First bass of the season, ‘twas not a monster, couldn’t care less, really rather pleased!

I must admit to being rather sceptical that the forecast from a few days ago would remain like that, but it did, and I was at the location I had been thinking about for 5.15am this morning. It looked really good with a bit of SW wind on it - how we have missed you SW winds! - and the forecast was for it to get nicer and nicer until it’s meant to get properly wild for a few hours later this afternoon I believe. On went a 150mm Sandeel Pencil SW in that rather lovely Sayoris colour, and out it went. Luckily there was nobody else around at 5.15am this morning because I was literally shaking with excitement at the conditions and the state of the tide and basically everything - until my first cast came in and the lure and most of my line was smothered in that horrible green weed.

The weed was all over the rocks to be fair and I did wonder if the sea might be full of it. Another couple of casts later and a further few hundred pounds of green weed and I knew I had a problem. I looked at Storm, she looked at me, she knew something was up, but for the dog it was going to be a lovely yomp back up the cliffs and on to a different spot to try and get away from the worst of the weed and take advantage of such stunning conditions. Storm was happy, I was chuntering away, and on the way back to my Epic Berlingo I was thinking about how fascinating it is when each start to a bass season can be so different, and how you start to doubt your abilities and decision making and all that vital fishing sort of stuff. Perhaps you yourself do not, but I would suggest that the first bass of a new season often feels like a weight off your shoulders because you can actually still find fish like you used to last season……………

I texted Mark to say don’t come to where we had planned to meet - I think he was having a bit of a lie in! - and that I was going to move to a different spot and see you later sort of thing. Storm and I got down the cliffs to the new location and the surf was starting to build rather nicely. A few casts in and there was still a fair bit of weed around but it was definitely fishable. It made sense to change over to a lure with a big single hook on the back rather than a treble or two. I had a White Pearl colour 30g Surf Seeker in my lure box rigged with the single hook that comes with it - barbs crushed flat of course - so I clipped it on and sent it out there with a little chuckle that tends to come when I fish with these lures because of how far they fly with a mere flick of the rod.

A few casts later and everything went wonderfully solid. I hit the fish, the rod arched over, and braid started peeling off a really tight drag. Okay, so that’s not entirely true, but a fish did jump on the end. The rod very much didn’t arch over though, and to be perfectly honest it wasn’t that easy to feel the thing scrapping away in the increasing turbulence, but I had a fish on, and in no time at all my first bass of the 2021 season was unhooked and swimming away. If the fish was four times the size of my Seeker that might still be a bit of an exaggeration, but the monkey’s off my back and at least there are signs of life local to me. I note with interest that the website I use to check the Plymouth water temperature said that it hit 10°C for the first time this year on Saturday 1st May, and this morning it’s given as 10.2°C. There are surely many different factors involved with catching that first tiny bass this morning, but as per a recent blog post here I would suggest that water temperatures are at least of some interest.

Mark turned up a bit later and I shouted across that I had landed my first rather small bass of the year. He was obviously picking up some weed as well because pretty quickly he went back to his rucksack for a sneaky lure change. Out he went into the surf again and a few seconds later I heard a yelp of excitement and turned to my left to see his rod over and into a fish. As per above it’s not exactly a record breaking bass, but a fish is always a fish and what’s not to love about your first bass of a new bass season? It was also considerably larger than my little monster from earlier on! I ran back to my rucksack to grab my camera and I was really pleased to see a Sandeel Pencil 125 hanging out of the fish’s gob - Mark’s first chuck with the lure this morning and this bass was the result (is that wound in the fish’s side the result of a bird attack?).

We fished on for a while and I then suggested another move which found some seriously stunning looking water yet no more bass. But it’s started around here for us and I could not be happier or more buzzed up. We had a pretty hard frost here in south east Cornwall yesterday morning and it seems like the weather can’t make up its mind at all, but a shift to what I would call a proper wind direction, a subtle nudge in the water temperature, and as if by magic we found a couple of bass. We will never come close to knowing it all and it really interests me how our season can go right into January if we get the conditions, yet other parts of the UK which have finished on the bass way before then have been throwing up fish while it’s been quiet around here recently. Bring it on as they say………….

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