Tide for today · loading
Sixty minutes. Thirty anglers on one beach. Nobody has been told where the gutters are, what the fish want, or how long the bait will last. You find out by fishing.
None of them is luck. All of them are things a shore angler already argues about in a car park at four in the morning.
You are given nothing. Wind a lead in slowly and you feel it drop into a gutter or bump over a bar, and that goes on your chart — at the range you think it was. Wind in fast and you learn nothing, but you are fishing again in twenty seconds.
Scent carries five metres downtide and half that up. Fish take what they are already eating: peeler crab is the best bait on the beach in June and close to useless in January. A gale washes lugworm out of the sand and changes the answer again.
Hook too big and a sole cannot get it in. Snood too heavy and a bass sees it in clear water. Lock the drag on a fish that pulls harder than your line and it parts — back it off in time and you land it, slowly, while the clock runs down.
One hour, counted in real seconds. Everything you do costs some of it.
Matches are drawn into zones of ten and scored on zone points, so nobody wins or loses on the peg they drew.
Within your zone, the heaviest bag scores one point, next two, and so on. Lowest total across the series wins.
Register, and you are in the next open. Bring your own tackle budget and your own opinions about bait. The beach will disagree with both.