First sailing, and Sam was back, for the first sailing of his birthday celebration, with the 1500 also booked to him. First sailing he bought along Joss, Hugh and Carl, but would be exchanging for fresh friends later.
Out onto mirror calm seas. And in close, to instant top water action. Which rather set the theme for the day. Up until the last hour we were able to stay with surface stuff. Only with the new tide did we suddenly find the need to go deeper. Plenty of excitement and lots landed, although just three were table sized. Biggest of the day went to Sam, although no picture because he went for a lift and it flipped off. Nothing huge, around 4lb. And two table fish. both for Hugh.
Second sailing,. and it was my pleasure to welcome aboard Brian and his wife Dianne, and daughter Jennifer, plus boyfriend (I think) Tom. They were signed up for the excellent Bait to Plate experience, with Fins & Forks (Fins & Forks - Experience Days, Fishing, Food in Sussex finsandforks.co.uk ) which is where you jump aboard, and catch the fish, that you are then shown how to prepare, and cook to excellent standards.
Chef Mike had requested bream, bass, plaice and cuttle. I felt cuttle were unlikely, as the big breeders seem to mostly not be here anymore. But the others were viable. We started with the plaice, where we caught plenty but finding table sized ones was tough. We ended up with four, which was the target, and while we still had some tide, I then switched over to the bream. These are all being caught on Isomes, but the technique is very different for both. The bream were also feeding well, and yet, we had the same problem of finding table fish. We managed three, and Jennifer managed another plaice on the bream gear, before the tide died, and it was onto bass. One irony, a big cuttle fish followed up a hooked bream... Grrr....
Sadly, the bass were not playing. I tried deep, and shallow, and ran around as much as I could in that last hour, but the bass part was a fail. As was the third sailing. A huge (and forecast for hours later) NE wind arrived. I did put out to see if there was any lee under the cliffs, but the downdraft was finding BIF1, and sending her way too fast offshore. Session abandoned, as are all sailings tomorrow, and many during the week by the looks of the forecast.
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