Food for thought

Looking across the water in Chichester harbour in April this year you may well have been fooled for thinking it was July – sleeves rolled up, clients meeting me on the jetty at the required time and water temps already topping 14 degrees, which is 4 degrees higher than the average at this time of year, the future looked rosy and April did in all fairness offer up early season sport with 60 Bass getting chalked up over the course of the month which will be a valuable contribution to the overall season’s total. May on the other hand has been a howler with average wind speeds over 25 knots and ambient temperatures feeling like you were back in March. If ever a month was to test the double hauling skills of those who managed to access the foreshore, May was it, but the Bass are in and the rewards even sweeter to those flyers who found the familiar pull of a bass on their 8 weight.

Looking ahead from late May 2007 I wonder what is in store, one thing is for certain and that is it will be interesting for a number of reasons: firstly the unseasonably mild winter should have bode well for Dicentrachus Labrax and you would think that this will offer up great fly fishing opportunities within our shallow foreshores similar maybe to 2005 which saw over 2500 bass getting fooled by the rainbow coloured clouser. However it may be worth remembering that what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander and other species too will have proliferated which means a good supply of Mullet and Herring fry as well as crab and shrimp.

In exactly the same way as we’ve witnessed in previous years very large Smooth hounds getting caught from deep within the foreshores of Chichester harbour due to a lack of crab being offered up on their usual hunting grounds, which in turn forces them to feed closer inshore, the exact same thing may well happen this year for Bass but in reverse. Bass migrate from their winter spawning grounds along the Atlantic shelf and move from West to East hunting as they go,following the food chain where ever it is offered up. In Sussex, we have tended to see these “Black Backs” from June onwards and they crescendo by September along the estuaries and beaches, harbours and deltas which proliferate around our coastline, often venturing into the shallows which are so easily accessed by the saltwater flyer. The question we need to ask ourselves this year is with a good supply of food on the deeper marks due to an obviously changing thermo climate, will these fish have the need to venture too close to home, their lack of presence merely reflecting the shift in a migration route which is influenced by both offshore currents and a more favorable food chain – if it is true for the Striped Bass fishery off the Eastern Seaboard which had a strangely quiet season in 2006 why could it not happen here? Food for thought maybe...

Justin Anwyl          

Saltwater fly fishing guide