Beach Fishing & BBQs

If you follow me on Instagram (which you totally should because it’s rad and I love the love), then you’ll already have seen how we spent last Thursday night… we went fishing!!!

Around here, i.e. coastal Devon, fishing is pretty much the norm, whether it’s crab lines for kids, mackerel trips in hire boats for tourists or professional fishing boats for those making a living from the sea.  With that in mind, you’re probably thinking we’re pro fishers but we’re not.  We’re REALLY not.  Beyond a couple lines thrown in when we were children and Dad thought it’d be a good idea for us to get some outdoor time, neither me or Mr DM have fished before.  However, the weather has been lovely and apparently it’s bumper mackerel shoals this year, which gave us the idea of a beach bbq/fishing night.

Armed with enough food and blankets to support a small army, me, Mr DM, our 2 friends, their toddler and our two newborns headed down to Branscombe Beach.  If you’ve not been to Branscombe before then I would thoroughly recommend it as a quintessentially Devonshire place to go.  It’s got two pubs which host rowdy beer festivals annually, winding lanes with overgrown hedgerows and is nestled into a valley giving it a hidden air.  Follow the small river down to the beach and you’ll find pebbles galore, ice-creams to melt for (literally) and a view of the surrounding coastline that can’t be topped.  In the evenings, the beach is fairly sheltered making it excellent for bbq’s and beach fires, meaning it attracts a lot of locals.  There’s no promenade for walkers so the few that you’ll see will be meandering along the shore line, chased by waves.  On a night like last night, it’s pretty perfect.

Not for one minute did we think the two manly menfolk with us would ever catch anything, especially judging by the level of banter exchanged over the previous week (if I hear any more rod or tackle jokes ever again, it’ll be too soon), but after a false alarm or two… ” I caught something!!! Oh wait, it’s a rock”… they did! Never before has a fish catch been so celebrated, with whoops and cheers and tears from the babies awakened by our hollering – fish was on the menu!  Speaking of which, the boys had disappeared off into fish world so whilst they displayed their testosterone, we cooked a stormer of a bbq, placated and fed the babies, corralled the toddler and generally put the worlds to rights and boy, did we cook good.

Fished out (even I had a go, although my catch count was zero!) and full up, we packed up our camp and headed back to the cars.  With a final fish count of nine apiece, the night was quickly heralded a success… even when YouTube came out for ‘how to gut a fish’.  If you’re looking for a family friendly night out and are lucky enough to live somewhere like we do, then grab a rod, gather up some friends and head on down to the beach, you might just have a night to remember like ours!

Right, I’m off to hunt for mackerel recipes, suggestions welcome…