Yet again, I hit Seaford beach yesterday, more out of a need to get on the beach than out of any great expectation, owing to the tides at the moment. Arrived during daylight to catch the 8.30pm high water, with the intention of fishing the ebb and over low water.

First snag I saw when I went over the beach, was the amount of weed in the water – tons of the stuff being held against the shoreline by the brisk South Westerly blowing but at least there was a half decent surf up. Not to be defeated, I set up a scratching rod with a size 4, two hook flapper, baited with some over-ripe lugworm and ragworm and chucked it out over the weed. Within what seemed like seconds, the weed collected on the line, dragging down into the breakers, where it collected even more. On bringing it in, I had to clear the leader knot before I could get the gear back in, where I saw there was masses of the horrible, slimy ‘spaghetti’ type weed clogging everything up. Another two casts and I admitted defeat and didn’t bother again.

Instead, I set up the bass rod with a long link running ledger, 6/0 pennel and whole squid and cast that out and tried  to get it into an area that wasn’t overly clogged up. I still had to retrieve and re-cast every few minutes and hope a fish found it before there was an excessive build up on the line and I had to drag it back in to clear it – but at least I had a bait in the water.

While participating in this fruitless exercise,  I got chatting to a guy visiting from Tonbridge, who was checking the beach out as a prelude to him returning to sea fishing after many years trouting (is that a real term)?  Turns out he is also a member of WSF and one of his associates, ‘Geordie Si’ is also known to me. It was good to meet you Keith and hope to see you down here at some time with your ugly side-kick, Si.

There was no activity what so ever and I was becoming even more disheartened (how can you become disheartened when you weren’t expecting much anyway)? Not wishing to be beaten, I continued to fish into darkness and thankfully, as the tide receded, the weed became more manageable, even though it was still a right royal pain in the ‘arris. The other fly in my rather depressed ointment was that the wind was also decreasing as the tide ebbed, which squashed the surf that had been there to start with, leaving a flat sea, with just the most feeble of wavelets at the waters edge. Now I know this is beginning to sound like a catalogue of fisherman’s excuses but there was also a very bright moon out was well – I think you can see where this is all heading, result-wise.

I stuck it out until just on low water, had packed up most of my stuff, getting ready to leave, when I went over to bring the bass rod in and saw a quick pull down – I lifted into… yeah, you guessed it, a fish.. and some weed. It didn’t feel big but at least it was a fish. I brought it out to find it was a bloody whiting that had managed to scoff a whole smallish squid. SO..blanked saved but in the manner I was hoping for.