Confessions of a bass fisherman #1

This is it. This is the hotspot, so they reckon. When the, um, tide's in obviously. You won't catch many when the sea's retreated half way to Lincolnshire and there are people building sand castles on this lot. You can probably tell from this I am a seasoned sea angler.

I have been told there's a feature out here where the bass queue up when the tide's right, as in when it's in. After a pleasant but relatively feature-free walk, I decide I've had my plonker well and truly pulled by the local sea angling fraternity.

Turning for the car, I finally find it. A gully just a few yards from the high tide mark you'd miss unless you were right on top of it. I line it up with a few distinctive rocks so I can retrace my steps and get a bait in it.

Heading off to consult the tide tables, I wonder how different pike fishing would be in the tide went in and out on the waters we target them on, so we could inspect every inch of the bottom.

No lure rod..? Then best make a run, Hun

You can smell the ozone as we take the winding path down to the beach. I was going to bring a lure rod, tackled up with one of those tiny krill things you can cast miles, but I've decided to take a camera instead to capture the storm clouds massing over Mussel Bay.

The sea's almost flat calm, as we walk along the foreshore, clouds shrouding the last of the sun. A few pictures, then the thunder echoes off the cliffs as the first drops of rain fall. Time to make a run, Hun, I tell the wife.

As we turn for home, I see terns diving for whitebait a few yards off the shoreline, accompanied by the odd swirl. Bass...! Should have brought the lure rod after all, with that krill thing you can cast miles. By the time we get back to ours, 10 minutes later, it's raining so hard our road's turned into a river.