Catch Report - Burnham-On-Sea - 28th November 2020 (0)

Date From: 28/11/2020 13:50:00

Date To: 28/11/2020 18:30:00

Time of day: Afternoon - evening

Location: Burnham-On-Sea

Mark: Lower Light

Tide Times:

Moon Phase:

Weather: Cloudy with a little bit of wind from behind to begin with but almost no wind by the end of the session. Feeling Cold

Sunrise/Sunset:

Sea: Murky with tiny waves just an inch or two high. A strong pull to begin with but slowing down after around 1 hour.

Method: Ledger (shop bought up and over rig) | Ledger (shop bought up and over rig)

Bait: Frozen peeler crab, frozen whole launce, frozen mackerel pieces, frozen whole loligo squid | Live king ragworm, frozen squid pieces

Caught:

Session and Lifetime Statistics:

The Session:

I tried Burnham-On-Sea because the weather forecast nearer home wasn't great and the wind direction up the channel was forecast to be easterly so it would be behind me. When I arrived there were already some anglers fishing and another about to set up so I walked down the slop and down to the water in almost a straight line. I was surprised at the amount of sand there compared to previous visits. It looked like a lot of mud had gone, though there were now two dips which would be behind me which I might have to look out for later on. Nearer to where the water was it was more muddy but mostly it was an inch or two deep with the occasional patch that would almost cover the top of my wader foot. Like previous times I looked out for the 'ripples' in the mud from where water had ran down it and left streaks of sand, showing that the mud along the streak was not deep at all.

The first cast with a flapper rig resulted in the 6oz weight just being dragged by the tidal pull to my left so much I just had to reel in and cast shorter and upstream. This time, at around 30 yards out it eventually settled in front of me and so when I put the bigger bait out I cast around the same distance and it settled around the same area.

With no bites in the first hour I tooook some photographs and kept looking around at the other anglers to see if any movement looked like they were landing or releaseing fish but I didn't see any. More arrived after I did and at one time it looked like there were 13 people there all fishing one or two rods each.

The tide soon crept in and once it was at the legs of my tripod I moved back 30 paces and it wasn't long before I had to do that again and again, mostly I was switching off the anti-reverse on my reels and allowing them to pay out line as I walked back with my tripod but occasionally I reeled them in first. I meant to time it so that when the water began to fill up one of the dips behind me I would rebait and recast each rod before moving behind the dip but I timed it all wrong and misjudged how far I had walked back already with each rod taking over 110 turns of the reel to get them in. I knew the water wouldn't be too deep but I moved back first anyway and once I rebaited I thought I'd wade through to the exposed sand and cast out but when I did so the solid patch of sand I found to walk across when it was dry was now allowing me to sink so I didn't want to risk it. I could just make out my weight landing the other side of the small waves that had now formed as the water began to cover the raised area. The other rod did the same and so I just left them although I wasn't entirely confident the water would be deep enough even at high tide to stand a good chance of a fish taking the larger bait. If I had someone with me I would have probably risked it but not when I was on my own.

Still I had no bites, I kept walking back and evetually ended up behind the second dip with around 40 minutes until high tide. I sat there still cheking the other anglers, using their head lights as indications of their type of movement to try to see if they were dealing with caught fish but I didn't see anything like that. Once I saw the water now moving away from me I knew high tide had passed and I gave it around an hour before deciding to pack up and check out the sea wall in the town as I intended to fish it in the near future with some others.

I chatted to an angler who was fishing from the steps in front of the wall who said he had a few small cod and whiting and while I was there he had one bite but I was more interested in finding out how far the tide would be coming in when I planned to fish it next. He told me it would be fishable from the steps entirely up to around a 12m tide but a 13 or 14 metre would see the sea hitting the wall if it wasn't calm. From other information he told me I figured we might get 5 hours fishing in a single session from the sea wall which isn't ideal and with nowhere near I know we could move to afterwards for a few hours might not prove worth the journey for a few of us unless we catch a few fish. That said it is a nice area to see and the steps looked very confortable to fish from so just the experience could be worth it for me even if I did blank.

So I learned a bit but didn't catch and I wonder if I will ever match my first Ray from here or even better it.

Tackle used (price) [ time since first used ]: