So, as we hit the last day of march I find myself thinking where did the last 3 months go ! It seems that Christmas was only 2-3 weeks ago and yet we are about to hit April and a late Easter this year !

So whats been going on down here in Brighton.? well, night temps still feel nearer like its still winter but the mornings are getting warmer and the sun is finally making things feel very spring like. Air temps are up and believe it or not, I know of one due that managed to get himself a bit of sun burn from being in his garden all day topless ! go figure!

I took the quad out again yesterday after sorting out my new fish tank and getting water into it to cycle, tbh couldn’t resist it and once down on the east I instantly regretted not taking the rod with me ! while down there I stopped and had a chat with one or two regulars including Roy who was doing a bit of fishing and also scraping off some of the algae on bay 25 using what looked very similar to a flat head garden hoe and stiff broom (until the broom head broke)
Now for anyone that has ever used a deck scrubber on concrete they will know its bloody hard work so credit to Roy for helping Mark shift some of the algae as not only is it back busting but it takes very little water on those sections to turn them into near ice rinks.
after a chat with Roy I had a short chat with Mark who confirmed what a couple of others had told me that Sat & Sun there was a complete lack of herring, not assumed it was a little too choppy and coloured water didnt help.
Regarding water quality, Id say its not actually that bad. Over all it resembles a sort of emerald green with not much depth visibility. Id say it was probably a bit better further out for the boat anglers.

Now, you may have noticed the pattern of how I type today, If I waffle the catch report sorta lacks fish & if the fishings decent I’m straight at it with the round up so, you may have figured that its not been that great. Well, Yes & no. For some, the fishing has ticked over quite nicely, Roy managed to get himself a mixed bag of Plaice, half a dozen dogfish, whiting, eel, a couple of schoolie bass(yes returned & a bit more on bass shortly)while most struggled Roy was ticking over nicely.
Further down the wall things were soewhat slower for most although there were more eels, dogfish and at least one “in size” bass that was returned. While chatting to the bass catcher I did mention how nice it was to hear of, how to put this politely,
erm a non English, white East European
yooouuuu knowwwwwwww, a fekin angler, yes they are all anglers. I dont give a rat if someone grey , green yellow or from outer space, if they have a rod in their hands they are anglers … that simple.
Any hoo, no offence meant to anyone here but the dudes fellow anglers often get tagged as keeping every fish they catch so it was nice to be told by this fellow (who has fished the marina a fair bit) that bass atm have to be returned even if it was keeper size and he wished it was April already as it would defo have been had for his tea. !

As a warden it is always nice to see anglers that, not only follow the rules, but have an interest in sensible sizes of fish and does his best to show this to other anglers also.
SAD NEWS
While chatting with Roy I also learnt of one of the wall regulars passing. Im told that VERNON who was a regular with the Palace Pier club has died in the last week. Ive no Idea if his wife reads this but if anyone reading this knew Vernon and Viv please pass on my condolences to Vic and the family. I believe his funeral is this week and think the venue is at WOODVALE but not 100% sure although most pier members would have that info.

Right, whats the weather doing this week ?< well, we have it seems a week of easterlies of which TUESDAY looks a bit gnarley with the wind speeds estimated on xcweather.com as picking up to near 20mph with gusts of maybe 30mph. high tide tues is 14.50 and things could be a bit iffy if the wind estimates are true, if it is the case its possible that mark would have to shut the wall if he doesnt decide today to shut anyway.
If you plan to fish TUES please check in tues day b4 you travel and no one likes a wasted journey.
for the rest of the week It looks like we will have a fairly sunny week and potential temps reaching 16 degrees on a couple of the days and no planed shut downs.

East wall still atm bays 1-24 and west remains closed
Thats it from me today so, as per, I will bid you all ADIEU
F

Morning world(as I type) things somewhat sluggish and very variable at the moment. The first recorded squid of the year poked their noses out of the water Tues & Wed although none were caught yesterday & not heard of any this morning.

I took “GRUMPY1” down onto the east for a mooch yesterday, the sun was out & lovely and warm, it actually felt like a decent spring day with decent water colour a sort of shiny green and probably the cleanest Ive seen this year I had expected to see a few more out making the most of the sun but there was only a few on the wall fishing. I guess a few had given up and headed home as the general story was that people caught some herring over/around the high water & that was fairly much it bar an occasional dogfish to bother the baits.

