Mastering the art of fishing the beach by Sean Thompson

Beach fishing isn't just a sport, it's a passion. Get it right and it can be incredibly productive. Not only that, but in our fast-paced world filled with digital gadgets and deadlines, it can be damn good for your mental and physical health. The sights, sounds and feel of the waves as they wash away your woes is something special. Even better if it is interrupted by a screaming reel and buckling rod!
GENERAL RULES
To get your best results from the beach, you need to understand how, where and when to fish.
The number one rule in beach fishing is that you need to be able to read the beach to understand where the fish might be. Inexperienced anglers often make the mistake of just throwing in a line wherever the sand track leads them out to the beach, and then expect fish. Even if there is fishable water there, these same areas are also popular with swimmers and surfers, and thus tend to spook flighty fish.
There are a few other general rules and tactics that will significantly increase the odds in your favour when beach fishing. These include knowing your target species and seasons, having the right gear, and knowing the right time and techniques to catch them.
You also need a few plan Bs and Cs for when the fish play hard to get. When you have some sneaky little tactics up your sleeve, it can turn a very ordinary session into a very good one!
For now, let's start by learning how to 'read' a beach.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT WATER
You can have the best tackle, baits, lures and surf conditions, but if you're fishing where the fish are unlikely to be, you won't catch much! This is why it's is so important to know how to read a beach. Gutters, holes, channels, spits, rips, sweep, back banks... fishing has a vocabulary all of its own, but these areas aren't that complicated to spot or understand. Basically, the colour of the water (darker water is deeper) and the wave patterns are the main giveaways, and when you know what to look for you'll maximise your catch rates.
Gutter
Gutters are stretches of deeper water scoured out of the sand, characterised by darker, greener water. They generally have a back sand bank where the water is shallower, and the waves break over this bank before reforming in the gutter, and don't break again until they get closer to, or hit the shore. Fish like tailor, salmon, bream and big dart will prowl the edges of the back bank, and these same fish may roam inside the deeper water of the gutter looking for food.
The shore break of a gutter (where waves are breaking on the shore) is the place to target foraging fish such as whiting, flathead, smaller dart and bream. These predators roam in the shallower gutters just beyond the shore, and as the waves break and surge up the beach, the fish quickly follow the water in and help themselves to the worms and pipis exposed, or any vulnerable baitfish.
Entrance
An entrance is often found with a gutter, and it's like a funnel of deeper, cleaner water that channels faster flowing water from the inner gutters or holes out to the open sea. This are known by swimmers as a rip. A break in the rolling waves can indicate an entrance, and this area is also characterised by more rippled water.
Fish use these entrances to enter and exit the shore-based gutters that hold a smorgasbord of food for them. Fish like to use entrances because they don't like sand in their gills or becoming disorientated by breaking waves. One entrance to a gutter is good, and two entrances is even better!
Gutters can also vary in size and depth, with deeper gutters tending to hold bigger fish like tailor, salmon and mulloway at the right time of day. Shallower gutters are perfect for smaller forage fish such as whiting, dart and bream. Fish like whiting can be found in a couple of different types of shallower gutters. Examples include shallow inner gutters that fill over an exposed back sand bank at high tide, or shallow low tide gutters that have a blind end. A blind end is where the gutter closes off to the shore or a sand spit and, provided it has a little bit of white water for protection, the fish will feed right up in this corner.
Hole
Holes are pockets of scoured-out sand in the surf which are formed as a result of big seas. They are evidenced by their darker blue/green colour and also by waves, which don't break at all over them. Holes can either be fully enclosed as they are surrounded by sand bars, or they can have an opening to the sea. These are great locations to fish at night on the high tide for predators such as mulloway, particularly if the hole has an opening or entrance to the sea. At low tide they can be good locations for flathead and bream.
Smaller 'melon' holes are indentations of around a metre or so in diameter, and can often be found on sand spits or smaller gutters. Whiting like to forage for worms and yabbies in melon holes.
Channel
Channels are simply very long gutters which are scoured out parallel to the beach. They can run for several hundred metres or even kilometres at times. They act like a fish highway, with fish travelling along them in search of food. If there are few other features nearby to fish, your best option when confronted with a long channel is to look for areas where the beach shelves away steeply on the shore into the channel, or the back bank is within castable distance for species such as tailor and salmon.
Outer channels can be described as a second channel running parallel to an inner channel closer to shore and the beach. These are the highways for very big fish, including sharks and pelagics such as mackerel, tuna, giant trevally and more. You can reach these outer channels at low tide if you choose an inner channel with a close back bank, and cast over it using big grapnel sinkers and running 'slide baits' of live fish or big flesh baits out to this deep water. Another alternative is to cast out with a more standard rig but with a big bait into an entrance or rip, and let the fast-flowing rip take the bait out to this outer channel.