One other thing comes to mind, this is a personal point of view: the importance of using two rods.

I have broached this subject before and I still believe it to be very important. We have become almost brainwashed into believing the necessity of casting a long way, with two rods you can afford to explore the really close in water. My experience has been it is often the rod fishing close in that gets the takes, whilst the distant rod lies dormant.

I know close to the beach is the home of bait fish, especially YEM's, isn't this what larger fish are looking for? I often see fish rising or jumping only a matter of twenty metres from shore, well my rod fishing 100 metres out isn't a lot of use is it?