, we were quite content on the returning bus journey, reliving the highlights of the long afternoon, the sights and sounds fresh in the mind and the constant calling of the raucous gulls echoing still in our ears. As we swung around the curve of West Cross we looked back toward the pier, the sea now nowhere to be seen but the bay still bejewelled as the rippled, wet sand and expanses of shallows reflected the westering sun and the pier now solidly silhouetted against the reddening sky. This was the view Dylan Thomas woke to in his childhood home high on a hill above the bay. Much influenced by the beauty of this ever-changing vista he wrote in his “Poem in October” of the “musseled pool” and “heron priested shore”.
It was a view I was to enjoy for many a year, indeed often becoming part of it on countless bait gathering forays,accompanied by the calls of curlew and oystercatcher and the gulls ever watchful for a worm I might have missed.
I can’t recall ever catching anything of note in those early days, even the ubiquitous dogfish seemed to avoid our baits. Of course, we were only scratching the surface then but those early experiences set the scene for a lifelong attachment to the sea and the bounty it provided in all its forms. Even the gathering of bait, something many found a chore, I came to enjoy almost as much as the fishing itself.
I learned by dint of hard work where to find the yellow-tailed black lugworm and the fearsome pincered king ragworm. Razor clams abounded on the Gower beaches and peeler crabs could be picked around all the rocky headlands. This wealth of bait, free for the taking, did much to enable my growth as an angler and cemented my deep affection for the marine environment.
These undeniable ties to the sea and the fishing were an inevitable consequence of genetic inheritance. I never knew my paternal grandfather, he had departed this world just after the Second War, but I was to learn that he was clever with his hands (an upholsterer by trade) and in his spare time loved his allotment and fishing the sea. All these traits skipped a generation emphatically but happily found expression through me, ensuring a continuity in my own gradually improving efforts over two decades.
On a late November night in the late Eighties, a storm was crossing the Atlantic heading west and pushing before it a lively groundswell. The gentlest of breezes caressed my face as I marvelled at the size and power of the breakers born two hundred yards out in the blackness, their creamy crests just visible in the glow from the steelworks behind. I waded out into the steady push and suck of the second wave, settled my feet and, with an assured, languid pendulum swing, powered the lead and a bunch of juicy lugworm ninety yards out into the tumult. The last wave hissed on the firm damp sand as I rested the rod in its spike, the retreating water rolling pebbles and shells seaward and drawing the sand from beneath my waders whilst leaving ribboned swirls of cappuccino foam at its furthest reach.
This was my fourth cast. Safely stowed further up the beach, out of reach of the sneakiest rogue wave, my bag held three nice codling, the spoils of my previous casts. It was a good night and it was about to get better! After not many minutes the rhythmically nodding rod top bounced twice then straightened as the line billowed slack and I was in business again. This one felt bigger, particularly when the undertow of each successive wave increased the resistance, dramatically prompting me to backwind a little. On the last wave I got behind the fish and encouraged it onto the sand. It was a good one, double figures I guessed, and twice the size of any I had caught before. My head spun as I gazed at its broad flank and huge head. It’s almost akin to an out-of-body experience, to take in the capture of a fish far beyond the norm and particularly so if it has been long coveted.
It took me some time to gather my wits and get another cast out there. Noticeably, this one screamed off far to the left! No bite came to this one or on the next two. The small tide was still not at half-flood, well within the best hours. I pondered a move and eventually shifted a couple of hundred yards to the right. Unbelievably, two casts gave me two more three-pounders! Six fish in two hours, I had to pinch myself! The perfection of the conditions served to enhance the enjoyment of a night that would stay long in the memory.
I looked around to left and right, not a soul to be seen. I thought about all the past times I had been alone on the coast, rod in hand, catching nothing because I was in the wrong place. Not this time… Tonight the stars had aligned, everything had come together and the strap of my bag cut into my shoulder as I climbed the dunes to begin the mile-long walk to the car. Even the barn owl put in a timely appearance to lift my spirits further, quartering the marshy pasture where the cattle lay contented, their warm breath mingling with a light mist that was beginning to rise from the damp land.
Much can go wrong to mar the enjoyment of these storm beach nights. The surf can be too fierce after a blow, carrying troublesome weed and flotsam, making fishing virtually impossible. On calm nights little whiting and masked crabs can be voracious, stripping baits in no time at all anddrastically reducing the real fishing time. An east wind can blow up, flattening the surf and like Masefield’s “whetted knife” can chill the air, making the fish dour. One not so common occurrence happened two weeks after the night just recounted. Everything pointed to another good night, the tide, wind and weather all the same as the previous visit. Peter came with me this time, hoping to share in the spoils. We had dug about a hundred good lugworm and confidence was high.
The early success I expected didn’t materialise and as the night wore on the rods remained straight and we became resigned to potentially empty bags. An intermittent moon had peeked out occasionally through the night, silvering the surf and the table-flat, wet sand; now, at around midnight, it pointed up something glinting on the edge of the tide; sprats, quite a few of them lying dead on the sand. The sea must have been lifting with them and obviously the cod would have been very preoccupied in chasing them. We decided to save our hard won bait for another day!
Another two decades reveals a much changed scene, with much of my sea angling taking place afloat. The anchor-rope of Guinevere thrummed taut in the powerful tide, emitting that weird, wailing hum reminiscent of some strange sea creature. It was mid-flood on a fine Spring day much like that first day on the pier and we, Dave the skipper and I, were anchored up on the Langland bream mark, not too far from the pier; and, as if to complete the circle, we caught pouting too but not until the tide slackened towards high water. In the interim we caught the black bream the mark was known for, half a dozen each up to nearly two pounds kept for the table, with many smaller returned. The fast, staccato bites were interspersed with the slow tugs of dogfish and the irresistible, savage pulls of starry smooth-hounds of up to six or seven pounds on occasion; on the light bream tackle these magnificent fish gave a thrilling fight. Gurnard, codling and, occasionally, dabs added variety to the catch on many visits to this productive mark, making it worth our while taking the boat out while the other favoured species were in steady, inexorable decline.
And so to the present, or at least as it was five years ago,before I moved inland. “The codling are not in the tides as they were of old”; shamelessly plagiarised and slightly modified from “The Meditation of the Old Fisherman” by W B Yeats. This poignant ‘hymn to loss’ resonates deeply with my sentiments on the current situation that the important species find themselves today. I substituted codling for herring quite deliberately as it’s these fish that have suffered the worst decline, having all but disappeared from the north coast of the Bristol Channel. On the night I recounted earlier I had caught six codling from the shore: two winters ago, the last one before Dave sold his boat, he caught one all winter! Enough said! The ‘flatties’ have gone the same way, the plaice gone completely, the dabs now small and worthless. The bass are slowly recovering after the stringent moratorium stepped in just in time to help them. Even then we witnessed small commercial boats flouting the limits on both size and numbers taken.
I’ll never be afloat drifting the ‘Banks’ again but I may yet get the opportunity to revisit some of the Gower shore marks in the future. I do wonder though if my aging frame will stand up to the rigours of the more productive rough ground… I may have to content myself with some fabulous memories of days ashore and afloat and arriving home tired but supremely happy with my lot.
Writing & Images Paul Huxtable, Spring 2025
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