# 22. Plum Pudding Island, Part Two

When my father bought himself a sea fishing rod and reel in the mid 1960's, it was the start of a hobby that my father would do until he was 80 years old and I still do today.

We nearly always fished at Plum Pudding Island. It was quite a popular venue, and a parking space was sometimes a problem, you could park next to the entrance to the sewage works then. Not as popular as places such as Sandwich Bay and Deal, mainly because you often had to walk a distance to find a spot to fish. Bait was readily available on the low tide, big lugworm beds on the sand Reculver side of the sewer pipe and ragworm on the Minnis side. We would often dig our bait on the low water, go back to the car and eat our lunch while the tide came in, then go and fish the tide in and out.

Plum Pudding Island was then very popular for people who liked cockles and shrimps. There would sometimes be dozens of people with buckets and garden rakes on the beach at low tide harvesting the vast cockle beds. When you first walked onto the sea wall the beach in front of you would often be covered with empty shells as the cocklers would bring shells back. The best time of the year for shrimps was October/November. This required a push net (my father made one), at the right time of the year you could fill a 10lt bucket in half an hour.

Sea fishing equipment in the 1960's was way behind freshwater equipment. Very crude fixed spool reels and multipliers that you sometimes spent more time untangling than fishing. Rods were cane or solid fibre glass. The end gear was brass or stainless steel booms and weights with fixed grip wires. Hooks were massive and made of stainless steel or plain steel. There was a hardware shop in Birchington called 'Rodwells' that sold basic fishing gear. My first bit of sea fishing equipment was a hand line, about fifty yards of orange nylon line wound on to a wooden frame.

As the winters in the 1960's were much colder than today, especially with the long cold period in 1963, Cod were very common and the main winter species, especially from October to December when they would feed on the huge amounts of shrimps available. In the summer Pouting and Eels were the two main species. Flounders were caught from January through till May.

*Terry Marsh*

Originally published in the Monkton News (June 2024).