IT’S been a fairly quiet week on the angling front, with wave after wave of weather fronts moving across from the Atlantic.

These brought high winds and rain and this, combined with higher-than-average tides, made boat fishing almost impossible.

The charter boat Sophie Lea managed to get a trip in and took a party of anglers off the coast.

They reported codling and a few thornback rays, with the best two rays falling to Oliver Duff.

Both were around the 12lb-mark.

I’ve had reports of the odd bigger cod now showing – one of 20lb from a Walton mark and a 14lb cod from the Clacton area.

The beaches and piers have also slowed down somewhat.

The night tides are seeing more fish, but not on the scale we were catching them.

Clacton Pier has seen a few codling. Peter Rose fished a daytime tide here and caught codling and small whiting.

I’ve also had reports that there have been dabs and the odd sole in calmer conditions.

Holland seafront is still seeing codling being caught, but, once again, not in the numbers we have been seeing.

Walton Pier Club fished their latest secret pairs match on the coastguard beaches towards Hipkins’ breakwater.

Secret pairs is a match where one competitor is matched up with another, but no-one knows who’s fishing with who until the end of the match. This makes for an interesting competition. Fifteen anglers fished and the sea was a good colour.

With the wind blowing off the land, it made for comfortable fishing.

Once again, the fish were few and far between, with only a few small whiting and rockling caught.

Barry Adair and Graham Distill were first, Jim Fennel and Colin Harris second and Andy Grant and Andrew Westrope third.

Walton Pier seems to be producing more codling at the moment than anywhere else.

With the flood tides on the head of the pier and the ebb tides on the stem, dabs are also showing well here. However, it must be fairly calm before they feed.

Clacton Angling Club headed for the pier for their first match of the new season.

They fished the incoming tide and also found the fishing hard going.

Result: 1 Vic Pearce 177 points, 2 John Wilson 146, 3 Berni Putko 137. Heaviest fish: Vic Pearce - a 45cm codling.

To be honest, January is never a great month in the angler’s diary, so any fish that are there are a bonus.

If you have any reports you can contact me via email at popplewell1@btinternet.com.

Tides for the weekend are 8.30am on Saturday and 9.32am on Sunday.