Yesterday also delivered some sad news with NICK the warden announcing that his dog “ELLIE” had died during the night at the age of 13, she was a regular sight on the west for many and such a good natured dog & I for one will miss seeing her on the wall this year. 🙁

After leaving the east I took the wheels into the marina as maidenhead aquatics shop had rung me to say my new fish tank was ready for pick up & no it wont be used as a live bait store :), once cycled it will be to split off some of the Bristle nose plecos I have.
With letting nature do its own thing some of the babies in my main tank fall prey to the larger fish and self turn into fishfood but it seems that a few have managed too avoid that fate and as a result I had a genuine excuse too convince my wife I needed an extra tank 🙂 (Yes im already planning on a 3rd one but it may take some convincing !)

Anyhoo, I just managed to make it home (fish tank in the foot area of my scooter) when I noticed that there was a layer of fog coming down . Turned out that the fog was also responsible for the days temperatures dropping like a stone and most on the wall called it a day early resulting in nothing else to report from yesterday.. and thats why im filling the page with waffle!

Today a quick chat will mark told me that things were quiet on the wall unless you fancied having a go for dogfish ! oh joy of joys!
Finally for today I had a word or 2 with Mark about the squid comp being as 3 were caught this week so no doubt would be on peoples minds if there would be a comp this yea, especially with the current state of wall openings.

The last 2 years that “spring run” hasn’t happened or its been so little people barely noticed any Personally I suspect they are linked in with the early April run of mackerel that happen if the water state is reasonable and lasts for about 10 day pre may bloom set in. Neither occurred inshore as said for the last 2 years . Thus logic & common sense came to the conclusion of aiming the squid comp this year in the AUTUMN especially as we still have issues with water supply on the wall to get it jet washed.

With regards to space on the wall it is planned to open higher untreated sections of the wall providing there is no threat of rain nor risk of water splashing up over the untreated bay and there are numbers there to justify the opening. needless to say I cant really post here if or when those extra bays are likely to be open simply because I don’t have a crystal ball to tell me when the numbers coincide with decent dry conditions to safely open further sections. Obviously if we can get untreated bays open the angler foot fall would hugely help knock the algae back.

So to round up & confirm

SQUID COMP 2025 will be in the AUTUMN

and with that last note I will bid you all ADIEU
F

So, we have our 1st recorded squid catch of the year on the east wall today, Mark posted to the FB group and caught by curtis

As well as the squid it has been reported that there were plenty of herring caught this morning. Along the beaches plaice catch numbers are improved on last week but im told most of the sizes are barely keepers. If you like skinny plaice barely in size I guess you will have a few to take home but in all honesty they would be better returning to grow out somewhat.

Plenty of whiting still about and a few strap congers in amongst the catches in somewhat cloudy waters.
And that,… as they say is a wrap so I will bid you all as usual ADIEU
F

….UP.
I was going to post yesterday but tbh either I forgot(again) or time simply got away from me. Thus, today is the day I guess!
The last 2-3 days have all in all been a bit quieter than I was hearing on Thursday when I previously trundled along the wall. I again popped down yesterday and caught up with a couple of people, one a regular down again with his 2 lads fishing on 24 ( sorry Im crap remembering names but you know who you are 🙂 ) who not only told me he had been checking up on the blog (nice to know) and was fairly much on his 1st time out fishing with the lads. He informed me that things too him were fairly quiet and they had only had 3 mutts and a whiting, now, if that is quiet i’m typing this all wrong as most this week would have considered the day “not bad” especially as it wasnt quite noon and the tide was only 30 mins past the low mark with half the day still to go.

Nice also to see Nick the warden with his GF and dog “Ellie”. Had a chuckle as his GF walked away with the dog because she saw me stop n chat with NICK and the dog promptly decided she wasnt leaving an parked her rear on the wall not budging, end result the GF joined Nick and fished as well !
To fully round up the water remains coloured although I was told by one of the commercial anglers that water temps have risen and are now almost 10 degrees which is more like the normal for this time of year. Hopefully April brings us some nice sunny & warmer days so everyone can get out, chill out and brush the cobwebs of the fishing gear.

Catch wise this week it started with whiting and plagues of dogfish, tues wed were prob best for the plaice & Fri/Sat slowed up a fair bit the have been herring most days this week and most were saying they are/were very close to the bottom, the bulk of which have been caught in the half hour b4 & after the high water. I guess they were feeding deep due to the poor clarity but yup, it may be a guess. In amongst the herring has also been the occasional mackerel, no doubt lost its way or too daft not to realise its shoal mates were not thee same as it was!

