Weekend shore checklist

Why check the plan and the tide first

Most blank sessions are decided before you leave the house. The same mark can be excellent on the push of the flood and dead two hours later, so the tide time is not a detail, it is the plan. Check the high and low for the mark you are going to, not for the nearest harbour on a generic app, and work out which part of the tide you will actually be standing there for.

Wind matters as much. An onshore breeze that colours the water can make a beach fish, while the same wind turns a rock platform into somewhere you should not be. Decide your limit for the ground you are fishing before you see the forecast, so the forecast cannot talk you into it.

Why tell someone where you are going

Shore fishing is often done alone, early or late, on ground with no phone signal. A message saying which mark, and roughly when you expect to be back, costs nothing and is the single thing most likely to matter if a session goes wrong. On rock marks it is not optional.

Why check the kit the night before

Line that has been sitting on a reel since the last trip is the usual cause of a lost fish, and a frayed leader or a cracked rod ring shows up far more easily at the kitchen table than in the dark on a beach. Tying rigs at home means you fish the whole tide instead of spending the best of it with cold fingers and a knot that will not bed down.

A headtorch, and a spare, is basic kit once the session runs into dusk. So are grippy boots: wet weed and slimed stone are the everyday hazard on piers and rocks, and they do not need rough weather to put you down.

Why read the water before you set up

Arrive and look before you unpack. Swell running up a beach higher than the forecast suggested, weed piled along the tideline, or a sea already breaking over a platform all change the session. Floating weed after a blow can make a beach unfishable however good the tide looks, and it is far better to move on than to spend an hour clearing every cast.

Set up above the high-water line, not at the edge where you first started casting, and on rock ground know your way off before the tide makes the decision for you.

Why log the session, blank or not

A blank is information. Recording where you went, the tide and what happened, fish or no fish, is how the forecasts on this site get checked against what really happened on the shore. It is also how you build your own picture of which marks fish on which tides.