Waking up at 7am I opened my eyes  to be greeted by my 2 little monsters barging into the bedroom armed with cards and goodies along with a shout of “Happy Birthday Dad”, what an amazing way to be woken up on your birthday and along with the 12 year old single malt my partner got me it was already shaping up to be a lovely day.

Our plan for the day was we were going to venture to the beach and lap up the sun as a family, of course with it being my birthday I had to take a rod with me to fling out whilst we were enjoying the sunshine. I suggested a beach which I knew would not be too crowded, one that is a bit of a hidden gem on the Suffolk coastline and that beach was Covehithe.

 

We arrived and made our way to the beach and we were greeted by an empty sandy venue, brilliant, perfect for a day of sunbathing fossil hunting and just general relaxing. Of course as soon as we found our spot the rod was out and I was setting up, I chose the Vertix Eclipse rod paired with the reel from the same stable for today. This rod is a dream to use when using superlight tactics and as it was bright sunshine paired with clearing water superlight was exactly what I was doing. I was fishing a Pro Rigs Urfe bar, plain lead and a 6lb fluorocarbon 2 hook flowing Portuguese rig, on the business end of this was size 6 Jinza Chinu hooks with squid tentacles for bait coated in Pro Rigs Sea Slime Ragworm additive.

First cast went out and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting much to happen, a couple of hours passed with only a few slight indications that may have been fish nudging the hooks. Me and the kids were sifting through the sand at the bottom of one of the cliffs looking for sharks teeth when I turned round to see my rod violently smashing over in the sand spike. I scrambled down and ran to the rod which was still banging over, picking it up I held on feeling for another bite, I didn’t have to worry though.

The rod was soon pulling round in my hand and it was fish on, to be honest I was still surprised that I hooked into something that was actually giving me a fight in these conditions, I was expecting if anything it would be only be tiny schoolies  finding my baits. This fish was actually pulling my string though and the way it was fighting I knew exactly what had ensnared itself and a nice little bass was soon sliding out of the water and laying on the beach in front of me. After a couple of pictures we all watched as the fish kicked its tail and then shot off back out into the blue.

That was it for the day, no more fish but to just catch something on a boiling hot sunny day at the beach with the family was more than enough for me. I reckon a return to this beach at night is definitely needed though as I have an inkling the soles will be in and feeding very very soon.