AS we’re now moving into the summer months, I thought I’d start this week’s column by taking a look back at last year’s spring, the months leading up to where we are now and compare the two.

Early spring last year was a bit slow to start with.

The weather was colder than this year and the conditions halted the boats somewhat.

However, we saw some fish movement as we entered late February.

Early spring codling were being caught by boat anglers, with a few bigger fish around the 9lb size.

After a slow start, the beaches and piers started to see spring codling appearing and, by early March, the first of the spring thornback rays showed up.

The boats were seeing bumper catches.

The piers had also seen their first catches, with by far the most being caught from Clacton.

By April and May, thornback rays had arrived on the famed St Osyth beaches.

Some reasonable catches were reported.

This spring has seen more fish showing from all venues.

The boats saw the first of the rays showing in February and the codling had stayed, even over the lean Christmas period.

The beaches suddenly saw an influx of quality-size codling and before we knew it the first of the rays was caught from the piers and beaches.

Summing up, this season so far has been better for the beach angler than last spring or any other year I can remember.

For the boat angler, it’s been on a par with previous years.

Let’s hope the oncoming summer will continue the trend.

This week has seen an improvement in the amount of bass being caught from the boats, with fish to 9lbs-plus being caught.

The Brightlingsea-based charter boat Seawatch has had some very good catches off our coast and Mark Baxter found one of these bigger fish with a cracking bass weighing in at 9lb 8oz.

On the same trip, they caught thornback rays and some smoothhounds.

The East Coast kayak boys have taken advantage of the calmer seas and Andrew Polson and Danny Lee put to sea.

They reported some really good catches of thornback ray no more than a few hundred yards from the beach, although whiting were still a bit of a nuisance.

The Sophie Lea has once again been finding some quality fish, with bass and rays being the mainstay.

The beaches haven’t missed out this week, either.

Walton Sea Angling Club headed for the new sea defences at Holland-on-Sea and, with the wind blowing off-shore, it made for a comfortable night.

They fished a flood tide and the fish were feeding from the start.

The top angler on the night was Clacton’s Richard Burt, with 12lb 3oz, which included two thornback rays.

Second place went to Rob Tuck (5lbs) and a close third to Bill Paquette (4lb 6oz).

I had another trip to Walton Pier this week with fishing mate Joe McDonald.

The weather was, to say the least, very inclement, with high winds and driving rain.

We fished the bottom half of the pier on the ebb tide and found the codling on the feed.

Joe found the biggest, weighing in at just over 3lbs, and we also caught dogfish and eels.

All the fish fell to worm baits and squid.

n The tides for the weekend are 10.22am on Saturday and 11.05am on Sunday.