Haven’t been broken off by a bass for a while, gutted!

The fish I lost last night isn’t going to haunt me because I don’t think it was a bass of one’s dreams, but it’s niggling me that I didn’t get to see it. That not knowing is worming its way into my brain. I can’t remember the last time a bass broke me over a bit of reef, but it went and happened last night over some shallow rocky ground…………….

How about this for some cunning planning though? I went for a 6am dog walk yesterday morning and then ran a nice, steady 5k so I wouldn’t be tired for the gym based heart rehab session I usually do on an early Tuesday evening. You can tell who the heart attack people are in the gym because we are all working on the various machines from our sheets of paper which have our individual rehab programmes laid out on them. I haven’t done any night fishing for a while now, but these calm and overcast conditions I feel very much lend themselves to going out bass fishing when it’s dark on the open coast especially. I consulted my tide and wind apps, had a bit of a think, and came up with a plan to go straight from my gym session to a location I haven’t fished all year. It wasn’t very far from the gym and I reckoned I could make it for just after high water last night and fish a bit of the ebb.

So I did my gym stuff and in my sweaty state I jumped into my Epic Berlingo and headed for the coast. There was a hint of drizzle in the air and the conditions looked really misty and murky. It’s a decent walk from the car to the fishing spot, and I had to get changed out of my gym stuff and into my fishing gear in the back of the Berlingo. On the walk I could feel the gym session in my legs, but I was bouncing away with the excitement at getting out night fishing. I was pretty sure there’d be no other anglers around because I didn’t see any cars, and sure enough I rocked up to a quiet beach and a gentle bit of chop rolling in.

I will more often than not clip on a Gravity Stick Pulsetail in white when I start a night fishing session on the open coast in calm conditions, and these days I tend to borrow from Marc Cowling of South Devon Bass Guide with how he tends to very specifically rig these killer soft plastics. I vividly remember the first night time bass I caught on the final samples of the Gravity Stick Pulsetail which I had rigged on one of the 6/0 3g belly-weight weedless hooks we specifically did for the original Gravity Sticks. I had such a good feeling about what the lure was doing in the water and when it went and worked I was over the moon. When Marc told me how he rigs the 12cm Pulsetail for night fishing I obviously went and tried it. It worked and the level-sink you get like this makes a lot of sense to me. Take either size of the Gravity Stick Pulsetail and rig it with the larger 6/0 3g hook. Stick one of the weight inserts which comes in the packet or original kit into the slot which is just underneath the lure where you can see in the photo above. Ready to fish. I really like white lures at night but you might like a different colour of course.

Anyway, I clipped this exact lure setup on last night and whacked it out. A few turns into my first retrieve and a fish tries to literally pull the rod out of my hands. I don’t know if I messed up and missed the fish or if it simply didn’t get its mouth properly around the hook, but I was so shocked I am pretty sure I did at least something wrong! I definitely got a dose of the shakes and it wasn’t because I had pushed it so hard in the gym. I checked the lure and cast out again, then a few casts later I got a sharp bang on the rod tip. Another few casts and I landed and released a small bass around the 2lbs mark.

So I moved around a bit and had a few more taps from what I presume were small bass. That first cast wrench was slightly playing on my mind and then it all went very quiet for a good while. I wasn’t going to fish a long session but I kept saying to myself one more cast, one more cast, and eventually I ended up where I had made that first cast of the night. I had tried a couple of different lures when it went quiet, but towards the time when I was intending to walk back to my car I clipped the white Gravity Stick Pulsetail back on. By now the water was really dropping away and I know that there would be a few tips of the reef starting to stick out of the water not far from where I was standing.

A while later and not very far out my lure is very suddenly engulfed and my rod tip slams over. I couldn’t have missed that bass if I had tried to. I can hear some big splashing on the surface not very far out and the fish feels very solid. My rod tip bangs over again and again and then it all goes horribly slack. I wound in to find that my braid had parted above the leader knot, so I must presume that the fish hit me almost from behind a bit of very shallow reef which was most likely starting to expose. You know as well as I do that sharp rock and tight braid usually means only one result. I kept on fishing for a while and never had another touch, all the while obviously churning over that lost fish and how big it might have been. I only got a second or two on the fish so I couldn’t get a proper feel for the weight, but of course that little bastard on my shoulder is telling me that it could well have been a serious fish. I will never know and I don’t quite think it was a bass to haunt me, but I know it’s going to niggle for a while……………..

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