Catching bass between the biggest lines of swell rolling in

The surf height that was forecast for Wednesday afternoon somewhat underestimated what we found rolling in, to the point that Mark and I had to tuck away somewhere we hadn’t intended to fish. I liked the tide and so on, although ideally we wanted to fish elsewhere but knew we would not be able to properly access the ground. So we tucked away, and even then it was often a case of literally standing there and waiting for the biggest sets to roll on in before casting a lure out there……………..

And it worked, although if we had hooked a really big bass I don’t reckon we’d have landed it. I don’t know what the limits for lifting fish out of the water are on the sort of lure rods we all tend to go bass fishing with, but I don’t fancy trying to deadlift a really hefty bass on any of them. At one point I deadlifted a bass around 3lbs or so on a sample rod I am trying out with no hassle, but much bigger? I didn’t really want to, but I had no choice where I was having to stand to stay safe and out of the way of some really big lines of swell crashing around.

You know how much I love taking photographs of fishing, but my one eternal frustration is that you can never really show the true and sometimes very impressive size of the sea when you have an angler in the foreground and the sea doing its thing in the background. For sure it can look amazing, but a photograph can’t do justice to the walls of water rolling in at us on Wednesday afternoon. We were perfectly safe because we chose to do the sensible thing, but even then we spent a fair amount of time standing there with our lures dangling off the ends of our rods, waiting for the right moment to actually fish.

There was so much water rushing around that the obvious lure to go for was the IMA Hound 125F Glide. The lure was coping with the conditions just fine, but there was just enough weed in the water to make fishing with a couple of treble hooks on a hard lure a real pain, so I ended up fishing with and catching on the heavier 13cm/33g Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless. All I was doing was wait for some less hectic sets to roll in, then whack the lure out and wind it in at a medium sort of speed with my rod tip up rather than down.

Eventually the light went absolutely loopy so I put my fishing gear down and shot the living daylights out of Mark doing the fishing. For a few minutes the sky was like a multicolour roof to the world before petering out and clouding right over. We caught a bunch of bass from a location we were kinda forced to fish, I was glad for once that bigger bass didn’t turn up and mess with our attempts to land them in such conditions, and I got to witness one of the most impressive end to a day that I have seen for a while. Not sure how I feel about the 3rd/4th place playoff tonight, but it’s England so I will obviously watch it. As I will the final tomorrow night. It’s been an epic Rugby World Cup but I am still gutted not to have had an Ireland v France final with Ireland winning it for the first time. You all have a good weekend and I hope you get on a few fish wherever you are and however you choose to chase them…………..

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