Fishing Report: 22nd October 07 - Bateman's Tower, Brightlingsea

With 90 Lugworm left over from last Saturday nights session sitting in the bait fridge I decided to have a short evening session at Bateman's Tower. High tide was at 10pm and with work the next morning it was only ever going to be a quick few hours, but it did at least get me out from in front of the telly and give me a good excuse to knock off work early.

It had been raining during the day but just as the beeb had forecast the cloud had started to break and the moon was showing it's face as I arrived at about 6:30pm. Although it was a bit early to fish because of the risk of snagging on the wooden breakwater at the base of the tower, I was keen not to waste any time and got my baits in the water within 15 minutes as I was hoping that there would be a fair few Whiting in the river shoaling up early on in the tide keen to get after the shrimp that gather in the light around the Tower. Normally I don't waste Lugworm on this type of session and would simply have bought along some Mackerel to cash in on the Whiting's normal autumn pre-occupation with fish baits but as I wanted to use up the Lugworm and I had limited time there seemed little point.

I was hopeful that there would be plenty of Whiting around and to be fair there was; unfortunately they all seemed to be about 4 inches long! As soon as my baits hit the water the rod tops were knocking to the attentions of very small fish or crabs. The first cast on each rod resulted in a Micro-Whiting on each rig and that is pretty much how it carried on for the rest of the night with only an undersized Bass and a small Rockling to break the monotony. The only strong bite of the night came about two hours before high tide and resulted in a seriously slimed rig so clearly the Eels have not yet completely disappeared. Luckily the 2/0 hook I was using prevented me having to deal with the slippery little bugger.

I eventually ran out of bait at about 10:30pm and packed up. Although the fishing was not a patch on the previous session at St Osyth I had been kept busy all through the flood and had lost count of the tiny Whiting I had caught. What was also nice is that not a one had been deep-hooked and so all had swam off strongly when put back; all too often, this kind of session turns into one of watching dead fish drifting away on the tide, which is not my cup of tea at all.

One final point to note is that the summer weed has yet to disappear completely and the leads came back coated in slimy tufts of weed on every retrieve. In fact, I would say that it doesn't seem to have dispersed at all since my last session on the Tower on 28th September which may cause problems on the next set of big tides or immediately after a good southerly blow; definitely one to miss as it will make fishing in the river a complete nightmare!