Growing up on the Suffolk coast I have always been interested in beach fishing, there has been many years of biking home and not being able to feel my fingers due to the cold.
I always remember going to the bait shop on a Saturday and buying scrap lugworm as I couldn’t afford fresh bait, waiting for it to start getting dark and head down to the North Beach and try my hardest to catch something.
Learning to fish
I had to teach myself how to fish from the beach. From an early age I started to enjoy fishing and with no one in my family that had this past time it was a case of reading books, watching John Wilson every Thursday night on ITV (God rest his sole, Flags at half mast) and learning by my mistakes.
Nowadays its a lot easier with all of the content on YouTube
As a teenager earning £4.50 per week on a paper round it was really quite expensive to go beach fishing due to the price of the bait and having to keep buying weight due to the hefts in the area I used to fish.
Living in Cyprus
Whilst living in Cyprus I worked as a Scuba Diving instructor and spent a lot of my spare time spearfishing for Octopi and boat fish for Tuna.
So when I relocated back to the UK in 2007 the first thing was to get myself some sea fishing gear and start fishing the winter of the Suffolk and Norfolk beaches.
The first year was brilliant loads of Cod. I was regularly filling the freezer with fish and then it started to dwindle to the point when I didn’t fish last year at all.
First Day this year on the beach fishing.
So last Saturday I was free from work my eldest has been nagging me to take him out beach fishing.
We finally got out onto the beach.
Fishing is a great way to participate in a micro adventure whether its all day, all weekend or just a few hours out walking the dog.
The weather was forecast sunny with a 10mph Easterly wind which was ok for the beach we where to fish from. We where heading to Kessingland beach.
After collecting bait, servicing gear and making a few traces up we headed to the beach around 15:00 for a 17:30 High tide. I always like to fish the tide up and down.
We arrived at the beach to find the wind slightly stronger than 10mph and looking at the sea it looked really rough.
I thought “Well we are here, we’ve got bait so lets drown some worms”. There was no chance to delay it a day as the weather was changing for the worse so we got on with it and headed North along the beach.
There was a few people beach fishing and looking at the state of the sea I didn’t think the gear would hold bottom.
Talking to someone fishing already he said he was catching Whitting and Bass so at least they where catching.
Setting was quite difficult as the wind was onshore but we got the shelter up, rods setup and started to fish.
We where getting a fish every cast mostly Pin Whitting. We managed to take home about 12 decent sized Whitting.
Jan caught a small Bass and before we knew it it was time to light the lamp and start fishing in the dark.
This fishing is my favourite. I love fishing of the beach in winter, yes its cold but as long as you have the right clothes there is something magical about winter night fishing.
Here’s the video of the session we had.
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