Far more experienced anglers than me tell me that these are bass feeding holes

I was warming down after a run the other day when a friend drove past and then stopped for a yap. If there’s an out of the way fishing spot around here that he doesn’t know about I’d be very surprised, and he started telling me about a rather secluded and off the beaten track area that I needed to go and check out for my bass fishing. Especially with this crab imitation lure stuff he added…………….

And then he said something along the lines of this: “I know there are bass around there at the moment because I was wandering around the other day and I saw their feeding holes all over the place”. In between my gasping for air and drinking some water after my run, I said “er, backup a second there please, bass feeding holes? What on earth are you on about?”. “You know, those holes on the bottom where the bass have been rooting around for crabs and it leaves these telltale signs when the tide’s out”.

“No, I know nothing about this, please tell me (a lot) more!” So he did, and it makes so much sense. I have searched all over Google and I can find nothing about these feeding holes, but a couple of local lads I know swear by these holes being created by bass feeding I guess head-down on food sources like crabs where they might need to root around hard and I guess almost blow stuff out of the way to get at what they want to eat - as evidenced by the build up of darker coloured mud and shale to the side of the holes. I put a post up on my Facebook page and some knowledgeable bass anglers chimed in to agree with what these visible holes are, but some anglers disagreed and said they are caused by other means. Suggestions included mullet feeding signs, flounder, crabs burying away etc.

So I took my friend’s advice and went out to this place for a look. I did miss a good bass hit that I should very much not have missed (your mother was a man!) when I was fishing a creature bait over some gorgeous looking ground, and then as I started to walk out of there when the tide was right out I suddenly remembered about these bass feeding holes my friend had been on about. So I started looking for them, and there they were, literally right in front of me and for the most part very close to areas of bladderwrack where I guess any shore crabs would feel safest when the tide’s in and predators are on the hunt. If these local and very experienced anglers who have been out and about around this kind of ground literally all their lives tell me that these holes are caused by feeding bass then I see no reason to disagree. What it does give me is a lot of food for thought about how I might target an area like this as I start to try and get to grips with it………………

For reference, the above are what I have always called mullet scrapes after being alerted to them back in my Plymouth uni days when night fishing nearly every night of the week AND then getting into daytime mullet fishing came very close to me completely flunking my degree!