Bait fish in Porthleven

Toady after a few days of manic Kayak fishing which I will write about soon I went with my brother to Porthleven. All we could see from the beach from about 17:30 onwards was huge shoals of bait fish exploding from the surface.

The fish were only about 200 yds from the shore line (at the closest) but looking at the size of the splashes and the darkness of the shoals they were large fish in huge numbers. We have know idea what species of fish they were, nor what was causing them to hit the surface, but it would be fair to assume that they were escaping from some sort of predator.

There were Herring gulls cleaning up what ever was left on the surface and they were feeding heavily. Normally when Herring gulls feed like this they are mopping up parts of fish damaged or destroyed by predators hunting from below.

There were 2 boats fishing in the shoals we could see and I would love to hear from a member of crew or an angler if you were there and you could shed more light on the situation