IT looks like we’re warming up in more ways than one this week.

The weather has set fair, with only a couple of days when the boats struggled to put to sea.

The water temperature has now risen another few degrees, prompting those bass and smoothhounds to move closer to our shores.

Most of the charter and private boats have reported really good catches.

Thornbacks are still there to be caught, although the size of them has decreased somewhat.

The smoothhounds are certainly on the increase.

Lester Baker, skipper of Sea Watch Charters, reported lots of mid double-figure hounds being caught.

These fish are great sport on light tackle and can really put a bend in that fishing rod.

The Brightlingsea-based charter boat Sophie Lea has also been among those early summer smoothhounds and reported some good catches, plus bass as well.

These mini sharks love peeler crab baits but, if you can’t get hold of them, hermit crab is also a great bait and most lobster/crab fisherman will sell you a few.

It’s been reasonable on the shore side this week, with some good catches when the sea has been rough.

This has especially been the case on Walton Pier, where, in the rough conditions, the codling have been feeding.

Walton Sea Angling Club headed for the pier for their latest match and, fishing a flood tide with a strong wind blowing, it could only be conducive to some of those bigger fish.

They fished the head of the pier and, from the start, fish were caught.

With codling to 3lbs and plenty of dogfish, the weights were always going to be high.

Top angler on the night was Jon Wilson, with an outstanding weight of 19lbs 7oz - a great weight in any match.

Second place went to Rob Tuck, with 7lbs, and a close third was James Everett, with 5lb 8oz.

Jon caught codling to 3lbs, plus a bonus thornback ray of 6lbs for top spot.

Their next club match is on the Frinton golf course beaches next Tuesday, from 7pm until 10pm.

The Walton beaches are fishing reasonably well on the evening tides.

Venues to head for are the Coast Guard beaches, towards the Naze, for soles and bass.

The Burnthouse area to the south of the pier is producing bass and flounders.

Colchester angler Derek Cranfield fished here and told me he had great sport on light tackle on the ebb tides.

I’ve had a couple of trips this week.

The first was to the Bradwell Power Station beaches, in search of stingrays and smoothhounds.

To be honest, the fishing wasn’t that good.

I ended the evening with six whiting and one eel.

I then headed for the golf course beaches at Frinton for an ebb tide saunter for one of those big bass and ended this session with seven whiting and two big eels.

I also managed to catch my first bass of the summer, so not a bad session.

The St Osyth beaches have once again seen some thornback rays, although not as many as we have been catching, and one more report of a stingray in the 50lb-range for Mark Cole.

Top venue this week has to be Walton Pier, with rays from the top of the pier and garfish, pollack and wrasse on light tackle fishing in between the pier piles.

The tides for the weekend are 9.40am on Saturday and 10.40am on Sunday.