How much do you trust that the bass can sometimes be so close in? (Can you literally deserve a fish?)

If ever an angler deserved a bass then I would suggest that the fish my mate Mark caught on Friday morning was just that. He’s been going through a lot recently, and we finally got some 50/50 open coast water which aligned with his day off from work and my timings with being able to sneak a quick session in before heading off for the weekend to see my mum at her new house and my eldest girl who managed to come down from way oop north at Durham university………………..

To be honest on another day and if we had more choice we could have walked away from the water we found, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that, not with the weather we have all been copping recently. I’d have called the water clarity 50/50 for around here, but it would depend more on how much weed was in the water after such prolonged strong, onshore winds. The fact that I literally didn’t pick up a single piece of weed during the whole session amazed me, but I didn’t dare say too much in case the fishing gods were listening..

The fishing wasn’t anything epic at all, but at least we were flinging lures into a good looking sea with half-decent water and a lovely lack of weed. You could have easily targeted the waves right out the back with say a 30g or 35g Surf Seeker, and I did for a while because I have caught plenty of bass here doing just that, but the way the mark is set up allows for a lot of very close in work with soft plastics especially. I love fishing locations where you can legitimately target the fish in a bunch of different ways, and as ever I must give Mark his dues with how bloody good he is at working lures close in and really tight to structure. Of course it’s a lot to do with confidence - if you have caught a lot of fish like this before then you know how deadly it can be - but it’s also a mindset thing. Easy to blast lures out and cover as much water as possible - me arguably too much of the time! - but harder to reign it back and make sure you don’t ignore so much good stuff so close in.

I was trying a rather lovely looking colour of a hard lure which is very new to me (photo above), the BlueBlue Scarnash 120F (120mm, 18g), and I knew that I shouldn’t have really been casting it quite where I was. I held my rod tip up and reeled as slowly as the rushing waves would allow me to, and to be fair I got away with it for a while - until I went and snagged it up good and proper. I tried every trick in the book to release the lure but I ended up having to break off. Literally as my braid went ping I heard Mark shout from around the corner, and I do know his “fish on” yelp! I gingerly rushed along the very slippery rock I was on, waded a bit, then ran back to my bag, dumped my rod (with no lure now on the end), grabbed my camera and managed to nail a few photos of Mark’s bass coming ashore. He didn’t need to say how much that one single bass meant to him because I knew.

I’d have loved to spend a good while covering all that ground but I had to get home and get on the road because it’s about a four hour drive to my mum. Only one fish was landed and I was so pleased that it jumped on Mark’s Sunslicker paddletail and not whatever I was flinging around after I lost my new lure. The fishing gods must have been pleased with me because I did go and check when the water had dropped a bit more and I found my new lure on top of a rock with one of its treble hooks wedged tightly into a sneaky little crack. I may have not caught a bass but I got my lure back! Rather hoping that the forecast this week is going to help clear the water up and give us a decent crack at it again……….

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.