Today's adventure was a bit special and today's entry is quite a departure from the usual, but indirectly it is still, of course, about wildlife in Devon!

 I have talked before about how I enjoy visiting Beer, the birds are good and the atmosphere and ambience is superb. Over the last few days I have made the acquaintance of the professional fishermen who work their boats from the small beach. They are very nice and friendly and have been really welcoming to me when they have seen me for the second and third time. I really admire the way that they are making a living from the bay with their small boats and a few nets, in just the way that people have been in England and all around the world for thousands of years. I was invited, well in actual fact I invited myself to go out with one of the fishermen, Jim, to haul in his 4 gill nets that he strings out in and around the bay just off Beer Head.  The nets, 100 yards long,  are laid between anchored buoys and left for 24 hours before they are hauled in. So at the crack of dawn I left home and travelled  to Beer to join the boat, which is relatively small at only 18 foot long or so. As we made our way out, the weather was gloriously sunny and the sea flat calm and there was a degree of anticipation and excitement in the air. Jim, the skipper, detoured a little to look at the sea birds on the cliffs and we chatted about birds and wildlife that he has seen over the years. He told me of a Basking Shark seen in the summer and of Porpoise seen in the spring months. We spotted a seal and waited for it reappear, it never did though! By now we had arrived at our first net and began to haul it in. To my utter surprise it was very fruitful and contained Bass after Bass, some quite sizeable at 3 to 4Ilbs with the odd one even larger. There was a Cod in the net which was a surprise to Jim as this net was quite close to the shore and had been placed to deliberately target Bass.

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This is one of the smaller fish, it was very hard to get a half decent photo because of the rocking of the boat so any action shots were a near impossibility. Anyway to cut a long story short we finished with well more than  50lb of Bass, several Cod, a large Dover Sole a big Grey Mullet and a 12lb Pollack. All this as well as 5 large boxes of Lesser Spotted Dogfish weighing a total of 250lb………. yes that is 250lb! As a by catch we caught around 25lb of edible crab of eatable size, a real surprise to me as they were entangled in the nets and not deliberately fished for. At £2.50 per pound for crab that is quite a  worthwhile bonus.

Jim said that this was a slightly disappointing day as he was hoping for far more Sole and Cod, but it seemed pretty good to me and is a real indication of the richness of life off, and close to our shores.

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If you have visited the blog looking for bird pictures then of course I will not disappoint you. Here are a few pictures of Rock Pipits taken yesterday.

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