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*The Definitive Guide on Where to Fish in Norfolk and Suffolk*
Author: John Wilson |
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As its title describes this is truly the definitive guide to getting and enjoying the experience of fishing the many fisheries here in East Anglia. As John recalls below, he edited a revised edition many years ago expecting that to be his one and only edition, not so and we have to be grateful to his continue vigilance in ensuring that this valuable asset remains available and up todate as possible. Available from local tackle shops and newsagents. Mention you saw it on this website when enquiring! |
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 INTRODUCTIONLittle did I envisage, when preparing the copy for this book’s first edition, that I would be still at it exactly 30 years later. Yet the purpose of this book is the same now, in this completely revised and updated seventh edition, as it was in the first way back in 1973. And that is to help the angler in his choice of venues from the vast amount of water in Norfolk and Suffolk. Whether he prefers game, coarse or sea fishing in East Anglia, and whether he is local or just visiting the area, I sincerely hope that the following pages may help his fishing. There is such an array of available fishing in East Anglia that much of it is little known, especially by the coarse angler who often tends only to think in terms of the Norfolk Broads and their accompanying tidal rivers. However, quite apart from the clean flowing upper reaches of the big rivers, several interesting mini-rivers and many streams, there is so very much more available sport now to be found in the unlimited acres comprised of ponds, lakes, meres and particularly in clay, gravel and sand pits. Naturally as time marches on the cost of both day and season tickets is bound to increase and no doubt numerous venues within the following pages will either cease to be available as fisheries, or simply change hands and revert to being strictly private. So I ask the reader’s indulgence in this and hope that perhaps he might even inform me of any important changes as they occur. To those who have already freely given information and assisted with the preparation of this book I should like to express my gratitude. These, unfortunately, are too numerous to name but my particular thanks go to George Alderson, Chris Newell, the late Len Head, Neville and Marge Bailey, Dave Batten, John Nunn, Mike Grief, Geoff Baker, Terry Houseago, Brian Finbow, John Easdown, Roy Webster, Chris Turnbull, Christine Shipp and the late Bill Cooper of Norwich. I should also like to thank Paul Kerry for his invaluable help with the sea section and my typist, Jan Carver. Tight lines. John Wilson A brief extract of some of the interesting information available within this publication follows.......
To tell the story of how Broadland evolved is not as simple as it might seem. Did it originate as we know it today from |
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the deepest areas of valleys, formerly the bed of an enormous estuary fed by the North Sea? Or did peat excavations during the Middle Ages help to create our now threatened playground of reed-fringed fisheries? Historians disagree in the case of the Broads, with many conflicting ideas as to exactly how this water playground originated. For due to gaps in the stratigraphical record, unresolved problems are numerous. In the eyes of some (particularly the older Broadsmen still living who cut reeds or run boats) there will always be differences of opinion despite the efforts of Dr. Joyce Lambert, whose conclusive work in the 1950s favoured that such steep-sided islands of peat left around the margins of most broads could only have been made by the efforts of man removing peat for fuel to burn. Surely the name of ‘Barton Turf’ is a reminder as to its origin, and there are many other references to ‘Turbaries.
As many of these excavations and the peninsulas they left were found to run in parallel lines and actually follow old parish boundaries, and as no mention of large expanses of open water were recorded before the fifteenth century, the case for man’s involvement is almost beyond question. Samuel Woodward suspected there was an ‘artificial’ link in 1834, but not until the 1950s was scientific evidence amassed in abundance.