Well it was Guinness really, chilled to perfection after dangling over the side of my friend’s boat for a few hours. We’d taken advantage of the neap tides and the fine weather to head out about 10km south of Anvil Point to a secret mark known only to Tom (one of the drunken reprobates on board) and apparently every charter skipper on the south coast as when we got there the mark was distinctly crowded. Unduanted we dropped anchor in around 120ft of water and allowed the tide to swing us round towards the mark. A bit of judicious weight bouncing got the baits (mackerel and sandeel cocktails) downtide to where we wanted them. 
The next job was to open the beer, stretch out in the sunshine and wait for bites. After a second beer I was feeling distinctly sunburned but hadn’t had to deal with the indignity of reeling in any fish, nor had either of my companions We could hear the cheers coming from some of the other boats as fish were brought aboard but so far we had hardly felt the urge to move, let alone cheer… 
I was the first to break the fish-drought with a pull on the rod tip – a bass, a cod, a pollack? All hunted this mini-spur of the Brittlestar beds! After carefully wedging my bottle in a no-spill position I did battle with the behemoth of the deep on the end of my line and eventually hauled in – a Pout 
What the heck though, it was a nice size so it was quickly filletted and shoved in the ice box. Tom had switched to plain sandeel and his persistence paid off with a 4-5lb Bass. I stuck with Mackerel but Andy followed Tom onto sandeel and had a Bass himself a few minutes later 
By now the tide was dropping and fishing over for a while so leaving my mackerel bait out I started cooking lunch (using the Pout caught earlier – slices of fish, floured, dipped in egg, sprinkled with dried herbs and shallow fried, served with coleslaw and french loaf lathered in butter and all washed down with…. Guinness). Whilst I was engrossed in my cooking my rod had started twitching and Andy pulled a strap conger in for me, only about 3 or 4 pound so it went back.
After moving and re-anchoring the return of the tide was a replay of the morning – Beer and Bass, the only difference is this time I caught a bass , but all too soon we were heading back across the almost millpond sea for Poole. I wouldn’t say the icebox was brimming full but Sue was pleased with the Bass I brought home (4lb 9oz gutted) so I’ve been given permission to go out and play with the naughty local boys again
