Me and Smudge spent the best part of Monday flying round the county trying to get hold of some Ammo sand eels. No joy at Lathams, Gorleston, Floaters or Sam Hooks (despite the freezer being covered in Ammo stickers) so we had to use the Bait Box brand. I think they're ok, they're blast frozen and look a similar quality as Ammo but you know how it is when your confident with a particular brand. Anyway that's all we could get so they'll have to do, I had to drag Smudge round Tesco's too as Mrs Aitch sent me a tex of "can you just gets" while we were out. I would do the shopping every week if it was as easy as it was with Smudge, 10 minutes had us through the tills and away home.

I had just about enough time to get the grass cut, pop a couple of spuds in for tea and have a general tidy round the garden before Pete Costin made the trip up from darkest Essex. I had a built in fridge freezer surplus to requirements and he wanted it to store bait. I never thought but I should have asked him to bring me up some peelers, I bet Ray Powers at Bait and Tackle has got some Ammo sand eels too. Pete pitched up around 7pm, me and Smudge had moved the fridge freezer to the front of the garage to make it easy to load into Pete's motor. Within a few seconds, the seats were down in Pete's Skoda estate and the fridge was all but in. A few minor adjustments to the front passenger seat and the tailgate shut and CRASH!!! Rear windscreen all over the boot. I don't know how he managed it, we'd had the tailgate shut once already, at least the draft would make sure he didn't doze off on the homeward journey. With the fridge freezer loaded, a bit of a babble and a brew sunk, Pete was on his way back southwards. A smashing bloke who I hope to have a chuck with one of these days, he has a caravan at Bacton in the autumn. Now with all my jobs done all I had to do was get my gear fettled for the foray to the Kent coast the following day.

Four of us had planned a trip to the Isle of Sheppey to try and snare an early ray, unfortunately some of the Jolly Boys were at work. The plan was to pick Pete up at 9ish and meet Smudge at Karl's house for around 10 then we'd go in convoy in two cars, via a Little Chief for a breakfast. High water would be around 2030ish and a neap tide of around 4.6m the idea was to take a steady run down, get there for early afternoon, lunch in a pub or cafe then fish 1730 to 2230.

Our man on the inside, Shane Pullen, had sent me some info. Weather conditions weren't perfect, what wind there was jibbed around between East and Northeast, but the sun was warm, and there'd been a few caught on recent tides, I felt confident. Shane was humming and harring whether to fish or not and said if he didn't he'd pop down and give us a look.

I got a text, Shane's mate had a couple the night before despite the easterly wind, I'm a confident sort of bloke anyway and now I was brimming, I knew if they were about one of the lads would have one. Karl, aka "chuckles", is a different matter. He doesn't need much putting off, "Bloody easterlies, we should carry on down to Dungie or Deal and fish for cod, we'll never catch rays in this", you get the picture. In my experience some of the best sessions you have are when your not really looking forward to them but I was still pleased I was travelling with Pete. I'd have been suicidal by the time I hit the M25, poor old Smudge. I felt confident if there were any there one of us would get among them, it was just a matter of time and a smidging of luck I reckoned.

I see no ships, only hardships. Where's the sea? You learn a lot when you do things outside of what your used to and comfortable with. We'd be fishing into a maximum of 5 to 6' of water without a feature, where do you start?

We got to the mark early at around 1330. A beautiful day, warm with a gentle breeze from a generally easterly direction (the only downside) and what to do for hours until the tide came in? I started to feel more confident as the sun warmed the sand, you could see it steaming like a dewy field on a hot morning. We relaxed on the green, had a brew and a sarnie in the local cafe and generally larked about, there was good reason for getting there early, local anglers often get down there after work for a session and the place would soon fill up if recent reports were to be believed.

Pre session banter. Pete, Smudge and Karl before the off. Nice comfy fishing, no sand in your gear or mud to wash off, bloody marvellous.

Karl cast at the first UKSF grand prix of the year at Huntingdon last Sunday, he did extremely well finishing as the top day caster with a chuck over 218m in difficult cross wind conditions. I noticed he started to sound a little more confident once he was on the beach and it was only a matter of time before the nuggett suggested going to try a bait at low water. Shane and his mate Dean had given us the inside edge on the venue, they said it wasn't worth fishing outside of a window 2 to 3 hours either side of high water. Obvious really when you look at the pictures, you'd be fishing in a few inches of water outside of high water, but when you can cast like that you never know and at least it would eat up some time.

Karl loading one up, after a quarter mile walk we finally got to the waters edge. The locals reckoned the water was too rough!

We messed around for about an hour inching back as the water eased in, Pete and Smudge sat back up with the rest of our kit and sunbathed. It was around this time that Shane and Dean turned up. They weren't very confident, what little wind there was had scuffed the surface, they were talking about white horses!!! Jesus christ on a bike it shows you how different things can be within a 100 or so miles of coast, we wouldn't probably have bothered fishing up here in the same conditions, not close to being rough enough! I was still confident we'd catch and what little scruffy sea there was would soon disappear when there was more than 6" of water covering the sand.

The obligatory picture of a northern bloke with his rod in his hand, the sport magazines are full of them. The sea's still too rough, allegedly.

