I understand completely why so many bass anglers love fishing with surface lures, indeed my thoughts on what constitutes the most exciting way to catch these fine fish tends to depend on the style of lure fishing I seem to have been doing the most mixed with whatever I happen to be working on at the time. One day I think surface hits are the absolute best, the next day I think the “wrench” when a bass grabs your soft plastic is the shizzle, and today I happen to think that really hard bang, or tap, tap, bang you get when a bass nails your soft plastic which is bumping along the bottom in a decent run of current is the mutt’s nuts…………….

I don’t know how many of you reading this post ever fish for bass in this way, but it tends to work in a number of places I might fish, and I absolutely love it. A very talented Irish angler was the first person I ever saw doing it properly with lures, and it was over in Ireland where I did so much of my early bass fishing on lures where this way of catching bass really started to bang home to me. Some of the best bass fishing sessions I have ever experienced and/or been a part of have revolved around bumping soft plastics on jig heads in current - which usually tends to be somewhere within an estuary system. I can remember lure and indeed “bumping peeler crab” sessions where the fishing was so good that even now I look back and wonder if bass fishing can ever get much better than when it truly goes off like that.

I have been corresponding with a few really good anglers I know who have been doing really well recently by fishing like this, and it’s really got me thinking about it all over again. Surface fishing is of course gloriously visual, but I reckon I’ve got it nailed down why bumping lures along the bottom and then getting hit is so damn exciting as well. If you fish like this then you will know what I mean - either you are putting a bit of a sink and draw on your lure or else the water is relatively shallow and the current is that strong that you don’t even need to anything other than follow your lure by moving your rod tip around with it as it moves with the current. I have always likened this to Czech-nymphing from the fly fishing world where the current is working the lure for us. Because we fish with braid we can feel so much when our lure is bumping along the bottom - those taps and bumps and so on as your jig head bounces around on the sand or gravel or rocks etc. You get used to the feel of your lure bouncing along over whatever ground you are fishing, and then very suddenly you get a really hard tap, tap, whack - or just one hard whack - and before you can even strike properly your rod tip has slammed round hard as the fish picks your lure up and everything very suddenly goes even tighter in the current.

And if every bass is worth double in the surf, I would argue that every bass in fast current and shallowish water is worth at least double or even triple with how good the fight can be when you mix fish and current together. I remember when I went mahseer fishing in India and I was so excited because I had heard so much about how hard these legendary fish fight - and they do, but I would argue that they do because they can get really big and you’re so often catching them in really fast river currents. I saw a few mahseer landed which pulled proper string in the current, but the biggest one I hooked and landed (which for the life of me I can’t remember how big it was) was actually a bit of a letdown. I caught it where there was basically no current and I remember pulling the fish hard and winding it straight in because there was so little fight from the fish which didn’t have current to use. How much does that current in our bass fishing make our already glorious fish feel so much stronger again?

I have a very strong memory of an epic session a bunch of us had one day at the mouth of an estuary over on the south coast of Ireland. We were absolutely hammering bass in fast current on what would have been those lethal little 4.5’’ MegaBass XLayers fished on jig heads around the 20g weight. Damn those soft plastics are good and I am quite sure that plenty of anglers are still catching plenty of bass on them, but these days with what I do and what I have helped develop, a lot of the time now I’m going to fish one of the two different sizes/weights of Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless soft plastics (from the off I wanted to make sure this lure could be fished very effectively like this). I remain convinced that a rattle helps bass home in your lure when the current is moving particularly quickly, and whilst I haven’t seen an XLayer for a while now, I am guessing that they still come with rattles inside them? I also need to add the killer Fiiish Black Minnow to the mix here because we have had a lot of epic sessions on this lure in current, indeed some of the largest bass I have seen caught via bumping lures came on the Black Minnow.

Anyway, sorry, back to that session. We were on the ebb tide and we literally couldn’t stop catching bass. It was awesome. I can’t remember what the biggest fish landed was, but I can’t imagine it was more than 5lbs which is obviously a good bass any day or night of the week - and in all that current in pretty shallow water? Each and every hooked bass is a truly epic scrap and it’s a big part of why I so love catching bass in this way. My mate Andy who was standing next to me suddenly goes and hooks a bass and straight away you can see that it’s a completely different class of fish to what we’ve been catching. Andy isn’t afraid to pull his fish hard and he fishes with a nice, tight drag, but this thing was gone. From memory I think he was fishing with the Tenryu Red Luck Super Distance lure rod (now called the Super Distance I believe), and on this fish Andy’s rod went flat. Most bass anglers will have no idea what I’m talking about because they are afraid to put real pressure on a hooked bass, but Andy hooked this train in a really strong current and the top part of his rod went flat. I have seen this happen before with other fish abroad, and I knew straight away that Andy was hooked up to a rather special bass - which went and bloody well came off before he could get control. He did nothing wrong, his line was about as tight as can be, the fish was screaming off down the current - yes, I know, current exaggerates the size of fish, but give me some credit here, I have seen enough good fish around the world to know when one is hooked - and the hook popped out. I can still remember it like it was yesterday and it’s one of those lost bass I still think about. Yep, give me a good hit in current and I reckon it’s about as thrilling as bass fishing gets - depending on what day of the week it is of course!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Bumping lures along the bottom in a fast current - is there a more exciting hit and scrap in bass fishing?

© Henry Gilbey 2023