Fished East arm of Brighton Marina, bay 12 yesterday from 7pm through til 3am. Fantastic night absolutely no wind, warm (double t shirt only – no fleeces or jackets).
Early part of the evening, after tackling up and sending some lugworm to the seabed, I tried for a few of the mackerel I’d been reliably informed were there – Nada, nowt, zilch.
As darkness I fell I set up another rod and used peeler crab on a running ledger and lobbed it out a few yards from the base of the wall.
First fish of the evening was a small ‘schoolie’Â bass which fell to the crab. This was followed by a never ending line of Pout to the worm baits. A few were kept as baits.
As darkness fell I was contemplating what a great evening it was when I saw a large tug on the rod with the Pout bait followed by nothing. On retrieving, there was a large chunk out of the baits head/neck area. Next bait it happened again leading me to believe that either squid or Cuttlefish were the likely culprits.
I would have tried a luminous jig but had left it home along with my float gear. I will not forget again!
I had another small bass at about midnight. More pouting and then all went quiet for the last couple of hours so jacked it again.
It was a lovely night, so nice not to be wearing floatation suit or fleeces or ‘owt like that.
Fished Seaford last night from 7pm through til 12.30am. Parked at Edinburgh Road and then found a spot just West of there. A very still, bright and clear night with no surf didn’t bode well for a fishy night but I was willing to give it a shot.
Bites were frantic from the start using one hook, DViced ledger baited with lugworm/squid strips. Loads of whiting landed, some a decent size, some not. I guess there must have been a carpet of them, there were that many. This made it difficult to target any codling that might have been around, as the whiting were taking the bait virtually as it hit the sea bed.
A second rod had the usual ledger with Pennel mounted whole calamari lobbed out about 20yards. This resulted in the one and only bass of the night. It was a very thin and scrawny 46cm specimen which looked like it was in need of a decent meal.
By 11.30pm, the bites stopped and all went quiet but I stuck it out for another optimistic hour before calling it a night.
Once again I opted for my old favourite and fished just up from the Beachcomber pub last night. Arrived and set up just after 9pm about and hour before low water. I was confronted by flat calm sea, the slightest NE breeze and overcast sky which made it quite warm.
Usual tactics – one rod with 2 hooker flapper rig using size 2 hooks baited with lugworm varying the distances. Second rod with 3/0 pennel and whole squid.
Wasn’t long before my old friend Tiny thornback appeared again…and again….and again, taking the lugworm. This was followed by some small Pout.
I had a couple of knocks on the calamari but put this down the usual suspects, small Pout or whiting.
Fishing was pretty slow until not long after 1.15 when I had two bass of around a pound and a bit hit the squid on successive casts. Next take was a beauty which had the rod slammed down hard. A nice bass of 44cm was beached. All three fish were taken, at most 20 yards out.
After these three, it was back to Pout. By 5.30, I’d had enough and decided to head for home. I don’t know if sticking it out longer would have resulted in any codling or not but quite frankly the thought of a warm bed was more appealing.
On Friday 17th. August, the weather looked awful with quite high winds and didn’t appear ideal for fishing. Undeterred, I decided I was going to fish come hell or high water. The East arm of Brighton Marina was the favoured venue and I was aiming to go quite a way around on the arm but as there was quite a bit of water being thrown up over the marina wall (slaps) by the wind, I decided to fish further inshore on Bay 18 .
I set up at around 9pm with two rods; one on a single running ledger baited with lugworm and sent out at about fifty yards or so. The second rod was a 2/0 pennel rig baited with whole calamari and lobbed down the side in the hope of a large bass.
The wind was blowing quite a bit with a strong W/SW breeze and there were a few slaps coming over but on the whole not too bad. There was a lot of weed though, which eased towards high water.
The first fish to come were small ‘bootlace’ eels which created havoc with my rigs, coating them in slime and knotting them up as they usually do. A couple of bass soon followed but were unfortunately only small schoolies, not large enough for the table. All these came to the lug baited rod. The next few fish were to my surprise, small codling of around 12oz. again too small for the table but indeed a welcome sight and perhaps a sign of better fishing to come.
As it neared high water, the wind strengthened and the sea was getting lumpier, with ‘slaps’ becoming larger and more frequent. It was time to leave, so having packed up and donated my unused bait to a chap fishing along from me, I trundled back to the car quite content with the evening’s result.
Fished Brighton Marina East arm on Wednesday evening to get the 10.30pm high water. Arrived at about 6.30pm and settled myself in bay 20. Spent a little while enjoying some sport catching mackerel on light spinning gear to be used as bait for the serious stuff.
I used to rods, both with running ledger terminal tackle, one with lugworm on size 1 hook. The other had mackerel mounted on 2/0 Pennel rig.
Had a number of small black bream on the lugworm and a few runs on the mackerel, which I believe were Cuttlefish, as the bait was stripped from the hook on retrieve.
A couple of small bass followed before a small pouting was landed. This was immediately used as live bait and was quickly scoffed by a spirited bass of around 18 inches which on landing was seen to be in beautiful condition and as plump as a plump thing, so had obviously been feeding well.
At about 1 am, the fishing went dead and it was time to call it a night and head off home. I might just have to have a bash at landing the Cuttlefish on a future visit.
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