Down to the nitty gritty, rigs for me for the day would be a 2/0 B940 with a 1/0 mustad pennel, long snoods around 2'6" and the bait of choice would be sand eel. We also had rag, squid and herring but when you have top local knowledge your daft if you ignore it, eel was the killer bait at this mark. I fish with pennels all the time, usually with larger hooks and shorter snoods. The idea behind long snoods for ray fishing is that they carry your bait away from your lead. The last thing you want to happen is for a big old flattie to try and settle on your bait only to be spooked when its wings land on the spikes of your lead, the hooks were sized to the medium sand eel bait. Karl goes a step further than just the long snood and turns the last quarter inch of spikes in with a pair of pliers, tide pull wasn't going to be an issue but they still grip well enough anyway.

Now here's something that was the topic of conversation all day and even during the run home, in fact I'm still thinking about it now. We could fish with sand eel and leave it fishing for an hour and still wind it in as neat as it went out! Can you imagine doing that in Norfolk or Sufolk, the poor bait would be mullered by the vermin within minutes, alright I'm exagerating, they'd have stripped the hooks within seconds! At one point in the session I put a bunch of rag worm on and expected them to get nipped about a bit but even they came back good to go again after 30 minutes. Obviously I'm not suggesting leaving baits out for that length of time, it pays to freshen them up regularly to keep fresh scents and juices going into the water, but one pack of sand eels can last a session easily in those conditions.

It was good to see Shane, I hadn't spoken to him since the year before on a session at Pakefield, he wasn't very confident though. We were, the sea was as flat as a witches tit (to us) and we'd seen the sand steaming earlier. No crabs or other vermin nibbling your bait giving you the confidence that you had a bait on and were fishing all the time. We started in earnest around 1700 on a lovely evening, one fired out as far as we could the other dropped shorter. When you have a beach without features you have to move things around a bit and try and locate a few or hope they happen on your bait as they're mooching about. It reminded me a lot of Cleethorpes though there's more tide there and this creates gulleys etc, this was a billiard table of a beach. There were worm casts inside the groins and to about 10/15 yards beyond them then it seemed to be a few cockle and piddock beds and possibly some sand eels, there really wasn't much of a clue as to what was bringing the fish into the shallow water as they couldn't spawn here the purses would be high and dry twice a day for hours.

We sat there for the flood full of anticipation, rod tips motionless until one of mine plucked forward about an inch. Shane had said they catch nothing else here apart from rays, so here I was excitement rising imagining a big female settling on my bait and it would be a matter of a few seconds before she moved off and the rod top craned over. Never happened of course, 10 minutes of studying the rod top, feeling the line and finally winding in a 6oz whiting that was barely bigger than the sand eel bait! Not blanked at least, strangely I found little comfort in knowing that.

There were 20 odd rods that I could see stretching away to our right and I hadn't seen or heard of a fish caught. Darkness had descended and it was high water, if it was going to happen the time was now. A shout from Shane, Dean had a fish on. We walked over just as Dean landed a fine thornback a little over 6lb, a cracking fish and a massive boost for our confidence.

This is what we came for, it would be great if we could all get one but seeing them caught makes it worthwhile. What a load of rubbish, I was green with envy and doubled my efforts to try and get one!

Have I mentioned yet Karl was the top day caster at the UKSF? Well after two crack offs he wants to go home. I could see he was feeling it and there are times even the merciless among us have to show a little restraint, he eventually set up again and fired a bait out. It can't have been in for more than 5 minutes and there's a shout from Karl, he's got a fish on. Smudge went down to the waters edge to beach a small male of around 2.5lb, the Jolly Boys had one at last. Just before the fish beached I was looking at Karl's other rod, "are you crossed with the other rod mate?" I enquired, "no I don't think so, I put that one out left". For the love of god it was turning into a massacre.

You wouldn't believe he'd just won the pools for the first fish would you? Granted it was only worth £1.50 but you'd think he could manage a smile, we came for rays and he'd got one, albeit a baby boy. Theres the beginning of a smile but he still looks more like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

I love him dearly but what a miserable sod at times! Nah only joking, he was well up for it now, so was I. I went over to take a pic all pumped up and obviously excited when he muttered one of his immortal lines. "Look at you with your mad staring eyes and hair that looks like you combed it with a firework", I nearly wept. There he was two fish in as many chucks, no sign for the rest of us, bearing in mind we were all fishing similar distances and there's 12 rods out within 50 yards!

They're getting bigger, this one was getting on for 5lb, still no smile. He says he has an image to uphold, like James Dean except Karl's a rebel without a clue.

He's had a relatively poor winter and like I said in an earlier piece, he's an annoyingly good angler and I was getting the feeling that all my merciless mickey taking after recent trips was coming home to roost tonight. No matter what me, Pete and Smudge did we couldn't buy a bite. Shane and Dean on the end two pegs were finding the same, it looked like peg one was the flyer. He'd returned them or rather poor old smudge had and fired out again. I kid you not within a few minutes he's up playing another.

The model of concentration, this feels like a better one he said, my anglo saxon expletive deleted.

This type of fishing can be like this, they travel in small groups or packs a lot like smoothounds or dogfish and one lucky angler can be on them while the rest of the beach appears barren. After a minute or two a fine male (all the fish caught were males) around the same size as Dean's first one was on the beach.

A stonking fish and still no smile, note the sticky out pinkies, they're posh up north you know.

We'd had a cracking day, laughs from start to finish but by 2230 it was time to leave for the long journey home, broken by a coffee stop at Stansted. Three fish in three casts inside 15 minutes, that was our session summed up, but a day out with your mates is always much more than that. Its a shame we didn't all get one but we set out with a target of getting one and we had three or rather HE had three, did I mention he was top day caster at the UKSF...