Brighton Inshore Fishing - Catch report 21st June 2025

First sailing, and my pleasure to welcome aboard Akram, George, Anwar and Hayden. All fairly local, and all looking to pick up some confidence with lures afloat, that they can then transfer the skills to their sib. A solid, and not uncommon, plan. Seas were quite flat, and as we headed down to where I expected the fish to be, we were accompanied by three bottle nosed dolphins, that then proceeded to feed just a few hundred yards from where we had come to fish.

Usually the kiss of death, with so much baitfish around, the bass did not do the vanishing thing. Bait was easy to see in the crystal clear seas, a dark mass scooting around as if a single organism. And harrying it, bass and mackerel. Although the final tally of sixteen, with six taken for the table, seems a lot, it was a fraction of the tens of thousands of bass that the sonar marked. They remain obsessed with small

2nd sailing, and we were catering for Remus, and his lad Seth, and Johnny, and his lad Theo. A really delightful crew to have aboard, with the enthusiasm bubbling through the two youngsters. Which is why it was such a tragedy that the bass had vanished from the area. 2 hours of hunting for nothing at all. Time for plaice, as youngsters MUST catch fish. Plaice were far more obliging with a healthy tea accrued before time was called.

3rd sailing, James bought his birthday boy son along, Will, and they were joined by Lee. With the forecast deteriorating for the latter part of the day, and the original booking being by people from London, we agreed to reschedule. And in the end, that was likely a good decision as we did come in an hour early with whitecaps all around. But in that time, Neptune decided to favour the birthday boy. It was actually quite an exciting couple of hours. The bait again formed with the new flooding tide, and the bass and mackerel were once more tempted into the edges.

There are only two situations where I have seen bass jump. To escape a dolphin. And in a feeding frenzy, torpedoing up from below a bait ball and screaming through it, mouth open, with so much speed, it ends up out of the water, and usually does a very non elegant roll and a belly flop. We saw some very big fish doing this. Squaring the boat off, we all cast.

But it was Will who found the big one. 70cm of elegant silver, likely around 8.5-9lb, He played it with patience and was well rewarded. We landed 13 bass in total, with 4 killed, the big girl released. We got back early due to a very stiff burst of SE wind (as promised) but I do regret it as it did seem the wind backed off again as we came into port. And now, perhaps Wednesday morning before further floaty action due to stiff SW winds.