Most people in England saw the New Year in with a prolonged spell of heavy rain, but we were lucky to have escaped the soaking and spent much of January in Poland – staying with family, enjoying the odd mountain walk, and, I should mention, getting married! The week of the wedding was Baltic, with heavy snow on the hills and temps in the valley down to -14°C… But I’ll take that over a never ending deluge in the UK any day of the week!

A proper winter’s outing for wrasse was well overdue, by at least a year, so once we’d arrived home and the rivers had begun to fine down, I was – rather expectedly – Dorset bound. Conditions were reasonable on Portland Bill but the breeze was just a touch too stiff for my liking; the south westerly had turned the neap tide quite choppy by lunch time. Cold fingers were made worth it by the handful of wrasse landed, with two being a gorgeous tangerine orange. I missed the best bite of the day by being too busy watching an oyster catcher, but I won’t complain too much… It’s enough to be ‘off the mark’ for the 2024.