Helping our lads catch bass over some of the most gorgeous shallow rough ground you could ever hope to fish

I get the impression that there might be a slightly macho male thing about the use of wading sticks for saltwater fishing, but when you are trying to negotiate the sort of ground that a lot of bass anglers do, they are absolutely invaluable. Out here in Kerry there is a lot of the most gorgeous shallow rough ground you could ever hope to fish, indeed it’s almost slightly daunting choosing where to chase bass at times. Perfect bass ground, but very tricky underfoot with loads of weed and boulders and slippery little sods of rocks, and I cannot tell you how much easier it is to move around with a wading stick…………

John Quinlan makes a lot of good decisions on his local patch, and our lads have had a bunch of bass in very, very shallow water. It’s such a buzz to be around your anglers and see them get hit, and these autumn bass we are seeing feel so heavy for their size. I am picking some of them up to unhook them and it’s like they are 50% heavier than you would expect. There seems to be a good amount of food around here and the bass are obviously reaping their predator rewards.

One lure I will be buying when I get back home is the Xorus Asturie. I have been very aware of this interesting looking surface lure for a long time, but I am pretty sure I have never owned or used one for my bass fishing. One of our lads out here has had a few fish on his Asturie 110 and I really like the look of how it tracks across the surface in calmer conditions with a slight chop on it. But then I think back to our first group and the little Savage Gear Pop Walker 2.0 90 was hammering bass when conditions went a bit calmer. Damn this lure fishing thing is bad for my wallet!

But for the most part we have been finding more bass fishing sub-surface when targeting the really shallow ground over the last few days. Dave was fishing with a surface lure and John changed him over to the (absolutely frigging deadly) Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad 13cm on the 6/0 belly-weight hook. How many times does a lure change produce a fish? Dave’s first cast with the new lure produced this bass for him above.

Another of our lads had never caught a bass on a soft plastic before. Mike hammers fish on surface lures from his boat back at home, but we got him rigged up with the Slender Scoop Shad to effectively fish over such rough ground - and bang, he caught this cracker of a bass above. When you read this it will be the last day with our second group, then we get a changeover day and our third group arrives. I love being out here and I seem to be holding up pretty well on the heart related front. For sure I am mostly having pretty early nights to recover from the long days - World Cup rugby aside, seriously gutted for Ireland - but I am keeping going during the days and hopefully not being a burden!

If you are interested in coming along on of these guided lure fishing trips out here in Ireland then please contact me through the Guiding page.