I'm sick of bloody work. If I'm not at work I'm working at home, the only upside is I haven't missed too much on the fishing front, though its just starting to look like there's an improvement in the offing. I'm on 12 hour days tomorrow and Tuesday then courses Wednesday and Thursday, but me and Karl have a trip in the planning stages for Thursday night before I'm back on 12 hour nights Friday.

I may have some forward scouts going tomorrow, lets hope they have a few. The forecast doesn't look great for the week with the exception of a low front coming over Thursday preceded by some stiffish southerly winds that might just stir the south of the region up a bit. I think the slight improvement in catches over the weekend has been down to the low pressure. Venues that are normally ebb beaches have fished on the flood as well, perhaps the fish have just been waiting for the right feeding conditions and now they're getting a proper feed whatever the tide state is. I reckon things will settle down this week and the regular patterns we know for the beaches will return.

There's been no mention of sprats in recent reports though the inevitable bait robbers are rearing their ugly claws again. I don't know if the sprats have gone or not but if they have and the fish got a good feed of them they should be packing some weight on. I remember last year me and Nobby having a few at Pakefield and they were hollow. These were late fish, I gutted 6 and never took so much as a crab out of them. The crabs weren't much of a problem for the most of last summer but came back with a vengeance late autumn. I remember PK writing about the lack of crabs and wondering what the hell was going on. Sea temperature all year hasn't got much below 8° and I can see lots of things being early this year including the first moult.

I'm starting to think about bass too. I reckon your best chance for a proper one round here is early and late in the season. Last year we didn't chase the early ones as we were still catching lots of codling down South until April / May by which time the big bass had probably moved on and up. If the season looks like its going to shape up the same I'll be chasing the bass this year and giving the cod a break. Me and my mates have loads of things planned for this coming year, trips away, some sorties locally for different species and I'm also going to get myself back up to Bircham and have a craic casting with the lads up there. Its a great way to keep your cast in shape for the coming winter or just to improve with help from some world class casters.

Johnny's been having a play with the rod I bust. He took the tip and just put a tip ring on where it had broken. He thought he might like it shorter but he says its too stiff now. Amazing how losing 3" can change the action of a rod so drastically. We're going to take it up to Bircham and abuse it, see if the extra stiffness can be translated into extra yardage on the field. Right I've to be up at 6am so I'll shut up and go up. I'll report with pics our Thursday trip.