As Autumn arrives the UK shore angler prepares himself for the incoming onslaught of those little silver beasties. Those locust like fish that will decimate an entire area, eating anything in their way and causing the species hunting angler a headache as this fish smashes any bait intended for something else… Ladies and gentlemen I am of course on about the Whiting and they’re back on our local beaches swarming the seabed in vast numbers.

With the weekend fast approaching the usual messages were pinging about, where are we fishing? who is coming? etc. In the end it was just me and Ste Chambers heading out with the others being busy or fishing matches etc. The next question was where to go though, Ste suggested trying somewhere neither of us had fished before, a spot behind Havergate Island on the River Ore. This spot is off the main river, the river cuts behind Havergate at one end and then rejoins the main river at the other end, creating a deep fairly wide creek that looks very fish. We were hoping for flatfish but little did we know of the horror awaiting us as we parked up and started the walk to our spot.

We had soon found a likely looking area to fish and started setting up, I chose to fish 2 rods, both fishing light leads attached to urfes. Off one urfe I was fishing a 4 ft pop up rig and the other was a short Portuguese rig, both rigs had size 5 hooks and bait for tonight was ragworm. Flicking out the first cast it was not long before both rigs were banging away, these were not bass or flatfish bites though, these were the unmistakable signal that the sea rats were about, at this point we thought that it might only be a couple of whiting showing up… How wrong we were.

The rest of the night consisted of constant whiting, some smashing the rod round in an aggressive manner, others rattling the tip and some just slack-lining us, no matter what we put out the result was a whiting. Now do not get me wrong some of these fish were touching near 40cm so not a bad size but the tediousness of catching a whiting every 2-3 minutes soon took it’s toll with just an eel each breaking up the whiting fest. As the tide slackened off we were soon starting to get bored of this action and as the tide started to flow the other way on the ebb we decided to call it a night and head home.

With these whiting hordes everywhere now the live-bait rigs are going to have to be prepped for the next trip, the sea must be thick with these little silver beasties and the only way to beat them is to use them, hopefully they thin out before the dabs turn up and give us a chance at some decent flatty bashing this winter.