Saturday should have been a great session at Seaford beach, with some great South westerlies stirring things up to get the fish on the feed. I arranged to meet a fishing buddy, Phil down that at the beach and fish from the 5pm low tide, up and over the 11pm high. I was going to fish two rods, both with big baits, searching for a decent bass or two.
I got down on to the beach and saw big rollers and a crashing surf, with little signs of the dreaded stuff I said I wouldn’t mention again – game on!
As a tester, I set up one rod with long link running ledger, 6/0 pennel baited with whole squid and launched it into the breakers. It managed to hold bottom ok but looked like it would be too difficult to manage two rods, so one rod it was going to be.
Phil turned up at about 7.30 and set just to east of me and soon had his bait in the water.
Darkness came and with it, the wind started to drop and the sea lost a lot of its energy but was still great looking conditions. Things were very quiet and there were no takes during the early part of the flood but I was confident of success later on towards high water.
About an hour or so before high water, the first of the ‘sea salad’ turned up – big clumps of the slimy stringy stuff. I thought it had been bad recently but things were about to get worse! As we neared the high water time, the damn stuff got heavier and seemed to choke up the sea from close in to medium range – it was everywhere! The main problem with it was that unlike before where I could unravel the stuff and pull it away from the line, this appeared to be dead and rotting, so just broke up as I pulled, meaning it had to picked off bit by bit, taking a lot more time to remove.
Phil timed one of my casts and found that after only 3 minutes and forty five seconds of being in the water, the line was clogged and had to be brought in for the crap to be removed. This obviously meant that baits weren’t being in the water long for anything to find it. I swear I was going demented, it was was driving me mental.
What made it worse, was I had a text from ‘Fishyrob’ to say that at Brighton where he was fishing (and where me and Phil had thought about going before opting for Seaford), it was relatively clear and that they were doing well with the bass. After that news, I reckon my language would have made even Kevin Wilson cringe.
Another Pal, Richard stopped by and said that he’d been fishing up by the Martello and had found the conditions to be just as bad and had given up. At least he’d had one fish but unfortunately, it had only been an eel.
Anyway, we persevered but it was all in vain with it being just about unfishable. Phil packed up at about half past midnight, whereas I thought about a few more casts. As we were chatting, I saw a good pull and bounce type of bite and unbelievably, I had a fish on! Alas, this was only for a few seconds and then it was gone before I could get it through the waves. Balls! – probably my one and only take of the night and it resulted in no fish.
Phil headed off home and I decided on ‘one last cast’, as I usually do but only lasted until about 1.30 before giving it all up as a bad deal and nightmare.