Fishing Report: 23rd September 07 - Bateman's Tower, Brightlingsea

I met up with Stuart and an acquaintance of his, Sugar, at about 7:30pm for an evening on Bateman's Tower. The weather had a distinct autumnal feel to it (unlike last night at St Osyth) and there was a fairly stiff breeze coming in from the south as we spread out around the Tower and started to set up our gear with me, as usual, hoping for a Bass or two.

We hadn't been there long when, as I was about to make my first cast, the juvenile hordes descended and proceeded to destroy the peace. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for encouraging junior anglers but this crowd had to be seen to be believed. In actual fact, it soon transpired there was actually only three anglers amongst the crowd, the other dozen or so individuals were there as spectators, and to carry the seemingly endless array of lights, car batteries and assorted luggage that suddenly seemed to appear between myself and Sugar.

To cut a long story short, rather than splitting up to utilise the available space, the three with rods decided they would squash in between myself and Sugar (despite them already having to all get out of the way so I could cast) and at that point I decided enough was enough and pointed out the lack of space. After a short discussion amongst themselves the whole lot headed off to another spot, looking like a team of Sherpas setting off on an expedition to tackle Everest.

With peace and quiet restored we set about trying to catch some fish but it was hard going and they weren't exactly giving themselves up. Stuart managed a Schoolie early on to Ragworm at range but failed to connect with anything else for the remainder of the night. Sugar did a little better and managed two small Bass to the same bait fished at medium range to the right of the Tower. As for me, it was all getting a little embarrassing really. As we began to think about packing up at 12:30am I had yet to get a bite, let alone a fish and my excuses of "holding out for a decent one" were starting to raise a few chuckles amongst the other two.

My honour was saved on the last cast when a textbook slack liner resulted in the biggest fish of the night, a Schoolie of about 35cm; by no means memorable, but welcome all the same!