Not really, to understand what's happening at Boulmer you need to know how the beach works and how the worms move.
From where the boats come down, along to about the car park is a nursery area. The further south and down the beach you get, the bigger the worms get. As the small worms grow they move along and down the beach getting progressively bigger. Certain people dig nowhere else but in this nursery area which effectively removes most of the worms before they have a chance to get to the main area you dig. This explains the lack of worms.
Boulmer has never been known for producing big worms, even when the ban was in effect the worms were still on the small side. In fact just after the ban was lifted, when Tony won his case, the whole beach was full of small worms. It wasn't until they were thinned out that they got to any size. There is only one area that produces big worms and thats on the bigger tides.
You will never wipe Boulmer out, it's as close to a perfect set up for lugworm as you can get. Lugworm feed on all sorts of stuff but their favourite is rotting seaweed. The way Boulmer is layed out is perfect, all the weed gets ripped off the rocks and dumped on the beach to feed the worms. Next time you're there look for patches of black casts. These are worms that are feeding on the buried rotting weed. There might be only half a dozen casts, but chances are there could be as many as 20 worms in that small area, and they will be much bigger than the one's in the surrounding sand.
I suggested a way to solve all the problems with boundries and boats a long time ago. Dump loads of fist size rocks where the boats go down. They would sink into the sand, make life easier for the fishermen, and digging impossible. Thats a far better solution for the money than spending it on taking people to court. I have dug over the line on smaller tides because there was nowhere else to dig, been to court for it and they couldn't do a thing about it. BUT, I have never dug where the boats go down or around the boats. If I was a fisherman, what I would do to the people who do this day in and day out, is borrow a JCB from the farm and dig a trench around their car.
Budle bay is another subject alltogether, how they can say someone digging bait is disturbing the birds is a mystery to me? I have seen more birds picking around in the area being dug than anywhere else on the entire place. Go a few miles up the road to holy island, and you can get a permit to blow these little birds brains out. From who? Why English Nature of course!
I should add that the birds in Budle are a special disabled variety that can't fly from one place to another so they need special protection just in Budle Bay. Yeah right, from long and often heated discussions with the warden for both Budle and Holy Island, my opinion is he is very anti angling. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he was a member of Pisces or PETA.