First open coast session since I got back from Ireland, found a bunch of fish, I did some happy yelping!

Don’t you just love it when you scan part of a mark and pick a very specific spot where you want your first few casts to land, and it actually goes and works? Everything about the forecast and the conditions I subsequently found made me feel positive about finding a few fish, but with how seriously up and down my local open coast has been with bass and loads of weed, plus I’ve been away for a couple of weeks - what was I actually going to find? I will quite happily take small tides on certain marks in my local area, so even Storm was slightly taken aback at my gazelle-like skipping down the cliffs to the water’s edge yesterday afternoon…………

And straight away there was this one, very obvious looking, specific spot I simply had to cover. A lot of bouncy white water was rushing in between some rocks, but of course that water then has to go somewhere when it’s done its rushing in - which in turn creates plenty of temporary currents and extra turbulence as this water rushing out meets the new water rushing in. I do what I talk about on this blog and I had rigged up a 15cm Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad on the heavier 5/0 15g Xorus Texas Power jig heads I had bought recently and blogged about earlier in the week. On the slightly smaller 4/0 15g Xorus Texas Power jig heads I had then rigged up a smaller 13cm Slender Scoop Shad. I was going with the heavier heads to allow for the bouncy sea conditions and the extra “grip” I felt I would need.

It was just me and my sheepdog Storm with nobody else around, and she knows to wait for me if I go wading out to various rocks and features. I will admit to thinking I might have snagged up the 15cm Slender Scoop Shad and my nice new shiny jig head about four or five casts into my session, but when the “snag” thumped back I yelped. I don’t remotely profess to being a bass fishing expert, but I would hope that most bass anglers would have spotted exactly what I spotted yesterday afternoon, and then put their lure exactly into that meeting of waters rushing in and rushing out. Unhooking and releasing a very plump and angry sand-coloured bass of 3lb+ had me grinning like a loon and I was only a few casts in.

I pulled another slightly larger bass out of the same bit of turbulence and then went wandering around as I started losing the water. I ended up with a few more bass up to about 5lbs, and at one point there must have been a big shoal of very small fish right in front of me because I was getting hits and plucks on every cast. One of the small bass did manage to impale itself on my 30g Surf Seeker so I took the lure off because I didn’t want to end up hauling in loads of undersize bass. I went back to the Slender Scoop Shad and giggled at the endless plucks. You don’t see any photos of the bass I caught yesterday because there were no rockpools to retain the fish in and I couldn’t even do a “hand in the mouth of the fish” shot in the water because there was too much surge on. I refuse to do any more harm to a fish I intend to return just because I might want a photo or two.

I doubt that it’s unique to the Slender Scoop Shad, but I obviously notice things about these paddletails because I fish with them a lot - when they want them, the bass absolutely slam them. The other day I told you how much I liked how these lures look in the water when rigged on those Xorus Texas Power jig heads, but it was quickly evident yesterday how much the “head” of the soft plastics were getting torn up from a bass slam where they sit on the jig head right behind the weight. I don’t pay for my Slender Scoop Shads but that doesn’t change a thing. I will always try to get as much life out of my fishing tackle as possible so I will repair the torn Slender Scoop Shads.

And I am going to start rigging soft plastics on these specific jig heads like you can see above and below and see where I get with it. I know it looks a touch unwieldy, but the unavoidable fact is that soft plastics rigged via a hitch-hiker/corkscrew last a lot longer around the head area. Rigging a Slender Scoop Shad or Gravity Stick Paddletail (there are other paddletails of course, but I like these ones!) like this obviously means that the hook doesn’t sit as far back in the body of the lure, so bear in mind that the photos you see above and below are of the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad on the larger 5/0 Xorus Texas Power jig heads that I bought. I can’t ignore the weather forecast and resulting conditions out on the open coast so I shall be giving this gear another swim today. If you see what you think is a gazelle skipping down the cliffs and you are amazed at the sheer speed and agility this magnificent animal shows, it could well me be! You all have a good weekend.

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