Do you have any plans to try something a bit different with your bass fishing this year?

I haven’t been lure fishing for bass since before I was born like some of the social media experts so obviously have - ouch! - but I had a quick look right back into my massive photo library and I reckon that chasing these spiky fish with lures has consumed me now for more than twenty years. I didn’t actually realise it was that long, yet here I am, still obsessed with these amazing fish like so many of you here, and here I am still making plans and thinking about different stuff I know I need to try because there is still so much to keep learning and enjoying…………..

And it’s that word “enjoyment” which I think is so important here. I have very little interest in being a bass fishing hero because I went and caught a particularly heavy or long bass. They say that greater wisdom comes with greater age or something like that, and one thing I do know is that I am simply not interested in any kind of toxic male fishing masculinity where the size or length of your fish defines you as a person or an angler. And yes, you can change one word in the previous sentence if you so please. Fishing is surely meant to all about enjoying yourself and enjoying other anglers getting a kick out of going fishing.

So we’ve got this one single species which I know a lot of us obsess about. Here I am, 20+ years into an obsessive journey, and this one species of fish is still giving me various opportunities to do different stuff and mix things up. For sure you could quite happily fish surface lures over a shallow bit of reef for evermore if that floats your boat enough, but it’s not enough for me. I didn’t know how fascinating the one species of saltwater fish could be when I started to fall for their spiky charms, and I could easily list you a bunch of different things I will be trying this year. Different locations, different types of locations, different lures, different techniques, you name it I am up for it.

I am very happy taking various gambles. Because if there is one thing I don’t mind doing is either blanking or not catching monster bass all the time which the internet experts do all the time anyway. Ouch again Henry! I might add that I don’t mind not doing particularly well if I feel that I am learning something new. That to me is the crux here. I can go fishing a fair bit because I work for myself and I am not bound by regular 9-5 hours or shift work etc., I live fairly close to a lot of varied fishing ground so it’s rarely a big mission to go and take that punt, and I really, really enjoy learning new fishing related stuff.

So I have various plans for this year, chief among them being my urge to see what I might be able to do with a creature bait type approach out on the open coast. I don’t mean fishing with crab imitation lures all the time when I am trying this, because part of this approach has to revolve around experimenting with the actual lures and how they present. Nope, what I mean is refining an estuary based approach to a slower and more deliberate way of lure fishing to see if I can get it to work in specific open coast situations when I would tend to more usually struggle - such as the early flood tide on a good few open coast marks for example. A time in the tide when I don’t tend to do that well unless there is a proper surf running.

How about you though? Any specific plans to try something different this year? I am currently torn between excitement at the bass fishing year ahead and what I think was the best Six Nations tournament I can remember. Let’s not cry about England and instead let’s celebrate the sheer unpredictability of such an awesome sport. And bass fishing.