RAISE YOUR GLASSES
Sunglasses are worn more for eye protection  when fly fishing in saltwater than for practical fishing reasons by most sea  anglers, but they have their uses for catching fish too.

I use Polaroid sunglasses for spotting  potential marks by identifying ground feature in areas I’ve never fished  before. This works especially well where you have high ground like cliff paths  where you can use the height to limit light reflection and get better visual penetration  through the water to the seabed below. You need calm sea conditions during a  period of flat calm weather for the best depth penetration. With decent Polaroid’s on you can see the  definite change from rock to sand to weed and identify routes and ground  feature that might carry fish.

The same applies to beaches with high rocky  outcrops at each end. To view the immediate ends of the beach itself, get the  sun behind you and with the height you’ll see the deeper gutters identified as  a darker blue or green than that seen from the shallower sandy areas. It will  also bring in to focus any shingle beds or rough ground patches, again giving  you an indication ofwhere might be best to place your baits come night fall.

I also use Polaroid’s for spotting shy mullet  in harbours. They often hang around under boats by day, rarely leaving theshadow cast by the hull. Your unaided eyes struggle to see their shapes due to  reflection again, but stick the Polaroid’s on and its different world with the  mullet far more visible.

Moving away from Polaroid’s, you have light  enhancing glasses. These gather all available light enhancing the effect and make a dull day look sunny and dusk almost daylight. This helps me watch bass  plugs and flies moving in the water far later in to near full dark way after my  unaided eyes would have lost the plot. You’ll often see the flash of a bass’s  flank as it turns in the water to hit the fly or plug, and these glasses pick  this up giving me a fraction of second longer to react to the hit.

These same light enhancers are good if you  want to float fish off breakwaters or rock ledges right through the final phase  between semi light and full dark. You can also use them on beaches if you’ve a  background of street lights or even plain moonlight to show up your rod tip for  bite identification without needing a lamp on all the time.

Light enhancing glasses can be bought for  as little as £14, with some excellent Polaroid glasses on the market for not  much more than tenner.

TIPS AND TRICKS
If you shudder at the thought of using  expensive swivels on running ledger rough ground bass or conger rigs, then  consider plain standard round split rings, which are much cheaper but do the  same job regards acting as attachment points.

Use a split ring running free on the main  line or leader to attach the mono to the lead weight, then tie on a another  split ring to the end of the reel line or leader and add the hook trace to  this. Providing the split rings are the same size the running split ring cannot  pass over the hook trace split ring.

A word of caution though. With the split  ring being double wire, some knots will slide when tied in lines of 15lb  breaking strain. To stop this, pass the line through the split ring twice  before tying the knot. This gives a secure knot with no chance of slippage.

GROUNDBAIT TACTICS FOR BREAKWATER MULLET
Mullet can often be seen working around  breakwaters, but tend to need inducing to feed by the use of groundbait. If you  watch mullet, they patrol what is often a large area of breakwater or long pier  structure. You can use just one bag of groundbait, but once you’ve caught a  couple of fish the fight will have disturbed the others in the same area putting  them down and off their feed.

To get round this, instead of using just  one big onion bag of bait, use the smaller mesh bags that washing up tablets  are supplied with and spread several of these at intervals along the breakwater  or pier if other angling activity gives you the room. This allows you the  option of fishing one area, catching a few fish, then moving on to the others.  By the time you’ve reached the last bag, the original area that produced fish  way well have settled down and you can start over.

Using several of these smaller mesh bags  also gives you the option to use different ingredients in different areas, a  ploy that works well when fishing a venue for the first time and you’re unsure  what the mullet will take.

Try placing the first couple of bags with a  mix of bran, cat food that contains tuna, and maybe a couple of smashed up  mackerel or herring. Also have a bag with just a bread and bran mix in. You can then float fish flakes of mackerel or  herring flesh by the cat food bags and the bread by the other.

If you haven’t got any bags and want to try  a quick session for mullet, a simple but still effective way to groundbait is to  buy half a dozen mackerel, cut the backbones out leaving the fillets attached  to the head, pass a line through both jaws and drop the mackerel down so that  the fillets are just washing in the surface water. This releases scent and  small particles of flesh that will bring the mullet in to feed.

This scattered approach is far more  effective than a single target bag and also works well for garfish.