River Thurne Martham. A small village in Norfolk just outside Great Yarmouth. It was a a chilly cloudy day. An afternoon drop shotting session was on the cards. Something I’ve hardly done and never at the River Thurne Martham.
Armed with my very little knowledge, a tub of worms big enough to fish for probably a year, and some small plastic baits. Lets begin by taking the walk down the riverside and see if any other anglers were around. I’d be able pick their brains. I did think due to the recent salt surge it was going to be a tough days fishing. I was keen for the challenge River Thurne Martham had in store.
The only anglers I came across were a group of kids, they’ve been fishing for past 4 days and caught nothing! When does that stop us though hey! Another was a guy fishing with his whip. Only thing he’s had were a handful of small roach. Fantastic! I’ll go back and get my stuff.
It was about 2pm when I set up and had my first cast. I was fishing with a 7g weight about 7 inches off the bottom was my worm. Within about 3 seconds of dropping it in the margin on the left of the first wooden peg I’d got my first bite. A perch about 4oz. Buzzing! take that kids I thought.
Fast forward another hour this was the only fish I’d caught at that point. Various depths and baits were not producing any bites. I’d covered most of the water along them pegs and decided to take a walk down a little further. By this point the kids had given up and the other guy hadn’t had a bite for hours.
River Thurne Martham was normally a place which would guarantee a catch, and regular at that. I had to come up with a new plan, being a newbie to drop shotting I was starting to think it was my inexperience preventing m from catching. Lets drop shot like I’m fishing my way. I spent the next hour chopping worms up into really small pieces. My plan was to fish my worm 4 inches from the bottom, and feed chopped worm over the top. That might sound ridiculous to some people but It was one of them situations where I thought, bugger it.
I know it’s a bit late on in the blog, but I best mention that I wasn’t fishing alone. I was with somebody that’s only fishing experience was sea fishing. So he’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I promised him some feeder fishing soon but convinced him to come drop shotting. Anyway, we proceeded to continue down the river for about a mile. A nice opening in the river presented us with a chance to try out our new plan.
This is where things slowly started to pick up, it was about half 4. The only little sun we’d had in the last 20 minutes were buried behind thick grey clouds. Bye! Anyways, I plonked our bait out in the margin and chucked around 2 chopped worms over our bait. A a few little twitches later, fish on..Another small perch. I proceeded to catch a mix of perch and roach for around an hour, right until we’d ran out of chopped worm. The bites were almost all within 5/6 seconds of the first movement. I assume that’s where they were all shoaled up.Right place right time.
We decided to head back towards the car around 5:30. We’d agreed to stop at any opening on the way back for a few casts, with more chopped worm in hand I decided to try and go for something a little bigger. I’d tried a few small plastics with no luck. I opted for 6 worms. Call me mad but in the water, it looked fit for a king!
I got to around the 3rd wooden peg in and I stuck it around 10 ft to my left. I slowly started dragging it from left to right. All of a sudden the rod bent and i was in. Being new to drop shotting It was pretty exciting. I thought, either a nice perch or a pike. Turns out it was a small pike. My first pike predator fishing. Chuffed to bits, not the biggest by any stretch but I was buzzing.
That was the last fish, It did bring me a brief moment of confidence after a long spell of nothing. We didn’t get so much as a sniff. I packed up and went home. A good 5 hours in total that afternoon and I’ll likely come back with better knowledge. experience and a lot more skill.
Conclusion
River Thurne Martham – I think the salt surge had really impacted the fishing right across the broads. Somebody with better knowledge would likely be a lot more successful. Will I come back? Probably. It’s very local to me and I’ve known pretty decent fish to come out of this stretch, I’ll try again in the not so distance future and see what luck I have.
