My previous session had gone reasonably well, so I decided on a day time session for Saturday on the East arm of Brighton Marina in the pursuit of herring and maybe a plaice.
As word has got out about the herring to be had on the marina, the usually quiet, wintery days have turned into a bit of a bunfight with multitudes of people fishing there. I hate to have to walk too far in search of a suitable spot to fish and I’m no great fan of crowded, shoulder to shoulder fishing, so I opted to set off early and get there in time to bag a decent spot.
I arrived in the marina and was at the door of The Tackle Box by just after 7am, just in time to see the owner, Dave arriving followed by the worm guy delivering some tasty fresh ragworm. After a quick chat and purchase of some odds and ends, I set off full of expectation.
Walking onto the arm, I noticed the lack of people there and the free reign I had to choose where I wanted to go. I walked around the bend and settled on bay 24 (or 25 depending on which painted number you take notice of) and started to unpack. With the tide rising I first had a shot at drifting a float through my section dragging the bait along the bottom to see if it brought any interest but this was impressively ignored by anything that might have been down there. I persisted for a while but as the tide picked up, it coincided with more and more people arriving, making it difficult to let the float drift through.
As time wore on, I began to work a set of 5 size 12 Sabikis and was immediately rewarded with a triple shot of small herrings, beautiful little bars of silver, dashed with a light mauve colour across the back and looking comletely unlike the grey dull offerings you normally see in a supermarket. Wanting to have some a bit larger, I continued to work the small lures, bouncing the lead across the seabed. Each time I had a hit, it was always the smaller herrings and nothing of a retainable size.
In an effort to try and bag something else, I swapped the float setup and went for a single size 2 hook ledgered DVice setup baited with ragworm. This was cast out at varying distances over the time I was there but each time I retrieved to rebait, the bait came back as good as it went out with nothing having given it a chew. The only exception was the capture of a small Masked Crab which had latched on to the worm and had refused to release it.
Had a few more goes for the herrings but only ended up with the little ones and these were very sporadic. As darkness fell, I felt there was little worth staying for, so decided to leave it for another day.
All in all it was a great day to be out and was another session of testing my back and showed that things are improving all the time.