Do bass feed differently at night compared to how they do so during the day in estuary based current?

Various specific fishing sessions really stick in my head over the years, and it’s not always because the actual fishing or size of fish was particularly noteworthy. For me it’s sometimes when something doesn’t actually happen and that session ends up rattling around my brain and gets me thinking and evaluating and guessing, and I guess driving myself slightly more mad than I might already be……………….

A good few years ago a few of us fished a daytime estuary session in Dungarvan harbour on the south coast of Ireland. There were most likely four of us fishing, and we’d have been bumping Fiiish Black Minnows, MegaBass XLayers, and other similar lures (on jig heads) in a good run of current around the last couple of hours of the ebb on a spring tide. We were casting onto what I guess is sand or mud, with no snags that I ever remember, and when the bass fishing was on it was simply incredible. As it was that particular day. We absolutely smashed them. Good bass after good bass came to what I call tend to call “bumping” - a simple technique where you literally Czech-nymph (it’s from fly fishing, Google it) your soft plastic on a jig head down a run of current and basically let the current do the (bumping) work for you. It’s up to you whether you do a bit of gentle sink and draw on the lure, but in enough current and over a clean bottom, there’s more than enough action on the lure for you to simply maintain contact and then react to a hit. The hits are generally fantastic, and the scraps from decent fish are amazing in the strong current. I absolutely love bass fishing like this.

So we’re buzzing, and because the weather and tides are essentially the same that night, we make a plan to do exactly the same thing when it was dark. Which we did. Expectations were through the roof because the fishing during the day had been so incredible. The corresponding night tides could not come fast enough, and we were almost beyond ready…………..

And we blanked, and I mean properly blanked. From one of the best bass sessions you could ever hope to have during the day, to not even the hint of a hit on the same tides and weather, but in the dark. Same lures, same techniques, same anglers, same location, and we blanked. Both those Irish sessions have stuck in my head ever since. The first one for the quality of the fishing, and the second one because we had to have done something very wrong to have blanked. I refused to believe that so many (daytime) bass were suddenly doing a no-show just because it was dark, and I remain convinced to this day that the bass were actually there that night, but they were feeding differently - and we simply weren’t switched onto it.

I fished a session fairly recently in a Cornish estuary where Mark and I did really well during the day via bumping these Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures in current. I am starting to obsess about these lures which I think are a more than viable (and definitely cheaper) alternative to the lethal MegaBass XLayer (what I really want to find out next is how these Dragon Tail Slug lures might work where I’d be more normally fishing a creature bait, because they sit bolt-upright etc.). I want specific things from soft plastics which I am going to bump in estuary based current, and those things I want will change depending on the depth and makeup of the bottom and so on. Anyway, we had a bunch of bass on cheb-rigged 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures - during the day. Some nice fish as well.

So we made a plan to fish the corresponding tide that night. Same weather, very similar tide size, we were buzzing. We obviously fished the same techniques which had worked for us earlier that day, but the fishing wasn’t nearly as good. I had one nice bass - thank you Mark for holding the fish so I could get a few photos - and dropped one, and Mark also landed one. I know that no two sessions are going to fish the same, but once again that marked difference to day and night fishing specifically in estuary based current had reared its head.

Which obviously gets me thinking. If the bass were feeding on something which happened to be on the bottom during the day - crabs, prawns, sprat etc.? - then was the food source they had come in for at night either something different, or was the food source itself doing something different and perhaps not on the bottom or moving so close to it? I hear some anglers say that when bass are on they will hit anything, and I know what they mean at times. But when the bass are feeding in a specific way and we the anglers aren’t presenting the right type of lure at the right depth or in the right way? Bloody hell I’d love to be able to think like a fish because there is SO much I don’t know about all this. You all have a good weekend, good luck to the rather awesome Red Roses, you girls are something else! Our eldest girl is 21 today which I can’t quite believe……………..

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