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Ferrybridge and the Chesil Beach centre

Beach section · Salt water · in Chesil Beach

The eastern tail of the bank where it runs out to meet the Portland causeway, with the Fleet's outflow on the landward side and Portland Harbour beyond it. The shingle here is at its coarsest along the mainland stretch but the bank is at its lowest and shortest, and there is sand as well as stone within reach.

Safety: drowning and immersion — can cause serious injury or death. One more point applies here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

FishingHQ describes what this place is, not whether you may fish it. Access, permits and who to ask.

What you can catch here

Documented at this place, grouped by how you would be fishing, with how strongly the sources support each one. This is what has been written down, not a forecast, and being listed is never permission to fish.

From the shore · 6

What these strengths mean
Established quarry
Fishing sources describe this as a normal local target here, not merely as caught.
Seasonal
Well supported, and concentrated in part of the year rather than spread through it.
Recorded here
At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Places, accounts and sources are counted separately
A fish documented once at each of six marks is still documented once at each of six marks. Breadth is reported as a place count and never raises the strength, and sources are deduplicated across places so one publisher covering a whole coast counts as one. A fishery account is a source describing the fishing; a recorded catch is a report of a specific catch. They are counted apart because they are not the same evidence.

How people fish it

Practised here: Sea fishing.

Methods the sources name for this ground. Each one is explained in full on its own page.

  • Ledgering

    Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.

  • Float fishing

    Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.

  • Spinning

    Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.

  • Surfcasting

    Casting heavy baited tackle from a beach into surf — a method defined by distance, by tide, and by reading water that all looks the same.

The ground and the water

The ground
The eastern tail of the bank where it runs out to meet the Portland causeway, with the Fleet's outflow on the landward side and Portland Harbour beyond it. The shingle here is at its coarsest along the mainland stretch but the bank is at its lowest and shortest, and there is sand as well as stone within reach.
Exposure
The most sheltered part of the bank, tucked behind Portland, and the one that stays fishable when the rest of Chesil is unfishable in a south-westerly.
Depth
The shallowest of the Chesil marks and the one where sand is within an ordinary cast, which is why the flatfish here are a different proposition from the rest of the bank.
Tide and flow
The Fleet empties and fills past this end of the bank, and the Portland double tide applies. The tidal run here is a feature of the fishing rather than an inconvenience.

Getting there

What public sources describe, last checked 2026-08-22. Car parks fill, services change and a path existing is not a path anybody may use — none of this is a guarantee of availability and none of it is permission to be anywhere.

Getting to it
The Ferrybridge end sits beside the causeway carrying the road from Weymouth to Portland, with the Chesil Beach visitor centre and its car park on the mainland side and a footbridge over the Fleet to the bank.
The walk in
The shortest walk to the water of any Chesil mark: a footbridge over the Fleet from the visitor centre and out onto the bank. The shingle beyond it is still loose and still steep.

Parking

  • Chesil Beach centre car park, Ferrybridge

    Public car park · Charged

    A large car park at the visitor centre run by Dorset Wildlife Trust. Charging arrangements are the trust's and are not published here — check them with the centre rather than relying on a figure from a directory.

Where this access information comes from
  • Chesil Beach visitor centre, car park and the crossing to the bank — Dorset Guide (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: That a visitor centre run by Dorset Wildlife Trust stands at Ferrybridge with a large car park, toilets and a shop, and that the crossing to the bank is a footbridge over the Fleet.Passage read and verified
  • Shore fishing Chesil: the marks, from the Cove to Hive — Weymouth Angling Centre (Practitioner report)Relied on for: That Ferrybridge is the easiest-access Chesil mark with the shortest walk, and what is fished for there.Passage read and verified

What is there

  • Public toilets

    Public toilets at the visitor centre.

  • Food or shelter

    A shop at the visitor centre. It is a wildlife-trust centre rather than a beach cafe, and its opening is seasonal.

Through the year

Plaice in spring, bass, mackerel and garfish through the warmer months, flounder and whiting into the colder ones.

Safety

Drowning and immersion — Can cause serious injury or death

The bank shelves steeply into deep water and breaks in a single step at the waterline. A wave running up the face and back down takes a person off their feet into water that is out of their depth immediately, and the backwash drags loose shingle from under them while they try to climb out of it.

What reduces it: Stand well above the step, treat the swell forecast rather than the wind as the deciding input, never turn your back on the sea, and leave the beach when a ground swell starts running rather than when it arrives.

Worse when:

  • In any south-westerly ground swell, which reaches the beach before the wind that made it.

Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death

UK coastal and inland water is cold enough for most of the year to trigger the involuntary gasp and the loss of swimming ability that decides most immersion deaths, and it does so within the first minute, long before hypothermia is relevant.

What reduces it: Wear a buoyancy aid rather than carry one, carry a means of calling for help on the person rather than in a bag, and plan on the assumption that an unplanned entry into the water is survivable only if somebody knows immediately.

Rules and access

FishingHQ does not know the current access position here. Shore angling in England is not rod-licensed, but access rights, landowner permission, local authority and harbour byelaws, national and inshore fisheries measures, and site designations all apply and all change. Check the current position with the relevant inshore fisheries and conservation authority, the harbour or local authority, and the landowner before going.

Particular to this water: The Fleet is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the bank carries conservation designations. This ground carries conservation designations that constrain access, vehicles, bait collection and disturbance independently of any fishing rule.

Who holds the answer:

  • The Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority for the district, which makes and enforces inshore byelaws.
  • The Marine Management Organisation, for national recreational sea fishing measures in English waters.
  • The local authority and, where one exists, the harbour authority, for access, byelaws and shellfish classification.
  • The inshore fisheries and conservation authority for the district, for sea fishing byelaws, gear rules and local restrictions.
  • The national fisheries authority, for minimum conservation reference sizes and national measures including those applying to bass.
  • The statutory nature conservation body, for the site of special scientific interest and European habitat and bird designations covering the beach and the Fleet.
  • The landowner and the managing bodies of the Fleet and the nature reserve, for access and for what may be done behind the barrier.
  • The local authority and food standards agency, for shellfish ground classification and biotoxin monitoring.

Nearby fishing

Other publicly documented places within about 40 km, by distance. Positions are approximate public geography and are never exact marks.

Ferrybridge and the Chesil Beach centreWeymouth HarbourWeymouth Stone PierWeymouth Pleasure PierPreston BeachChesil CoveRingstead BayAbbotsbury beachWest Bexington
Ferrybridge and the Chesil Beach centre and the publicly documented places around it. Approximate positions, not marks. Positions are approximate by design — they are capped at about a hundred metres and describe where a named public place is, not where fish are and not a mark. Everything plotted here is also listed below.

Sources for this place

  • Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of British sea angling practice by region, ground type and named mark.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
  • General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated public descriptions of which places are conventionally fished and how, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship, and not relied on for access, permission or any current rule.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy. Last reviewed 2026-08-16.

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