🏝️ Fishing Sandbanks

Sandbanks are among the most productive structure on any surf beach — if you know how to fish them.

How they form: waves and current pile sand into bars running parallel or at an angle to the beach. Between the bank and the shore, and in gaps in the bank, deeper water forms — and that's where the fish hold.

Where the fish are: predators sit in the deeper gutter behind the bank or in the holes and gaps, waiting for bait washed over the top by the waves. Cast to the edges of the bank and into the deeper water behind it, not onto the shallow top of the bank itself.

Reading them: at low tide the bank shows as pale, shallow, browner water with a darker gutter behind it. As the tide pushes, waves break over the bank and calm water forms behind — that calm strip is your target.

Best conditions: a moderate swell that pushes bait over the banks without churning the water to mud. First and last light, and the pushing tide, put fish hard on the banks. White mussel — a natural food dug from the banks themselves — is a killer bait here.