It was one of those mornings. I hate mornings. I picked up the mini bus and started to load the tackle at 6.am. We were travelling from Deal to Brighton to fish an open match on the Marina. After picking up another angler at Folkestone, we headed for the M20 Motorway.
It was a sunny crisp September morning and the forecast was for light winds I thought this was ideal for the venue. Last year we fished this match in gale force winds and were restricted to the Western Arm of the marina as the larger Eastern arm was closed due to the bad weather. On this occasion I was placed 2nd with a catch of Whiting, flatfish and eels I was hoping to go one better this year and I had done some homework, I'd rung friends in the area and sought advice on tackle and tactics, as this was another new venue for both myself and my daughter, England International, Emma Davies.We were told to expect to catch Garfish and Pollack on the surface, if the water was clear with whiting and flatfish from the bottom.
The week preceding the match had seen gales in the area and I was not expecting the water to be clear enough for the Gars so my main target species was to be the bottom feeding fish and my chosen tackle was therefore standard 3 hook flapping and clipped rigs with 30cm to 50cm hook snoods with size 4 and 2 kamasan B940 hooks.
What do they say about 'All good plans' It all went to POT. As we neared the marina the sea was flat calm and driving above the marina looking out to sea I said to the others in the van " I have never seen those sand bars before. It must be a really low tide. (There were a number of very large dark patches out to sea and I was at this time convinced that they must be small islands or sand banks showing on the low water.) How wrong I was would decide the match later that day.
The book in was in the Asda car park under the road, near the Western Arm, We arrived in good time, booked in, and made a decision to fish the Larger Easter Arm. The match was a 'Rover'. This means that you may fish any where between certain boundaries and in this case we were allowed to chose whether to fish on either the large Eastern Arm or the smaller Western Arm.
I drove the mini bus across to the entrance to the East Pier. It's a long walk from the car park To the eastern arm and as there is limited parking, I dropped off the anglers at the entrance and drove back to the Asda car park to leave the bus. I parked up and walked back. Thankfully Emma and her fiancé Paul Ewbank had carried my tackle on to the pier and had chosen a spot just past the first bend facing directly out to sea. Not knowing the venue this looked as good as any. We spread our selves out giving each other plenty of room. The sea at this time was calm and was clear and we stripped off to shirts, as the weather was bright and warm with very little breeze.
I brought out my big guns; My Daiwa Tournament coupled with a Mag Elite, a clipped rig and Red Impact lead. I baited up with a combination of lug and crab baits and cast it to the horizon. Emma using her Conoflex Vixen (A prototype of the Source). Put three hooks baited with wrapped yellow tail lug out about 30 meters, and Paul using a similar rig cast out about 80 meters. We were trying to cover all options as far as distance and bait, I know we were fishing against each other, but in this type of competition you can fish together so why not try and find the fish together. I got the first bite but failed to get my tackle back as rough ground robbed me of my tackle. Emma's rod tip bounced and the line went slack. Two minutes later she pulled in a nice Plaice of about ¾ of a pound. She had cast out and found a bank of some sort. She said that when the tackle hit the water it hardly dropped at all. She then pulled the trace back and found that it dropped into some sort of a gulley about 20 meters out. That's where I put my next cast and as the sinker hit the water I noticed another splash next to where the weight entered. The garfish were there. On the next cast I cut off the top hook snood as the competition rules state that you can only use a maximum of three hooks, and I took out a sliding float rig. I cast my main rig out fishing two hooks on the bottom and then slid the float rig down my line. This rig had a 1 meter hook length of 6lb 'invisi' line, a soft fluorocarbon attached to a size 8 kamasan B983 wide gape hook baited with a small strip of mackerel. It hit the water and promptly disappeared. I thought I had put too much weight on for the float but to my surprise I had hooked a Garfish. I pulled in and unhooked but my bottom tackle caught up with the float and took quite a while to untangle. The next cast was the same with a fish immediately and the same tangle. I decided that there were more garfish to be caught that anything on the bottom and took of the main trace. I attached a Breakaway weight to my main line and cast that in. I then attached a 2-hook float rig to the line and slid it down. Again the float was only in for a matter of seconds before it disappeared under the surface. This time I left it for a couple of minutes and when I pulled in I had 2 garfish. This went on for quite some time. The garfish were on a feeding frenzy and there were hundred of them. Emma had seen what I was doing and had changed her rigs to match mine. She was also pulling in the gars two at a time. I had said earlier that I thought the water would be too coloured for the garfish. How wrong I was. However I had only taken one small mackerel as bait and this was quickly running out. A decision had to be made. I had quite a few more Gars than Emma and so we thought I had a better chance of winning the match, so Emma sacrificed one of her smaller garfish as bait. I had just cut the fish up and given her a half when I pulled in a double shot of fresh mackerel (Sods law!!) Any way this continued for the next hour or so with the fish coming in waves. I tried a free lined float set up, cast out about 20 meters and found that if I didn't get a take immediately the float was pushed into the sea wall by the tide flow. The fish seemed to be about 20 to 30 meters out so the fixed set up worked far better.
About 2pm with 2 hours of the match to go everything changed. The wind got up and when the tide turned I realised that what I had thought were sand banks were in fact massive rafts of floating weed disturbed from the seabed in the gales of the previous week. The weed swept into the pier and along from east to west. My float tackle was no match for this weed and the force of the tide and amount of weed making it impossible to cast out and keep the bait in position. In trying to maintain position the tide and weed tore off two float rigs. The last two hours of the match I was forced to try fishing straight down the wall. I tried French booms baited with King rag worm and white rag and caught wrasse after wrasse all about 20 cms long I couldn't find a sizeable one. Paul had better luck in his bay finding two both going about 26cms long.
Going back to the weigh in I was optimistic. I thought I had done as well as I could and watching the others in the match I thought I had done enough to win. However I had not reckoned with the anglers fishing on the Western arm of the pier. Here they had been able to fish for the garfish for the whole match. The water had been in the Lee of the weed and tide and they had been fishing in clear calm water for the whole match. The winner Brian Babbage, fishing the West arm had caught 6.8 kilos of garfish to my 4.5 kilos putting me into second place for the second year running. Emma won the Ladies prize and finished 4th overall, a good result for the Davies family and a great days gar fishing at Brighton.