Next week is looking milder with a bit of a stir up potentially next weekend but that is still a few days away and could al change by then.
Well thats it for today so I will bid you all… as usual, ADIEU
F

as it says, yesterday I took the “quad” down into the marina, part to do a bit of shopping but also to mooch along the wall & say hi to a m8 fishing down there. Yes it had BEEN A WHILE SINCE I had been down and said hi to anyone fishing !…
So whats going on you may wonder?

First off I stopped above My m8 Colin and chucked a few dog biccys at him to get his attention. Nope he didnt even notice so had to shout at the deaf old bugger to get him to notice me. Was good to see him especially as he had been quite seriously ill through the winter & he seemed back to his cheery self I’m please to say.

Having spoken to him earlier about trying for herring 30 mins b4 the high he was well prepared and while lower on the bend he did manage to catch some about 10 mins b4 the high but they were mostly hard work and the bulk I saw caught yesterday were deep and probably feeding off the sandy patches. Further along the wall I found Joe (aka Tony) trying and catching herring on bay 24.

Now some wonder why I call him Joe (ex night warden) , well surprisingly his name is JOE shocker eh. so how come many call him Tony ? & yes he answers to both ! well that was Dave Grinhams fault. Joes dad WAS called TONY, and for ease Dave called them both Tony, so when JOE’s dad passed he simply carried on calling him Tony. Joe simply couldn’t be arsed to correct him after his dads loss and so the name stuck in Dave’s head. The result, when Joe started on the wall dave introduced him to everyone as Tony , so if you see Joe, he will answer to being called Tony 🙂

Ok, now I should get back to the fish having slanted off in a different direction. Somewhere in between Colin and Tony up on 24 was another familiar face who had been fishing and about to pack up so a quick chat with my mullet informant told me he had tried this week but informed be as I had suspected that while there are mullet in the marina (warmer water) they were not or seemingly not venturing out onto “usual” spots yet and as in his words, “if you don’t try you wont know.”

The herring arrived about 25 mins b4 yesterdays high at 2.55pm and some were caught upto about 20 mins after the tide as low as bay 12. only a few plaice were seen yesterday and the plagues of dogfish must have been hunting food elsewhere as things were quite slow yesterday.
Conditions of water atm are quite cloudy and little to no water visibility, fortunately there was plenty of spring sunshine so most were able to easily keep warm. Irony is todays forecast yesterday shown just an hour or 2 of sun shining and overcast the rest of the day…. how wrong has that proved as today seems the warmest so far this year, little to no wind and bright sunshine so far most of the day.


We still only have 24 bays to use, Im told the issues with the water have reached frustrating levels for Mark who wants to get more of the walls open and now he has been told there will be delays to getting the work on the west started. East water supply is still to be resolved and the result is he has all but come to a frustrating crashing halt .
Ho hum , plan c I guess
Well, thats it for today, so I bid you all ADIEU
F

Yup, the first answer is as you see when you thing to ask what is open to fish atm on the Marina. The west is shut and will stay so until July and as I understand it we still have issues with water supply that is hampering jet washing.

Usually by this time of year much of it would be done or at least what was left to do wouldn’t be too much of an issue but, with these cold temps the algae on the walls is retaining moisture and is a serious slip hazard. Please bear with us, it will get done asap although not as fast as most including the wardens would like.

On the fishing front catches are dominated still by dogfish that some are convinced are out there in huge packs hunting down food and anglers baits en mass. As usual for this time of year now there are plaice to be had, no great numbers but enough to keep people interested while we are stuck with some very cold air temperatures that at times feel more like mid January rather than mid March ! defo too cold for my liking out there, Im finding as I get older id rather have my feet up indoors in much warmer temperatures!

There are still whiting out there while the water stays coloured and some reasonable numbers of herring to be had usually over the high tided. be warned though, sometimes as soon as they seem “IN” they are gone again and the window for catching can be as long as 50 mins or as short as 5, blink and they have been missed so to speak. Bass are about for those that know how to ferret them out and im hearing a few strap congers are about.

Catch reports are still a bit thin on the ground, not too many fishing the reduced number of bays on the wall and the cold temps putting quite a few people off venturing out too long.

Not a massive amount of info to work with so until next time I will bid you all ADIEU
F

10th MARCH 2025

We are still having issues with water supply that is delaying much of the jet washing, a couple of possible solutions have been tried and found way too expensive to continue with so we are currently back to waiting on the marina to resolve the water issue.

That said, some of the wall has been sorted on the lower level with the upper level ready to fully open.
Barriers have been placed over the “Vs” that have not been repaired and we will be able to do a

ROLLING OPENING

FROM TOMORROW Tues 10/03/2025
The east wall BAYS 1-20 ONLY will be open to anglers from 7.30am and close at 5pm so please start packing in time to clear the wall for 5pm

NEXT week the EAST will open mon -fri at 8am til 5pm, weekend opening time tba

ALL OPEN days are subject to weather conditions

As repairs are finished and needed jet washing is completed further bays will be made available in a rolling opening.

