wow Friday already and tbh , I should have posted this last night but got delayed while visiting the wall !.

popped down to chat with Joe the night warden (some know him as tony , thats daves fault, hid dads name was tony so dave kept calling Joe by his dads name and it stuck ! ) Any hooo, as was saying I popped down onto the west about 6.30-7pm , ended up having a dabble alongside Joes son in the corner by the tower. A spur of the moment thing and there were loads of small mackerel flashing past in mini shoals.

Well in amongst the undersized were a few decent sized ones that were worth taking home so tea was sorted very quickly. In amongst the mackerel? yep the schoolie bas came out to play and Seb was into them very quickly, nearly all undersized, all he had went back as none there of size but decent fun jigging to pass the time as the sun dropped.

Half way down the wall @bay 17 was a first time visitor doing well on the low catching bream. None of size but he was pleasantly surprised to be getting them on the low mid wall as about 20 metre’s out. Had a nice chat with him and explained that I hung about when he landed a bream while I was there. very please to see it returned and I explained that I wasnt being funny watching him land then return the bream and explained as a warden we do actively encourage good practice with size returns and encouraging anglers to so so. His reply was that he was an old hand, always returned undersized fish and it was his first visit to the wall having read the website (yes another reader who may be reading this)
I am very pleased to say he came prepared and even had a blue marker for the lens of his headlamp, then jokingly suggested I dont update the website often enough that prompted a chat about best months to fish and what to expect.
To that gent I will say sorry, but, I’m crap at remembering names so please drop me an email, say hi, and let me know how things went for you last night.

One down side, an Asian gent with 2 young ladies had arrived on the wall with a drop basket and 4+ buckets who started netting for spider crab. Now many regulars on the wall may think yay he is removing them spiders but. The marina is within a protected fishing zone, while It may be right at the far end of “BEACHYHEAD WEST” Marine controlled zone rules do apply when collecting crabs.

For those unaware info is on the “size regs” page on local catch sizes. Spider crabs from nose to bum need to be 12cm with a max of 20 per person per day.
The gent in question was advised of the rules and instructed to return all of the 40+ crabs he had collected, not one met the legal size.
Illegal collection of undersized species will get us into trouble not only with the
fisheries IFCA’s but also with the marina for not dealing with illegal catches and risks any night fishing on the marina.
This also brings me to the point that the local IFCA’s will prosecute offenders and as well as hefty fines court costs get added to the fine bringing the penalties into the 1000’s, not worth it IMO

As a final note some readers here also use the marina uk facebook group, to reduce the sillyness on the group I have set the group to invisible. To members already they will not really notice any change. The real change is that the group without the link is invisible in searches and invisible to non members. Thus on an admin side things should be somewhat easier to deal with all the summer applicants wanting to join.
The 3 questions to join are deliberate, it thins out the lazy and makes sure people do a little research prior to joining.
Without answering correctly the application will be declined so please, if you invite someone to the group, make sure they know of the invite as they are time limited and also make sure they know to answer the questions. Quite simple , but very effective.
Anyhoo until next time …. ADIEU
F