Fancied having and afternoon/evening session down at Brighton Marina yesterday and had planned on fishing the East arm to do a bit of float fishing as well as the usual bottom fishing. These plans were scuppered when, as I drove along the coast road and looked at the sea on my left, I saw that there was a band the colour of weak tea all along the coast and around the marina – a result of all the silt and chalk in the water being stirred up by recent heavy seas.

I carried on anyway popped into The Tackle Box to top up my bait supply and get a few bits and pieces. After a chat in the shop and seeing one of the wardens, it became apparent that the West arm would be the better option as it was thought the colour would drop out of the water as the tide flowed. Stock replenished, I headed off to park the car and by about 3.30pm, I was walking out onto the West arm. The sun was shining, it was warm with hardly any breeze and unusually, there weren’t that many people out there but they were pretty evenly spread out along the wall. To have any chance of some space, I had to settle for bay 13 ( luckily I’m not superstitious – touch wood ).

As float fishing was out, I opted to start off with one rod, 2 hook flapper rig using size 2 hooks and baited with ragworm, tipped with strips of mackerel I had with me (frozen). I hoped I might manage to get a few fresh mackerel for bait if the sea cleared enough later on. One cast and one cup of coffee later, the first good bite of the day and I missed it. I left the bait out a bit longer but nothing returned to finish it’s meal. There must have been enough on he hook though because when I did retrieve, there was a small bloody spider crab hanging on while it finished the last morsel. This happened again on the next cast… and the next, I must have had a dozen of the things by the end of the session. I wouldn’t mind if they were peeling but they weren’t, they were all bullets.

I new it was going to be black bream that were giving the bites, so scaled down to size four hooks but by this time, the bites had dried up and all went quiet. I did notice that the water was clearing very slowly – very, very slowly. I tackled up with a set of Sabikis, just in case it was clear enough for some mackerel. As the tide rose, the colour was dropping, so I decided to have a few chucks; this resulted in zero, zilch, nowt.

By now the arm was filling up and I soon heard the swoosh of people casting sets of feathers into the oggin. There were also a few ‘Swoosh ‘n’ crack’ noises, as quite a few were obviously not using shock leaders on their setups and their main line was snapping under the strain of the cast. This is just daft, dangerous and puts everyone around them at risk. Luckily none were that near to me.

Time rolled on and before I knew it, sunset was upon us and it was a real beauty, I grabbed the small camera out of my bag and luckily it decided it would work this time which gave me the opportunity to get a couple of pictures. As darkness fell, the bites started again but were still difficult to hit even with the small hooks. I decided to hold the rod after each cast and it proved to be the downfall of two unlucky fish – one bream and one Pout, both which would not be worrying the record books.

High water came and went with nothing to show for my trouble, so with disappointment, I trundled back to the car and buggered off home.