We found some pretty good open coast conditions a couple of days ago, but in a perfect world I’d have taken a bit more sea. The water was nice and green though and there was no weed at all to mess things up. Fairly early on I dropped what felt like a decent bass from an area that almost becomes a sort of whirlpool around high water when there’s a bit of sea running, but there had to be more fish around………….

The 13cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on the 3/0 5g Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head

I don’t know about you, but over a lot of fishing time I tend to come to various “conclusions” in my head that concern which rigging components seem to work best with specific lures. I really like the corkscrew-type weedless hook approach with the Gravity Stick soft plastics for example, and the same with the DoLive Stick. They just seem to look right in the water and a load of bass on these combinations obviously raises the confidence levels.

We all have our most trusted lures, and one paddletail which I always have in my lure box when I go out bass fishing these days is the Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad. You know that I work with Savage Gear who are owned by Pure Fishing these days, but I would hope that you also know from reading this blog that I go bass fishing with the gear I want to fish with because I trust in it. I may well have literally stumbled upon the Slender Scoop Shad on a Savage Gear press release, but I am so bloody glad I did. What was brought to market as a freshwater lure has become one of my go-to paddletails for bass fishing. You will be no different to me here with you trusting implicitly in certain lures.

I started off fishing these particular paddletails on belly-weighted weedless hooks, mainly the 6/0 ones we did for the Savage Gear Gravity Sticks which I like for the 13cm and 15cm Slender Scoop Shads (I tend to turn to the 4/0 hooks for the smaller 11cm size). I often fish them like this and I don’t think these particular paddletails swim right if you use no weight at all on them. Then I started to mess around with a cheb-rigged approach as you can see below, because I think that when you put the weight on the front of these Slender Scoop Shads, it changes the action to a more intense roll which I really like - and the bass obviously like as well which kinda helps! That weight at the front also opens up different techniques you can apply to the lure.

Then a friend finally convinced me to take the plunge with those rather clever Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig heads. You can check out the different sizes of these jig heads that I use with the different sizes of Slender Scoop Shads here if that helps. The cheb-rigged approach caught me a bunch of bass and it works really well, but the simple weedless jig head approach obviously simplifies things a bit, and I really, really like the way the Slender Scoop Shad swims on these specific Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig heads.

Anyway, so I dropped what felt like a decent fish a couple of days ago on the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on the 3/0 5g Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head. It casts pretty well as a combination, it looks fantastic in the water, I can swim it way shallower than I initially realised you could with the right design of jig head, and if need be I can also fish it with a sink and draw or bump it along the bottom and so on. I feel really confident with this lure and jig head combination on the end of my mainline in certain situations, so when I dropped that fish and hooked no more, I went for a wander. With the same lure/jig head.

I was moving along a beach on an ebbing tide, with various rocks and areas of structure out in front of me. There was a bit of bounce on the water but I stayed well back from the edge without even really thinking about it. I definitely put this down to having done so much of this more finesse, estuary based fishing this year when a much quieter and more measured approach pays off big time. I noticed a small gully in between two big rocks, and a while ago I’d have most likely gone right down to the water’s edge and waded out a bit to get to where the gully was a bit deeper.

But I didn’t. I held way back and instinctively decided to put my first cast into what looked like the shallowest part of the gully very close to the shoreline. I had the same lure and jig head clipped on from earlier when I dropped that bass, and as a combination it’s pretty good for accurate casting. Sometimes your first cast on a different bit of ground does actually go exactly where you intend, and literally as the lure hit the shallow water and I turned the handle to tighten up, my rod tip slammed over and the bass you can see above hit me (thanks Dave for the phone photo!). There wasn’t much of a scrap because the bass was almost out of the water straight away with it being so shallow and so close to the shoreline, but what a buzz. Everything came together in a split-second and I know I’d have most likely never even known that bass was there say last year because I’d have probably got too close and spooked it without even realising. Never stop learning, that’s my thing completely. You all have a good weekend and enjoy the autumn internationals if rugby floats your boat. Come on England, and come on Ireland v The All Blacks tomorrow night from Chicago……………….

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Amazing how this bass hit me in such shallow water and so close to the beach, all this estuary fishing is also helping my open coast fishing

© Henry Gilbey 2023