Decided to fish the East arm at Brighton Marina last night, so headed off armed with a load of lugworm and for a change, some frozen sandeel.

Arrived at around 9.30pm with the water very low and set up in bay 58 near the rocks. Conditions were a flat calm with no wind at all. Very overcast and heavy cloud.

First rod was set up with a two hook scratching rig baited with nice juicy lugworm. A gentle lob placed the bait a short distance out from the wall. Put the rod in the rest and turned to set up the second rod. Bang!! The rod lurched over over with a violent take, I grabbed it and leant into what seemed a decent fish.

A few seconds later, a decent looking bass was rolling at the base of the wall, problem was, my drop net was still against the back wall along with the rest of my gear, the cord still coiled up nice and tight. I tried, but there was no way of getting to the net without letting go of the rod or letting the fish take a load of line. In the end I decided on trying to hand-line it up the wall – big mistake – twang! as the snood line parted and Mr. bass was off into the distance. (I swore that it turned and stuck two fins up at me). I reckon on it being around the four pound mark, maybe a bit bigger.

I was well pissed off, but nevertheless, attached a new snood, re baited and chucked it again – after uncoiling the drop net and putting it in a convenient spot.

Second rig was a flowing trace baited with sandeel fillet and lobbed a few feet out from the base.

The scratching rig brought in never ending double hits of Pout and a few smallish whiting.

Whilst having a ciggy, the sandeel rod lurched over suddenly. There was a definite tugging going on, but it only resulted in a whiting of around a pound.

Some twitching on the scratcher caught my attention. It failed to develop, so I brought it in, only to find one of the smallest thornbacks I have seen hanging onto the size 2 hook. After sending it back, I recast and then repeated the action again with an even smaller thorny. Try as I might, I couldn’t get any bigger than that.

At about midnight, the wind got up and became quite a brisk SW breeze that added some movement to the water.

In the next couple of hours, it was more Pout, more whiting, a couple of school bass and one crab.

As the tide fell away, so did the bites, as did my ciggy and coffee supply. Time to call it a night and head off home.

As an aside, all the Pout fell to lug, almost all the whiting fell to sandeel or lug/sandeel mix. bass fell to lug as did the Thornies.