Saturday 11th June

Arrived in Brighton, dumped my stuff (after dealing with my car being broken into at 4 o clock that morning in London!!) and got down to a bit of reef that I havent previousley been on for prawns. Result, plenty of them, unlike where I was going before which was getting very thinly populated, mostly because of how popular a bait prawn is, and partly because the accesibility is very good, so many people use it for their bait. Well, I dont mind a bit of a stroll, so I'm very happy with this new spot. It also would appear to have more marine life generally than the other spot, so the anorak in me is greatly satisfied!! So, with a bucket of prawns and a couple of rods I headed off to the long arm of the marina, reckoning that with the bright sun and the super clear water, somewhere with a good bit of ground cover in the form of kelp and bladderwrack would have the advantage over clear water. Normally when I fish for the bass with float and prawn I fish quite shallow, sometimes only five or six feet under the surface. Today, with a sea busy with weekend sailors, plus the clear and bright conditions, I didnt feel the fish would want to be travelling too far from the sanctuary of the weed cover, so I set the BLN3621 size 1 aberdeen at eighteen feet below the float. Another tip in these conditions is to fish clear hooklengths, and as light as you dare. Having said that, I wont go below 6.8kg. I have fished with many anglers on the marina, and seen many of them (including "angling superstars") go for the ultra-light set up. 6lb vanish hooklinks DO NOT STOP BIG BASS however, and I'd rather have the tackle on to handle the fish of a lifetime when it comes along, rather than have just another big fish that got away routine.

So, on with the fishing. I put a pulley rig down the wall, to be met with a stonking bite resulting in a big corkwing wrasse. I re-baited it and dropped it down while I set up my float rod. But, before I had the two pieces together, the pulley rig was off again. I missed that one, but put it down to wrasse. I retired the rod, as if the wrasse were in that kind of mood, they would soon go through every prawn in the bucket. Finally getting the float rod assembled, I got in to the routine of running the prawn with the tide. I feel that at this spot, it is very important for the maximum results, to have the bait moving at the same time as the tide, or ever so slightly slower. At this spot, the tide pushes along the coast towards the wall, and then runs along it. The way to fish it is to cast straight out in fornt of you, allow the float to come towards you whilst picking up the slack line, and then feed line as the float breaks right and runs along the wall. You would ideally want the three bays to your right hand side free to do this properly, but you can do an abridged version if the bays are busy.

So, to cut a long story short. Two bass landed on the flood, and one lost. One of them was (Finally) a table fish of about 2.5lb's (which is steaming with spring onion and ginger as I write this...) Another one landed on the ebb. About a dozen pollock mostly on the ebb, usual marina fish of around 8oz's. Plus the first wrasse, and a second one on the ebb. All in all a very enjoyable session. One thing I noticed just before I left was huge clouds of tiny whitebait. There were a few nomadic mackerel chasing them down, but as these are the mackerel's favourite food, I'm thinking that the mega shoals of mackerel will return to find them very soon.

No fishing for Sunday, as I am renovating my kitchen in the bungalow. But looking forward to next week...........