Catching Dinner

By , 18 December, 2011 15:26

Decided on a few hours at Seaford beach last night to get some decent whiting for dinner. I arrived there about an hour before the 10pm low water and walked across the shingle to find that the beach had been virtually flattened by the recent gales. The concrete ‘prom’ was covered in shingle, almost making it part of the actual beach. Instead of the usual steep ridges, the shingle descended in a shallow slope towards the sea.

There was a bit of a North Westerly blowing but it was nothing compared to recent winds. The sea had a nice bit of movement to it, stirring things up nicely and making things look promising.

Initially, I set up one rod with a size 1/0 two hook flapper baited with frozen lug and party squid tipping. This was chucked out a way past the breakers in the hope of bigger whiting. The second was set up with a long link running ledger, 4/0 pennel and whole squid, more in the hope of a late bass than specifically targeting them.

It wasn’t long before rod two with the big bait began jumping around and shortly after, a plump whiting of 37cm was on the beach, dispatched and put in the ‘dinner bucket’. By the time, I’d re-baited and cast out, rod 1 was rattling away. A double shot of smaller whiting were soon beached before unhooking and returning them.

Rod 1 was bouncing away with some quite dramatic pull downs which indicated it may be something a bit better but on bringing it in I had in fact a double shot of whiting, a smaller one on the top hook of the pennel and a dinner sized one on the lower one. The smaller one went back and the other… well into the bucket it went.

A double shot of small ones on the flapper were beached a short while later. This was followed up with a double shot of ‘dinners’ coming in at 36cm apiece. The big baits were being ravaged by whiting and frequent bait changes were needed. I was beginning to wish I’d brought more bait with me, as I had to resort to using the tattered leftovers bound up with bait elastic. One of these ‘scrap’ baits was responsible the next ‘keeper’ fish, nice really plump whiting of 36cm.

Lots of small whiting were brought in but were not sizeable enough to keep, the sea was literally alive with them. With bait being used up at a rapid pace, it wasn’t too long before I was using the last bits of bait on the flapper and rod 2 packed away. I had a final hit which brought in yet another 36cm specimen.

I packed up at about 1am and with some nice fish in the bucket, it had been a good session, with the target of dinner achieved.

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