IT looks like summer is fading fast.

The nights are drawing in and there's already an early-morning chill in the air.

As we come to the end of August, we'll see the first of those autumnal fish appear.

In fact, it's started already.

Vast shoals of whiting are already appearing on the Suffolk coast, so it looks like the next set of big tides will see them hitting our part of the coast.

The last few years has seen our cod stocks virtually diminish to nothing but they seem to be making a bit of a comeback, with good reports coming up from the south coast already.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hopefully we'll see a return of those cod turning up for our boat, beach and pier anglers.

Meanwhile, back to this week’s reports and it's been slightly on the slow side for the beach and pier anglers.

The boats have faired better.

Smoothhounds, thornback rays and bass are still showing well, with the odd autumn dogfish already here.

Clacton Pier has seen the return of a few thornback rays, along with the odd bass and soles.

Gary Coward fished a daytime tide on the pier and caught a couple of thornback rays to 6lbs, in addition to losing another. All his rays were caught on squid.

The Holland beaches have been very slow during daylight hours and, with only a few anglers fishing, reports have been sketchy.

However, thornback rays will be caught after dark, along with soles and some early whiting.

The Walton beaches have seen school bass being caught.

There's no need to cast too far as they're feeding only a matter of yards from the high-tide mark.

Soles are feeding after dark from around the pier and also the Albion beach.

We've also seen a fish that has never been caught from this part of the coast.

The lucky angler was Mark Adlington.

He fished a popped up ragworm bait for bass and was rewarded with a gilt-head bream.

These fish frequent the south coast but this is the first we've seen from our beaches. Could this be a part of our climate change?

Walton Sea Angling Club members headed for the local pier for their evening match and were greeted with light winds and calm seas.

Most anglers opted to fish the bottom of the pier, with just a couple heading for the lifeboat area.

The fishing was slow and the top angler on the night was Vic Pearce, with a catch of bass and wrasse for 148 points.

His bag also included the heaviest fish prize in the form of a 39cm bass.

Second place went to Peter Harris, with 98 points, and in third was Rob Tuck, with 91 points.

My trip this week was to brave the high winds and rain to fish lures in the Walton Backwaters.

It was difficult fishing in the atrocious conditions but the bass were feeding.

I didn’t land anything very big but did catch bass to 2lbs on silver flashing spinners.

Colchester Sea Angling Club headed for Aldeburgh beaches to fish their Wass’s Tackle-sponsored sole match.

They also faced strong winds and a heavy surf.

Fourteen anglers fished and everyone caught fish.

First place went to Mark Sessions, with a sole of 1lb.

In second spot was Nik Highfield, with 7oz, and in third was Brian Bethell, with 6oz.

The high tides for the weekend are 5.59pm on Saturday and 7.11pm on Sunday.