Had such a blast over in Guernsey - amazing ground, what a fascinating winter bass fishery

I have always stood by my belief that, for the most part, anglers are some mighty fine people. The lad who I have been corresponding with for a good while now didn’t need to reach out and invite me across to Guernsey to come and have a look at their winter bass fishing, but he did, and I am incredibly grateful. Thank you so much Simon and your lovely family for looking after me, plus I got to meet and fish with some other very friendly local anglers as well. I had such a great time and I have come back home with my brain bouncing away about the fact that seventy miles off the south coast of the UK is a beautiful place where the bass fishing is best at a time of year when it definitely isn’t in the UK………….

To be fair the other Channel Islands of Jersey, Alderney and Herm have essentially the same bass fishery, indeed we spent one glorious day on Herm when I was over in Guernsey. The tides were arguably a bit too big for my trip, but Simon and I hatched the plan based on when we could both do it. I got a really good taste of both the actual bass fishing and of course the amazing ground you get to fish over out there. Wow isn’t nearly enough. I get to fish for bass over a lot of exciting ground in Cornwall, Devon and Ireland, but the Channel Islands are somewhat unique with the tidal ranges, mad amount of current, and the sheer amount of ground you can access if you know what you are doing out there. Which I very much don’t I might add, and I put the bunch of February bass I managed to catch firmly down to Simon. Get it wrong with the extreme tidal range out there and you could get into serious trouble. I am really interested to hear that Simon de la Mare - the bloke who so kindly invited me over - is going to start a bit of bass guiding during the winter months when they get some of their best shore fishing. Contact Simon via email here if you are interested. Guernsey is a very easy place to get to and Simon can sort out accommodation etc. for you as well.

Bearing in mind that I got to sample about 1% of Guernsey’s shore based lure fishing for bass, I was pleased to see that the typical gear that we might use in our home waters is perfectly appropriate for the waters over there. For sure you might be accessing a lot more current than you could be used to, but it’s still bass you are targeting, and lots of the ground is pretty shallow and extremely rough. Get ready for a lot of walking and scrambling over some hectic terrain at times - studded boots are absolutely essential - and our day on Herm was pretty physical which I absolutely loved. There are no cars on Herm so you need to walk to any of the fishing you do, and because there is so much water moving in and out you end up spending generally shortish amounts of time at each spot before you are heading for the next vantage point. I love this type of fishing because it feeds to the whole point of lure fishing to me - moving around and always doing something - but if you don’t like walking, scrambling and wading I would personally look to fish other waters.

The SGS5 9’ 12-46g 4-piece travel rod that I took performed perfectly - review to come - indeed there’s an argument that it’s a slightly better rod than the already awesome 2-piece version. Both are almost ridiculous amounts of rod for the money. If I had taken the ferry with my Epic Berlingo instead of flying like I did I’d have most likely taken a few 2-piece lure rods because they can obviously sit in the car boot, but that SGS5 travel rod is awesome. I paid for a 23kg piece of hold luggage on the Aurigny flight to and from Exeter and I managed to take all that I needed. Waders, wading boots, waterproof jacket, a few clothes, a couple of travel rods in a tube, a couple of spinning reels, plus a bunch of different lures. My camera gear and laptop and so on was in my Savage Gear waterproof rucksack which I carried with me as a cabin bag.

A couple of the lads I fished with a good bit over there have been doing really well on their winter bass with the Longin Hi-Standard 120F (19g) and 120S (21g) hard lures, and especially the 120S in the red-head colour at night. I don’t have any of these lures myself, but they do look rather nice and I can’t argue with the amount of bass these lures have caught for the guys. I took what I tend to think of as a regular selection of hard and soft lures and I don’t recall ever wishing that I had something else with me because a specific mark called for it. I was really pleased to bang a lovely bass out of a racing bit of current running over a causeway on a cheb-rigged 15cm Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad in the white colour. I had put this on because the winter sun was rather gloriously beaming away and I do like a white lure in the sunshine. Damn that particular hit felt good!

I didn’t land anything of much size when I was over there, but I did drop what felt like a bit of a better fish on a hard lure which again I know the lads over there have done really well on - the Berkley DEX Long Shot 14s (14cm, 21.8g). I didn’t have a white one with me so I clipped on the cotton candy colour because of the sunshine. It’s one of those hard lures which you want to cast at that sort of 75% smooth power, and then it tends to fly. Very grippy, a stunning action, I reckon it swims at a similar depth to the IMA Hound 125F Glide, and whilst I am not for one second trying to claim that this DEX Long Shot lure is another Hound Glide, for a good bit less money it can do a fairly similar thing.

Most of the bass I caught around Herm came on the smaller 10cm Savage Gear Gravity Shallow hard lure. I am over the moon with what Markos Vidalis did with these very long-casting, very shallow swimming hard lures. Both the 10cm and the 11.5cm versions absolutely fly, indeed the 11.5cm is easily up there with the Hound Glide when it comes to pure distance. The Gravity Shallow lures are designed to swim nice and shallow with a subtle but intense and very stable action, and I really like the colours Markos made. The treble hooks are brilliant and a few Herm bass smashed into them with a lot of February relish! Which was nice.

Simon has also been doing well on the Samson Lures Stealth Glide in the 28g size. He tends to use the white one but changes over to the black colour either at night when there is a bit of moon showing and when fishing over sand especially, or when it’s overcast during the day. He is fishing it much like you’d fish a needlefish - whack it out, wind it in, tight little wiggle just sub-surface - and like all Samson Lures I have seen it absolutely frigging flies. I also noticed that his surface lure of choice is by a long way one of the Xorus Patchinko family. Generally the 140, but very much open to the smaller 125 and 100 sizes when required. I do know that Simon has nailed bass off the top in every month of the year over in Guernsey. You all have a good weekend, catch you next week……….

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