Brighton Inshore Fishing - Catch report 15th August 2025

Of course, the one thing to do with normal life that I had to do this week, fell upon the only windless day we have seen this year pretty much. As such, I ran a 1030, 1400 and 1730 sailing, although in part I was interested to see what a session into dusk may bring during these bright, hot days. First up, Paul, Andrew, Jeffrey and Nick.

I had a good idea what I wanted to do. With the session being from low up, I wanted to play in some offshore shallow bits. There are lumps to within 5 feet of the surface in places along our reefs, even a good way from the beach in some spots. And when fish are hunting in these cracks, a surface lure worked across the top of them can produce the goods. And it did. Except as the fish went rocketing out of their cracks, the sun caught them hard, and they all missed. Quite a few attacks, all failed, and from decent fish. Reset.

I was quite thrown by this as I really was thinking it would go. Had there been grey, it would have been different but as it was, time for a hunt. Finally finding some fish, with table fish among, in some deeper water to save the bbq ambitions of my crew. Indeed, a max kills of 8 from 14 landed, which for a 2nd sailing, wasnt too bad.

Next up, my beautiful if rather whale like with 8 months of daughter formed inside her, friend Yulia, plus her fella Nikita, and Yulias brother Vadik, and father Dimitry. Vadik I met last year, but Nikita and Dimitry are new to me. Not such a serious fishing trip, although I could see Dimi clearly had a lot of rod hours in his past, and it was no surprise that with hard fishing, we finished with one fish apiece. Yulia and Nikita were there for the sun, and a little swim. Vadik was a little unlucky. But there will be more opportunities I am sure.

The sunset sailing I had along with me regulars Andy and Tom, and new to BIF1, and passed to me from a commercial rod and line bass fisherman friend I have, Simon and his lad Mathew. Grown up lad. Both with rod skills, it was very quick to get them doing the things we do on BIF1. With rods. And latex. A couple of misses and false starts, but heading to a regular bit we were welcomed by a carpet of seagulls right around the spot. So, we got into it.

Surface lures (even in the 30 feet of water) and shads worked all through the water column saw a steady procession of fish coming in. 20 landed. Only 2 were taking so 4 killed plus a couple of mackerel. No beasts, the biggest fish likely Simons, around the 4lb mark.