PLEASE NOTE, THE WEST WILL REMAIN CCLOSED UNTIL AT LEAST THE END OF JULY

I have checked with mark on current state of wall issues and repairs ect and can now give an update of sorts being as there are now a few enquiries and a decent spell of weather. so first up is the
WEST WALL (to remain closed)
As it says, the west wall will for now remain closed.
Some may already be aware already that the marina plan to continue with caisson filling to strengthen both walls. For the west this work is expected to start in March and obviously subject to weather conditions allowing the work to progress. During this work the wall will be classed as a building site and will be closed to all on both levels.
Due to the work starting so soon it is pointless jet washing, time to do it, staffing ect makes it somewhat pointless. Granted the algae this year is not such a serious problem but any moisture /frost/rain ect makes that algae like an ice rink.
The repair work is expected to last until the end of July but needless to say is subject to weather conditions being suitable to do the work which will require a dive boat stationed off the wall.
EAST WALL
currently closed, jet washing was planned to start a few weeks ago but the pipe work and water lines to be used have been condemned by Southern Water as a major Legionnaires disease risk. The current set up has been a spur line from the cafe water supply that ran 3/4 the length of the wall. Unfortunately this was a single one way line that left standing water in the water line and has been condemned as unsafe .
The result of this means that the marina has to put in suitable pipe work with a return flow so there is no standing water in the supply line. This is in hand and being worked on by the marina but it has meant that Mark has been unable to start any jet washing on the EAST WALL until the supply is resolved.

As well as the water supply issues there has been lots of concrete debris to remove from storm damaged areas of the EAST and I’m told that has now been completed.
POSTS & WIRES on the east are still being repaired and replaced as needed and is taking a bit longer than expected due to the high number of posts that need replacing and some smaller levels of damage to where the wires fix to the wall that have been damaged or smashed away. As a result extra wiring and red posts were needed above what is kept in the marina stores.

SO WHERE does that leave us with regards to opening the east to anglers…….

Mark is working on something and has a plan of action, if the weather holds he will be starting work on the EAST lower levels very soon. He is targeting March but obviously having the right equipment in place makes things progress quicker than has happened this year.
The work on the wires and posts should be soon finished and there are some minor hole repairs to sort on the upper walkways. While that continues Mark will deal with the excess algae issue and as mentioned he is hoping to have the EAST OPEN somewhen in MARCH.
Yes March is the aim, no we cant say when in March as we are still restricted in repair gear and water issues. so will it be early or late March ? hard to say but if the weather holds the plan is to have the wall open in MARCH (somewhen)

While the west is closed there will not be any night fishing as things stand. The east once open will open on a daylight only basis.
While we all realise people want to get onto the walls to fish for the early plaice the deciding factor is safety insurances, so, please be patient, we are very nearly there.
F

Is the 1st actual post with info for this year. being the case I should really start with happy new year and welcome back, not that there is much to come back too as yet.

So…, where do things stand this year. ?
mark is now back from his hollibobs and the 1st update of the year is as follows

EAST WALL , currently closed.
The is some work happening on the EAST in the way of smaller repairs such as re-wiring of th red posts and I hope also replacing of damaged and lost posts. Higher end there are some concrete repairs going on and although a new wall check by mark has not been done yet there is quite a lot of heavy damage that needs sorting on the bays just above bay 10.
Jet washing on the east.
It seems that there has developed an issue with the water supply on the east side of the marina. It may be a single inflow & involve any branch off said pipe it maybe more but don’t have details. The upshot is that there currently is no water supply to the taps we have access too so that the jet washing can begin. we are ready to start the jet washing on the east but atm lack water so a start has been delayed.

WEST WALL, fairly decent news in that the algae this year is not as heavy as in past years but it is known that there will be some major works carried out this year by marina developments. Mark as yet does not have any start date for thes works and once they begin there will be no access to the west for angler for the duration of the work.

For the above reason Jet washing has not begun and wont start until the development work dates are known. It is pointless Mark starting to knock his arse off jet washing if the west will get closed too all within a week or even a month. The extra work preparing the west VS the few that would get to use the wall before it is again closed is minimal and not financially viable.

Needless to say, as soon as Mark can provide me with the relevant info it will get posted here and onto facebook.

