Skip to content
FishingHQSearch

Seatown

Shingle bank · Salt water · in Lyme Bay

A shelving shingle beach at the foot of a narrow valley, about midway between West Bay and Lyme Regis, under high soft cliffs. A stream runs out beside the beach. The seabed is clean close to the valley mouth and becomes rougher to the left, under the cliff, which is where an angling title places the main fishing. It names smoothhounds and wrasse here as well as the fish profiled below.

Safety: moving water and currents — can cause serious injury or death. 2 more points apply 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 · 9

Also documented from the shore: Small-spotted catshark

What these strengths mean
Recorded here
At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
How breadth is counted
A fish documented at six marks is shown as six marks: breadth never raises the strength on its own. A fishery account describes the fishing; a recorded catch reports one specific catch. How evidence is weighed.

Fish documented nearby, not here

Nothing below has been documented at Seatown itself. Each one has been documented at a named place on the same ground, and the places are listed with it. Treat this as what the water around here holds rather than as a catch list for this mark.

Also documented at neighbouring places

One or two accounts each, on the ground around here. Enough to know the fish is caught in these waters; not enough to say anything about this place.

From the shore

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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Baits and lures for these fish

The baits and lures each of the fish above is commonly taken on, from that fish’s own page. This is what works for the fish, not a report of what people use on this particular water — local knowledge and the conditions on the day still decide.

Baits

Lures

How to catch them: Mackerel fishing · Conger fishing · Bass fishing

The ground and the water

The ground
A shelving shingle beach at the foot of a narrow valley, about midway between West Bay and Lyme Regis, under high soft cliffs. A stream runs out beside the beach. The seabed is clean close to the valley mouth and becomes rougher to the left, under the cliff, which is where an angling title places the main fishing. It names smoothhounds and wrasse here as well as the fish profiled below.
Exposure
Open to the south-west across Lyme Bay. The angling source says stormy spells should be avoided and that the beach is dangerous in a big swell.
Depth
A shelving beach. Bass are described as taken close in after dark, and most other fish at eighty yards or more.
Tide and flow
The source favours the flood, with the best of it about two hours either side of high water, and says mackerel come inshore on summer evenings when high water falls near dusk.

Safety

Moving water and currents — Can cause serious injury or death

The beach is a shelving bank of shingle open to the south-west. In a swell, waves break onto the slope an angler stands on, run up it further than the one before, and drag loose stones and footing back down with them. The angling title that describes the mark calls the beach dangerous when there is a big swell.

What reduces it: Stand well up the bank, watch several sets of waves before settling, and treat a big south-westerly swell as a reason to fish elsewhere. The best fishing here is described as coming once the sea has settled after a blow, not during it.

Worse when:

  • A big swell from the south-west, which the beach faces
  • Darkness, when the size of a set cannot be judged
  • Fishing under the cliff, which is soft and falls without warning

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

The soft Jurassic cliffs along this shore fail regularly and without warning, and rockfall and mudslide reach the beach beneath them. The coast's own managing bodies advise against walking close under the cliffs at all, and the failures are not confined to wet weather.

What reduces it: Do not walk or fish close beneath the cliffs. Keep to the seaward side of the beach where there is one. Take the managing body's current advice seriously — it is issued because the ground moves, not as a formality.

Worse when:

  • After prolonged rain, which is when the largest failures happen
  • On a narrow beach at high water, where there is nowhere to be except under the cliff
  • Where a previous slip has left an unstable face that looks like solid ground

Cold water shock — Can cause serious injury or death

General safety for this kind of ground, not a finding about this place.

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.

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 relevant Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority for the district, which makes and enforces inshore byelaws including those on bait collection.
  • The harbour authority or commissioners, for fishing from piers, breakwaters and harbour structures, where permission is a local matter and changes.
  • Natural England and the relevant protected site body, where a designation affects access or collection.
  • The Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the RNLI, for safety guidance on this coast.

Nearby fishing

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

SeatownWest Bay and Bridport harbourHive Beach, Burton BradstockCogden BeachLyme Regis CobbWest BexingtonAbbotsbury beachSeaton beach and the Axe mouthWeymouth Harbour
Seatown and the publicly documented places around it. Approximate positions, not marks. On a narrow screen the plot is wider than the screen and scrolls sideways inside its frame. 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
  • Sea Angler: Seatown sea fishing mark — Sea Angler, 2022 (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: The ground at Seatown, the fish the mark page names through the year, the ranges and baits it gives, the tide and weather it favours, and its warning about swell.States this directlyPassage read and verified

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

Share this page