As much as I am enjoying the discovery of so much more estuary fishing than I ever realised, heading for the open coast is always magical

I am in a constant dilemma these days, and I am sure that your heart is going to bleed for me! Do I keep on trying to scratch numerous estuary bass fishing related itches - keep learning, that’s obviously my thing - when I also really fancy the conditions for an open coast session, or do I give in to my desires for a few waves in the face and get out there on the reefs, boulders, cliffs and beaches? Far too many people on this amazing planet seem to be hating each other more and more these days, which in turn makes me think it’s even more important to do something as simple and life-affirming as going fishing…………….

The other day I simply could not say no to an open coast session. I know I was in Ireland for a couple of weeks, but I always keep a close eye on the forecast and conditions for various areas I might fish around home. The forecast promised the first bit of bounce for a while, so I made the call to get up early and access a stretch of very good looking open coastline the moment the receding waters would let me get around to it. My sheepdog Storm is nearly 14 and I still take her fishing a lot, but on this mark I chose there’s a bit of a climb which she couldn’t get up even in her prime and I can’t really carry her plus a rod at the same time. So it was me, myself and I. And yes, I obviously took some early morning saltwater in the face as I pushed the ebb tide to try and access the ground as early as possible.

It did feel so good to find bounce and fizz and lovely green water with very little weed to mess things up. A S/SE wind made the presentation of certain lures a bit tricks on some parts of the mark, but I settled on the larger Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless to keep me down in the water a bit, and soon enough I got one of those wonderful hits which you can’t really miss. I don’t really like dead-lifting a bass on something as fragile as a modern lure rod, but I couldn’t get down to the water’s edge and as carefully as I could I lifted a bass around the 4.5lb mark up the rocks and into a rockpool for unhooking. Damn that felt good!

I kept on moving around to cover different bits of ground, expecting more fish with the conditions, but for some reason not finding any more until later on as the tide began to really strip right out. As much as possible I turn to soft plastics for my bass fishing for various reasons, and especially because I far prefer the simplicity of the single (barbless) hook. But where I was now standing felt like hard lure territory, so I clipped on a lure I haven’t fished with for a while but which I am still convinced hooked me my biggest ever bass over in Ireland a good few years ago - the IMA Nabarone 125F. That particular bass still haunts me from time to time, and especially because a mate had his trebles straightened out on another bass during the same session.

Anyway, so I clipped on the exact IMA Nabarone 125F you can see above. I would normally remove the middle treble from any hard lure which carries three of them - barbs are obviously always crushed - but there seems to be a select few hard lures which I don’t think swim quite correctly when you remove a treble and/or change over to singles. The IMA Nabarone 125F is one of those lures for me, but obviously I can’t prove if any potential modifications do actually make a difference. It’s only a feeling I get.

I got nailed on my second or third cast with the lure, almost right beneath my feet. I got the bass to me and into a rockpool for unhooking, but I could see that the lure was way down the throat of the fish. Even with barbless hooks I knew it was going to be a tricky unhooking, but I gave it a (gentle) go. The rear treble had got entangled with the gills though, and when a load of that thicker blood started coming out of the gills I took the immediate decision to do the humane thing and dispatch the bass. I will always return bass whenever possible, but at the end of the day as anglers we stick hooks in fish for our enjoyment - and it ain’t always going to work out for the fish. However much we try to mitigate against it. I haven’t fished a diving hard lure like this for a while and this happens.

When I got home I weighed the bass at 3lbs dead, and when I gutted it I found a single shore crab in the stomach as you can see above. Don’t shoot me for putting a photo up like this please, it’s part and parcel of taking fish to eat if you choose to do so, or if you need to because you can’t return the fish. My wife and youngest girl had a fantastic supper out of this fine fish, and guess what I was thinking while they were eating the bass and I was eating some delicious leftover chicken curry my awesome wife had made the day before? Two open coast bass I have seen gutted or gutted myself in the last week or so, and both contained a shore crab. More plans are germinating in my already addled brain……………

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