Fishing Report: 4th October 07 - Halfpenny Pier, Harwich

I managed to con the wife into combining an evening trip to Harwich to get chips and watch the harbour with an hours feathering off Halfpenny Pier. It was far from a serious session and was really just an experiment to see if I could catch some of the Herring I have seen swimming around the Pier on feathers. We got chips (very nice!) and then, having finished mine, I left wife and daughter to admire the lights of the harbour and headed onto the pier with my Whychwood 4lb Spod and a set of Owner Gold Rainbow Skin Sabiki feathers on size 12 hooks, hoping that the Herring I had seen on a previous trip were still there.

It was a flat calm evening and sure enough, the Herring were feeding near the surface under one of the pier lights. As I dropped the feathers down near the shoal and began working them I was getting bites almost immediately, though I seemed to continually fail to connect; judging by the general size of the fish on the surface they were just too small, mostly about 2 to 3 inches long.

After a bit of perseverance I did eventually manage to connect with one of the "tiddlers" and then promptly lost it to a small Bass of about 1lb as I lifted it to the surface. The next drop down resulted in a small Bass of about 2oz but then everything went completely quiet so I assume the Bass had spooked the Herring. After another fifteen minutes of fruitlessly trying various spots around the pier I was unceremoniously summoned back to the car for the return journey home; my time was up. Last time I was here the Herring were much bigger and though this particular session was (except for the chips) a bit of a waste of time I will be back at some point to try again.