Brighton Inshore Fishing - Catch report 16th June 2025

First sailing, and accompanying me was a NW wind, which creates a long roll on our patch, plus Richard, David, Loz and Curtis. All regulars, so the roll was not an issue, and dropped with the wind anyhow. Although the wind dropped much earlier than forecast, swung to the SW much earlier than forecast, and picked up enough that 3rd sailing was cancelled. Annoying. It isnt the safety, but without the right conditions, the only fishing available is vertical jigging, and how boring is 3 hours of lift / drop / lift / drop. Plus factor in the shallow water and the rocks and the efficiency of the technique is also called into question. I need to cast. Touch luring is fun...

With such BIF1 experienced rods on board, I knew we would be in for a reasonable tally if I could just find the fish. It did take a little while but then, bang, there they were. To be fair, a thousand seagulls found them first, and it was their excitement that led us to them. But, the curse of the bigger shoals of bait is they tend to have the smallest bass with them. Deffo the case this morning.

Indeed, we were into the last hour before the food started being caught (other than mackerel, which were plentiful this morning). But once we found a food sized shoal, 8 fish were despatched pretty quickly. Which bought us to the total of 29 bass landed, max kill, and mackerel supporting act. A pretty good session really.

2nd sailing, and it was my pleasure to welcome aboard a lovely couple on holiday from their home in Hong Kong. Faith and James. James was an experienced angler, Faith much less so, but with a passion for knowledge. I enjoy having clients from Hong Kong aboard, as their expectations are not big. The fishing out there has been screwed for a long time now. Long waits for bites from small fish. I knew action would be relished, so I split the session 50/50 plaice, then bass.

Plaicing was good. Lots of action. A lot of small fish but still 8 good ones for the table, plus a bonus cuttlefish. And a smooth hound pup Bassing much harder. It was as I attempted to demonstrate our main casting technique that I realised just how much the wind had increased. It wasnt possible to stay tight to the cast lure, which just left us the less effective method of vertical jigging. This is when I decided to cancel the 3rd sailing. Vertical jigging isnt a great way to catch fish in shallow water compared to casting. But conditions exceeded what we need for casting so, we cracked on. 2 small bass to my rod. A further cuttle to James, and issed takes for all. And yet, I think they were quite blown away by "so much" action.