25th August - A.M. East Sussex Beaches
Steve with fat little bass....!
With a day off and no clients to attend to, I gave my mate Steve a call, to see if he fancied a daylight session at a spot I havent fished very much of this year. Fishing the usual whole squid in the margins routine, at the top of the tide Steve was away. Not quite the normal stamp of fish on the whole squid, this spirited and very fat fish of 39cm was the only fish we beached this session.
"Anonymous" and 5lb 10oz bass
Not so the case for a chap plugging a little way along the cliffs. I spotted out of the corner of my eye a guy handlining a decent fish in. From where I was, with the sun on the fish, it looked like a decent sea trout, so I hoofed it over. No sea trout, but a cracking spikey of 5lb 10oz. I took the picture, but the chap doesnt use the internet, so is unlikely to see the result. I think the stunning part of the capture, was that it was on a £2.99 reel from lidl, complete with bright green line. I lecture my clients long and hard about the perils of glary anything when fishing for bass, and then something like this happens to make you really start wondering!! Well done anonymous, for persevering with the lure in heavy weedy water. A cracking result.
25th August - PM - East Sussex Beaches
3.5lb open beach bass
Out with regular client Alan, and thank goodness in rather better weather than our last sorty, when persistent heavy rain did not give us the best start!! This trip was all about the spikey's though, and with a full nights fishing ahead of us, and definately a resurgence in the fish stocks, we were hoping for great things. Three venues were planned for the session, and we began on the first one, which we expected (as did a further three anglers who crept down onto the same beach) to find a bit of surf, which rather spices up the fishing at this venue. However, what we found was a virtual calm, as the wind had crept around more to the west, and the sea had flattened quickly on the shallow ground.
A call from a friend fishing an open beach mark, to say a four pound fish landed and bites missed on the early flood, saw us back in the car and heading west. Arriving at the mark, we quickly got the baits out, and we both experienced headless squid as unseen culprits attacked the bait. Soon after, a great slackliner saw me connect with the 3.5lb fish pictured. WIth the flooding tide, we had to make a decision on wehter to proceed to the third venue, or stay put and keep at it where we were. The weed was fairly problematic, so we made the move to venue 3. Here, the fishing was less than what had been anticipated. I had one good pull, missed, but generally the fishing was quite dissapointing. On datbreak we considered going back to the open beach mark, but once again, tiredness after a 12 hour session was the deciding factor, and I dropped Alan back to the station for his journey back to London Town.