Caught another February bass yesterday morning, still smiling!

Just to level things up yesterday morning after catching another rare February bass, I got a nice cold wave right in the face to stop me thinking that I am getting to grips with any of this! I am not going to get ahead of myself because this is only my second ever February for catching bass on lures in UK waters, but I would guess the fact that it’s been the last two years might say something about global temperatures and currents and so on. Or is it quite simply because when we get the right conditions down here there is always half a chance and I do like having a go?

I don’t have the answers, but I do know that both Mark and I had independently decided that we would have been a bit disappointed not to have seen a bass yesterday morning with the conditions we found - even though it’s February. It just looked so good. Within about five minutes of starting to fish the ebb tide, Mark radioed to say he got hit but didn’t hook up on the smallest 11cm size SG Slender Scoop Shad. I must have some here somewhere because Mark swears blind I gave him a couple of the smallest 11cm ones last year, but I guess I am getting old because for the life of me I can’t recall seeing one before Mark showed me his yesterday!

Anyway, we did our usual wandering around this particular reef, and to me the water starts looking seriously nice as the tide starts to drop and the water really starts swirling around that bit more as it gets almost squeezed through gullies and channels as more reef appears. I have just got hold of a couple of ABU spinning reels to have a go with which I had never seen before, so at one point yesterday morning I picked a rock I wanted to fish from for a bit, set my camera and a long lens up on a tripod, and set it up for shooting a few photos of myself dangling away. It doesn’t always work and it looks a bit daft, but it helps me get photos of various items of tackle being used in real fishing situations for blog posts and magazine articles and so on.

So I was rigged up with this ABU reel on the awesome little Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g lure rod (review to come), and because Mark got hit so early on in the session I dug out a Slender Scoop Shad in the 13cm size which I did have in my lure box. I have been fishing with these paddletails since February last year and that’s enough time and fish now for me to trust that there is something rather special about these particular soft plastics and how they work for bass fishing. I find myself turning to “my” Gravity Stick Paddletails and Pulsetails and then these Slender Scoop Shads for subtly different water conditions and wave shapes.

Anyway, my camera was hopefully firing away, and then bang, I got another one of those rather wonderful bass hits which you just can’t miss. Hard tap then proper bang, fish on. I pulled the hell out of the fish and I’m going to give it about 3lbs with the excellent condition it was in. I held the fish towards my camera for a few shots which I hoped might work, but Mark was kindly on the way after I had radioed him so that I could get a few decent “bass in hand in water” photos. I was fishing one of our 6/0 belly-weight weedless hooks with the barb crushed down as always, but the hook must have gone in particularly well because the lure never dropped out of the fish’s mouth as I was messing around with a few photos. Mark then kindly unhooked the bass and let it swim strongly away when I was done, and although we fished on for a while there were no more signs of any bass. I can’t imagine that this time of year is ever going to be a numbers game, but my first fish as a 50 year old “grownup” has had me smiling since I lucked out yesterday morning. March and the fact that it’s the one month I have not caught a bass on a lure sits there like a foul temptress!

This coming Monday evening (13th February) I am heading down to Wendron Football Club near Helston to give a brief talk for the hugely admirable Tight Lines charity. To quote from their website here: “Tight Lines is a Cornwall based non-profit Community Interest Company providing mental health support to the people of Cornwall, using the wonderful sport of fishing as the vehicle.” Check out their Facebook page here. Far too many people suffer far too much with mental health issues and it’s something I could hardly say no to, not with how I have always believed that going fishing is so good for you in so many different ways. Please come on down if you can, I believe I am talking at about 7.30pm. I don’t really know that part of Cornwall so I reckon I might pick a bit of coastline and go for a decent walk with Storm beforehand and see if I can find some bassy looking ground. You all have a good weekend because there are some seriously epic Six Nations matches on this weekend. Anybody else a little worried that Italy might do a job on us?

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