Im informed that Shop hrs are currently 7am to 12pm daily

Well here we are again although I will resist typing out the lyrics to the Queen song! Anyone would think that lack of posts means that its November and nothing going on out on the fishy front ! not quite so, more a gap in posts due to a few health issues and away from my keyboard for a few days. so, wtf is going on out there ?

Lets start with the obvious to a few of you but maybe not all.
Simply put , SQUID, squid , squid and more squid. It is quite extraordinary, high pressure, the gulf stream where is should be and unusually clear non autumn winds have created perfect conditions for the squid to come inshore as do what they do best but there is more.

I have been on or around the marina almost daily for 25 or so years and never ever seen the quite extraordinary numbers of squid in Sussex waters and especially around the marina region, boat crews , owners & users like shore anglers are all saying how they have never seen the likes, the sheer numbers are honestly stupendous.
Standard squid times for the marina tend to be 2 clear “runs”, the first in spring often arrive at the same time as a run of mackerel that I believe come up from the bay of biscay and if the weather hold will be around the marina for about 10 days usually mid April, Im guessing the squid follow them in on the food building energy so as to get giggy giggy with it, the squid run can be anytime in April feeding into May. The second run is usually in October and if the weather holds will feed into November, these squid are larger than the spring species (na cant recal the species names).
Its quite noticeable (normally) that the optimum time to catch the spring squid is during daylight and very few seem to be caught after dark. The revers is the norm for the autumn run in that the best time to catch is at night although they can be caught during the day.
This year ? well wow. numbers have exploded as the weeks ticked on and we have had squid since mid september this year, mostly at night but as the weeks ticked over the numbers not only slowly increase but the day catches also increased. As I type we now have had 2 weeks+ of huge catches. Some anglers have been catching 50-70, 50 is not atm an unusual number for the dedicated. Charter boat Likewise are seeing catches of stupendous numbers, one boat from the marina clocked up over 500 squid with the skipper moving on and actually stopping the squidding in favour of catching some fish. The catch numbers remained high over the weekend but, a word of warning, it looks like those “perfect storm” conditions are to change in a few days so if you havnt topped up on bait squid yet now is the time to get down age get in.

Now, at the beginning of this post I sorta hinted that there was more going on than squid ! well there is.

While there was a lull in the fishing post September I guess with water temps and weather patterns moving away from the summer cycles and bringing Autumnal conditions the fishing again like the squid has shown a little upturn, not to the levels & number of the squid but defo better than normal for November. October tends to see the changes of summer species moving out to deeper water, bream bass, wrasse & the like see an obvious slowdown as has been the case mostly but, the last couple of weeks have actually seen a bit of an upturn and a change from the standard whiting, codling if lucky dogfish and eels. Yea I said lucky !.

Now, where were these reports then you may be thinking? Well there were plenty of reports out there, just not here, time constraints, boring life stuff and occasional CBA days lead to the current gap of a couple of weeks no reports even though there has been quite a bit going on. Bass numbers may have thinned down as the better fish move off shore but is seems that some have chosen to have a late stay and there are still regular catches on the wall. yes the sizes have dropped but there are still 4-6lb fish being had on the walls and not only in darkness. This week alone on the walls there have been garfish, squid, bass, squid, red mullet, squid, gurnards, more squid, plaice, squid, 1 or 2 sole, squid, cuttle fish, did i mention squid ? herring (yes herring, no red ones though, some squid had also one of the charter boats even mention that there were still some mackerel out there.
Now that I mentioned charters I think I should add that they also are having a fantastic time out there, a few have added and adapted so that there are regular squidding trips to be had, turbot I believe are still on itinerates, pollack & cod are staples on wrecking trips. Rays are still being caught with the overall picture of November fishing being excellent.

Now if all of that lot wasnt enough you may think well , things couldnt be better ! , well yes they could and are. If you dont fancy a boat trip for fishing there is more than just sight seeing. local waters are being swamped with sealife at the moment, its quite extraordinary, we have seals getting in on the feed, dolphin pods are still here at least 2 months later than usual, Tuna shoals seem to be getting spotted all over the place and often from the beach !, not enough ? , Robin Howard got some pics of a minkie whale breaching barely a mile or so off shore. Thresher sharks and bull huss are this year common events, I think it is fair to say that Sussex waters at the moment are quite blessed.

Thus as I round todays post off you can see that the fishing for this year is not quite done but I suspect this “final surge” may not last much longer as next week there are some changes to the patterns we have recently enjoyed. If you have a day or 2 spare it may be worth getting the road trip plans in place quite sharpish.

And with that I am gonna sign off for today and wish you all happy hunting and bid you all ADIEU
F