With the fishing being so poor of late, I found myself looking back at past trips to Chesil, the beach of broken dreams.

With one specific trip comes back to mind from 2018, when sometimes plans change at a moment’s notice, a bit like this year really?

The plan was to fish Sunday 26^th August 2018 down at Chesil Beach, I had fresh Blacks ordered at Lagoon Tackle & Bait for Saturday morning, but this plan soon flew out the window when the weather forecast that would make Chesil un-fishable on Sunday. So, a mad dash down to pick up my Blacks on Friday morning and it was game-on Saturday.

Alarm went off at 3 am, up, loaded the car and hit the road, after a traffic free trip down to Ferry Bridge and a walk to the far end of the Bird Sanctuary – I was all set up for first light. Game plan was to fish one rod for the Cod and one for a Ray, armed with Blacks and Prime Peelers for the Cod on Cox & Rawle SCR29 3/0 Specimen Extras and SCR32 3/0 Chinu on a Pennell Pulley and Solent Baits unwashed dirty Squid and large Sand Eels for the Rays on an up running, up-and-over set-up with again the SCR29 Specimen Extras Pennell-style. Sea state was good with a bit of chop and some cloud cover, the only downside was the NW wind blowing straight along the beach. My fear, as the day progressed, was proved correct as whenever the tide pushed right-to-left, I struggled to get my gear back, when slack or pushing left-to-right it was fine, on the broken ground that’s out there

First casts saw bites straight away resulting in 2 strap Conger, just before the tide changed and I then started to struggle to get my gear back, resulting in 4 lost sets of gear over high water and as the tide started to ebb things conditions became easier. Then the little Bream started to attack my baits. Luckily, they soon moved off leaving my baits for the bigger fish I hoped to find.  By this time Mark from Cox & Rawle let me know he was on his way down with a fresh supply of leads. Just as the tide had turned after low water, I had a classic Cod pull on my Lug and Crab bait resulting in a 4 pounder, shortly after hitting the beach and just in time for Mark’s arrival. As we said our hello’s the rod went again, this time with another Cod of 3lb14ozs lay there on the beach in front of us. Happy days! But not for long as the Bream soon returned. Before long the tide started to push again just after 8pm and more gear lost so I decided to call it a day. Despite the Cod, sport was very slow unless you wanted to put out small baits and hooks for small fish, but the main thing was that I had now opened my Cod account for this season.