I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  

A few days ago, I was on a boat off Blakeney Point simply gawping at more grey seals than I had ever thought possible. Remember I did have a year lugworm digging round those parts back in my university days but never were the muds carpeted with them like this.  

It was a stormy evening, all scudding seas and snow threatening skies and the host of seals gave the whole scene an apocalyptic air. It could have been digitally enhanced almost, an image from an Attenborough spectacular.  

Four thousand pups, we were told, and perhaps as many parents. An army of fish eaters camped on our shores. This has always been my personal quandary: how can fish survive such an onslaught? Or, then again, why would seals be there so numerous if fish were not present in unbelievable quantities? 

It was suggested by Mike Girling, a magnificent friend of mine of many years standing, that the offshore wind farms hold the answer.  

In effect, they provide an enormous artificial reef that harbours immense shoals of fish safe from commercial boats. Cod. Bass. Crustaceans no doubt, a feast of the seas but can even this bounty provide tucker for 8,000 hungry mouths?  

Over very many decades I have known wonderful times with a rod but mostly well in the past. 

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I think I have written before of my sea trout catches and fish closer to 20 pounds than 10! Fellow anglers have in the past wallowed in bass and cod and I can remember seeing the incoming tide awash with mullet, oh, can anyone tell me how to catch them please?  

All great memories but how can the seal tribe not consign catches like these irretrievably to the past? Or do we just need more wind turbines? 

But let’s move south and look at the marshland washed by high tides. Over the years, I have seen and caught clonking pike and perch living cheek by jowl with flatfish, crabs and even a smelt I remember years ago. And do you remember when the Glandford trout farm flooded nearly half a century back, releasing its population of quarter a million rainbows?  

We all ate trout grilled, fried and smoked for months but those that lived on grew to enormous sizes in the shrimp rich dykes and drains. What about the rudd hereabouts, supposedly released to feed the emerging population of marshland bitterns? Back in my Salthouse days, I saw absolute clonkers but always in the confines of a bird reserve and tantalisingly out of casting range.  

This magical, mystery tour of ours leads us to the many rivers and streams that run into this enchanted seascape. Back in the sixties, some of these held stunning roach, two pounders for sure, and even as late as the nineties I saw specimen way over the fabled three in the River Glaven just up from the sluices on the Cley road. 

The fact that I never set myself to catch them I regard as one of the great missed opportunities of my angling life. Dace too, shoals of silver minted stunners that combed the gravels all the way to Wiveton bridge and beyond, into the upper reaches when wild brown trout have traditionally reigned... and do so again, thanks to the terrific restoration work done at Bayfield in particular. 

Ever southwards and we come to the crowning glory of north Norfolk in my angler’s eyes, the God given, exquisite estate lakes. Where to begin listing these jewels... and where to end?  

Barningham, Bayfield, Felbrigg, Selbrigg, Letheringsett, Holkham, Wolterton, Blickling and a myriad more beauties that have held tench since the 18th century when most were created. What a magical, watery tapestry these lakes wove and what a tragedy most are a shadow of their former selves. Though I believe that Gunton Lake is alive and well, proof that TLC can work wonders if there is commitment enough to turn back the years of decline. 

So that’s what I saw and that’s what I thought as I trudged over my old fishing grounds for a couple of days last week. A more glorious landscape would be hard to find in the whole of England and, when it comes to variety of water and fishing, nowhere surely can come close.  

Some enlightened residents and riparian owners recognise the treasures that surround them and this gives me hope that coastal kids like we were might enjoy this fine sport of ours in the decades to come.