Not the best of weeks fish wise .no two weeks are the same or tides, fished a contest on wednesday nine hire rods off Clacton ,to say the least it was very slow,managed a few codling and whiting but all in all a disappointing day ,we also tried the deep water as the tide eased but this seemed devoid of life ,think the answer today might have been to stay in the river .

Sat 3rd fished the river up till high tide it was quite good with plenty of whiting and the odd codling although once again sizable but only just, best fish caught by Andy was a cod of 5lbs 2oz. The tide roared in but the ebb was virtually non existent .I had heard from the oyster men there are lots of pink shrimps in the water so for the ebb I tried the North shore in about 22ft .That's where we had the best fish of the day and one smaller one ,we weren't there that long so possibly the fish have moved up on the edges feeding on shrimps,

Sunday 4th tried the marks off Clacton all the local and private boats were moving about so I think it pretty obvious they were trying to connect with the elusive.we managed a few codling and whiting but nothing special,moved right in close into about 15ft of water and located a few more although once again they weren't big fish,we decided to run back up inside for the last of the flood ,another few whiting appeared and the ebb saw another couple of codling which were a slight improvement size wise than the ones we saw off Clacton.

The fishing all round seems a bit unpredictable one customer who fished Walton pier report he had 8 codling these were from the shore end but the guy who fished alongside him blanked .a couple of my other customers tried Orford the weekend but fish were very scarce there with the odd whiting and a couple of small bass The odd charter boats that have managed to locate anything worth while havent managed it on consecutive days so I recon the old should have been here yesterday phrase came into use.I am going to go for it Wednesday so if anyone is available give me a bell .I'm after sitting it out in the deep water ,I don't expect loads but hopefully what we do get should be good fish,only time will tell.see if we can find something exciting to put in next week.Only another couple of weeks to go now before the boat comes out .About 20th Dec and It will be back in buy end of Feb.,lm afraid I've done this job too long to put up with the weather and Sprats in January and February so its holiday time and maintenance time for the boat hopefully the sprats come while i#am out and the cod that every ones been targeting will have a chance to gorge themselves,they should put on a bit of weight ready for our return

Next year weekends going fast so if you haven't yet booked phone asap March,April,May we look for the codling and skate ,late May,June first 2 weeks in July its tope ,then up till Sept its hounds again.We tagged 143 tope and hounds for the UK Shark program this year with one recaptured I will try and get the final dossier on all the hounds,tope and sharks tagged when its released so you can see the extent of the program and how its evolving .cheers dave weaving

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