24th / 25th September

Well bad weather and a bout of decorating has put paid to any fishing for a couple of weeks, so I was pleased to be heading off down to Dorset at 5am on Saturday morning....

Now some trips just don't go as planned, I was full of confidence, with a decent forecast and good tide for the mark. I'd taken my ESG and had planned to concentrate on soft plastics. I arrived and as soon as I started fishing I started doubting what I was doing. I has a couple of pollack pretty quickly and saw someone nearby land a small bass, but this did not help me...I was just fishing badly and I knew it...I wished I'd gone somewhere else, I was swapping between hards and softs every few casts and before I knew it, time and tide had run out on me with just a couple of wrasse more to show. To top it off, as I was packing up, I took a tumble and twisted my knee aggravating an old rugby injury...I manage to do this every couple of years and the pain for a couple of minutes is excrutating. It took me a little while and a couple of fags to get myself together afterwards but it left me limping and with a knee swollen like a balloon. So after hauling myself up the cliff I drove home in pain and dispondent from making a mess of what should have been a good session.

So today, I needed to get this trip out of my system, but with rock hopping not on the cards for a couple of weeks now whilst my knee recovers, I opted for a couple of hours down at Chesil. A nice clean weed free sea was running and it looked promising, but as ever with me and Chesil looks were deceiving and I only managed one schooly on a zonk, Still I fished a lot better than yesterday and I drove home much happier and looking forward to the next session.

I've still not got a decent sized bass yet this year though, so hopefully the weather will smile for the next couple of months and I can have a productive Autumn.

Here's a couple of fish from the weekend....

A couple of trips...

I started off with a blank on Tuesday night. I went down to east Dorset with a view of plugging into the night but when I got to my mark my heart sank when I saw the colour of the water. I'd forgotton about the massive tides which had the water lapping around the edge of the Jurrasic coast cliffs and turning a nice muddy grey colour. Visibility ranged from 0 to 18' at best but there was a bit of surface activity going on so I gave it a go for an hour or so, I lost something small and had a few bumps from Gars but once it got dark I lost all confidence in fishing such coloured water so I packed up headed home.

Yesterday saw me take a gamble that the water would not yet have weeded up with the Sou'westerlies and I headed down to Chesil. Conditions were great with a lively see rolling in but still clear water and reletively weed free.

The session started well enough, I quickly had a small fish on the beach and lost another of similar size (on a chartruse Zonk), so I had high hopes for a really good session, but it didn't turn out that way and I fished on into darkness with only one more fish to show for my efforts, taken on Zonk in Crusing Blue, the last fish took right at my feet in only a couple of inches of backwash, I guess bass are used to chasing their prey right up onto the beach here. I was slightly dissappointed to only end up with two fish after sucg a promising start but still double my last trip here so I am improving!