First (small) bass of the new season, it made me smile for so many reasons

After what turned out to be a bad call on Monday morning, I liked the look of the forecast for Wednesday morning - a shift around from NW to W/SW winds which on my local coastline should get a bit of bounce on the water. It was set to then shift to SW 6-8 later in the day so I did a bit of thinking and came up with a plan to fish over the high water in the morning in case it got too hectic later on. The timings also worked out with being able to get up early and clear some work, plus I needed to be around in the afternoon to pick my girls up……………

Last year seemed to be a bit abnormal with how late things got going and things feel a bit different/better so far this year, but I continue to wonder what my first ever UK bass in February might mean in the longer term. I chose to concentrate on a couple of spots which have both turned up early April bass for me in the past. I wasn’t quite sure what sort of sea conditions I would find out there so I had a primary location in mind, and then a backup if there was too much sea rolling in. If both of those marks were too rough or coloured to fish then I’d have to do a bit of driving and thinking to come up with another plan.

So I ended up fishing the backup mark for various reasons, and I managed to land the one small bass which had me grinning from ear to ear. Now one small bass isn’t exactly going to change my life, but from my point of view here in south east Cornwall, that one small bass just about made my week. I don’t know how the bass fishing season as such might pan out now, but catching my first bass of what I think of as the new season on April 6th ties in with roughly when I tend to see my first bass in what might pass for a “normal” fishing year. The world may well be many miles away from anything approaching normal at the moment, but to catch a bass from a local mark in great conditions really gives me a boost to really start getting myself out there as much as possible now.

MY GO-TO BASS LURES

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MY GO-TO BASS LURES **

And if fishing is so much about confidence, then surely part of that gaining confidence is knowing that a different way of rigging a lure does actually work. We are all very different people and I had a number of people questioning whether this rigging system would work when I posted some stuff up on Facebook a while ago, but firstly a good angler got me thinking about it and it works just fine for him, and secondly I am perfectly prepared to try different stuff and risk missed fish on my quest to learn more and give myself more options. You might not feel like this and that’s just fine, but this lure fishing thing does it for me because I love the whole learning journey thing.

With the conditions I faced on Wednesday morning at the (backup) mark I chose to fish, I was restricted in how much water I could cover because there were some serious sets of waves rolling in - which I might add simply do not show up in these photos I was shooting of myself fishing and by pure chance I went and caught the one (epic) bass at exactly the right time! I had to keep well back from the sea and only fish one part of the mark because it would have been foolish to do otherwise. You will notice that I am wearing my Crewsaver Crewfit 180 Pro HD lifejacket, but it was just Storm and I on the rocks and I don’t want to end up in the sea if I can help it - lifejacket or not.

So I had to work out how best to fish the water I could cover. My go-to hard lure in any kind of bounce like this would always be the Hound Glide, but even that was struggling a bit with the strong side winds and the way the waves were catching my braid and constantly trying to wash the lure onto the rocks. The logical lure to turn to was the 33g/13cm Sandeel V2 Weedless because I wanted something with a relatively slim profile on a jig head which would swim that bit deeper and not be so affected by the conditions (I’d have been fine with the J-hook version where I was fishing if I had had any in one of my two lure boxes which sit at my side). I know the Sandeel V2 Weedless really well by now and I know how well it performs in really bouncy conditions - other soft plastics perform well in these conditions of course! - so I did fish it for a while and it coped how I knew it would. But I’ve always got other stuff that I want to or indeed need to keep trying and learning about……………

Back in early March I wrote a blog post with the title “Casts well, swims well, bumps well, but is this style of rigging going to effectively hook fish?”, and this way of rigging my beloved Gravity Stick Paddletail came to mind with all that bounce and side wind and fizzed up green water on Wednesday morning. I was still waiting on my first bass of the season but the conditions felt so good that it didn’t remotely feel like a gamble to go back to my rucksack and dig a 5/0 20g Savage Gear Ball Jig Head out of the old chewing gum container I keep them in. It’s very noticeable how well the lure goes out when rigged on a 20g jig head like that, and wow the thing “grips” so effectively in what were some properly hectic conditions. No better I might add than something like the Sandeel V2 lures, but how am I ever going to know if this different way of rigging is going to work for me if I don’t try it? I didn’t need to fish like this, but I am interested to do so for any number of different reasons.

Bear in mind then that I am taking a bit of a punt here. If you read that blog post I linked to above then it’s all very well knowing that other anglers catch bass like this, but you know just as well as I do that you need to catch on something different yourself to trust it and not just fish it for a few casts and change over again. How confident do I now feel that the very first bass which hit me on this Gravity Stick Paddletail rigged like this hooked up without any worries and became my first (small) bass of the 2022 season? It looks like the J-hook might prevent the soft plastic from moving enough to give the fish enough hook to get hooked up, but the first hit from a fish and it was very much on. Who knows how my playing around with this might go, but damn it helps that the very first time I got hit resulted in a landed bass. What it also does is help me with my thinking about future lures and lure rigging systems related work. I could go into more reasons why that first small bass of the season made me so happy, but I have gone on long enough already! You all have a good weekend and I will see you next week…………

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