Thought I’d give you an update as weather had kept me away from the boat for two months, well away from fishing anyway.

The sight of a flat calm forecast, the first when I was free to go fishing for a couple of months so Roland and I set out in the morning, not too early as it was a Sunday after the Saturday night.

First stop mackerel, no gulls working to help so went to Dean Tail – few Scad there, then off to the nab, nothing there so not a good start. Went out to a hole south of the nab. One thorny about 8lb and a few doggers later and we decided to move at slack tide to a nearby wreck.

We had by now picked up a couple of mackerel but the first surprise was a 12lb Bull Huss on a whole small Scad, then a few more dogs and some pouting along with some large mackerel. A re-anchor as the tide turned and a very large mackerel came on board from a bottom hook, approaching 2lb, but nothing exciting – oh and more dogs. A move to East Nab as the tide grew but nothing there (well dogs of course) so went towards Selsey, between East Nab and the Medmerry.

Action started quicker here – a flapper gave a resounding bite and line screamed off the real – ahh tope of course, well no actually, a Smoothhound about 14lb. Then another 7lb Thorny followed and a further 3 smoothhounds, this time on more conventional hardback crab.

We’d kept the feathers over and occasionally a small shoal would come through and we’d freshen up the bait stocks. We weren’t exactly wiping them out but came back with some 30 fish for table and future baits.

Nothing exciting but a range of fish, the last couple of hours topping off the day and making it reasonable with good sport on light tackle up-tiding with crab for the smoothies.