THE FEEL GOOD FACTOR
I never was a messy worker. I like things neat and squared away otherwise my mind can't settle and my concentration goes out the window. I adopt the same attitude when fishing too.

For a beach, rock or pier session I have a system of laying things out around me in the same pattern and sequence overtime. This breeds familiarity, which saves time and minimises work.

I rarely fish a brolly, but the brolly can be used a focal point for those that use one. Usually it's windy and I'll angle my rod slightly downwind to make rod tip bites that bit more obvious. This means my seat box goes to one side of the brolly so I can look towards the rod tips from the butt end without craning my neck too much.

Cleaning up you tackle box could catch you more fish

My lamp is a rechargeable Samalite that has an adjustable arm to allow the floodlight beam to be focused on the tip, but the all round light is more than enough to fully illuminate the whole inside of the brolly or my open base camp.

The bait box goes at the opposite side of the brolly and has my cutting board, knife, baits scissors and bait elastic etc, on top. I leave my rig wallets out for easy access, and anything else like coats are thrown to the back of the brolly or camp out of the way but handy for immediate use. I don't need anything else instantly to hand. As soon as I use some item, because this pattern is engraved in my mind, my conscience sees me replace it where it belongs.

By sticking to this basic positional format I instantly know where everything is and it eliminates hunting around for bait scissors, pliers and other ancillary items that other anglers seem to constantly lose.

TIPS AND TRICKS
Sea floats always have brightly coloured orange, red or yellow tops, but in virtually all sea conditions these are difficult to see more than a few yards away. By far the best colour is black. Black stands out starkly against all sea colours on the surface and will indicate bites much better. If you buy the typical plastic cigar shaped sea floats these have a black base and coloured top. Just fish them upside down and you have an instant black float.

CREEK FLOUNDER TACTICS

Nice creek caught flounder

This is the time of year to think about creek fishing up the estuaries for flounder. I learnt about this as a kid feeling for flats with my feet and lifting them by hand before eventually switching to the rod. We'd be camping every weekend, always hungry, and a couple of flats for supper used to supplement our food supplies.

The knack is not to fish the deep channels. It's the shallow muddy creeks that they like, and they'll be close in along the sides in water just a few inches deep soaking up the early summer sun during the ebb tide, but as the new flood begins to push up the creeks they wake up and move out to feed.

It's a bit like small river trout fishing. The best ploy is to slowly work your way upstream along the creek side with a short, light spinning rod and fixed spool with just 6 lb line. Bait with peeler crab sections the size of 10p pieces on size 2 hooks and flick these freeline about 20-feet in front of you and a few yards out from the edge. Keep the reel in free spool and use the light tidal pressure to wash the bait away from you naturally.

Alternatively fish the edges of the deeper pools, but rig with a light lead and 18-inch hook snood and let the lead roll around the sides of the pool until the fish are found. If you have to, retrieve a little line every few seconds to get the flatties interested. Good places to fish are just inside the bends in the creeks where the pools starts to shallow from deep water.

Creek flounder can be docile and moody by day, but tend to switch on and feed for the hour around dusk, and again at dawn if it coincides with a flooding tide. The downside is that you get plagued with eels too.

Tide size does not matter much, but you'll find that numbers of flounder concentrate around the inside edges of bends in the creek and around the edges of the deeper pools. What does put flounder off their grub is lots of rainwater flushing through the creeks.