How often does it happen that one of the cheapest lures in your box saves you from a blank?

I didn’t have much time to get out fishing yesterday morning, but I had myself set on a mark that I reckon I know pretty well. The water is nice and green again out on the coast and I felt pretty confident that I would at least connect with a bass in the short time I had. I also have a lot of different bits and pieces of bass related fishing tackle here that is going through a testing and evaluation process, so onto the rod racks on my Epic Berlingo goes a (very interesting) lure rod and reel, in the boot goes my rucksack and lure bag, in fact the only thing I can think of that’s missing is the dog. Storm nearly always comes fishing with me, but there is so much walking, fishing, running and cycling going on here at home (no running or cycling on my part I would like to add!) that me and my wife and our two girls sometimes have to almost negotiate who gets access to the dog. Fit and healthy sheepdogs go and go and go and Storm will take as much exercise as we can collectively give her - and then some - so it was negotiated yesterday morning that Storm would get more exercise running alongside my youngest girl who was heading out to do a load of hill-sprints on her bike. So I went fishing on my own…………..

And I went and changed my mind on the location. The water looked so nice from the cliff road that I decided not to go to where I have been many times before, and instead do a bit of a yomp and a climb down to a spot I don’t know very well but I really like the look of. In the right conditions I can fish around a load of boulders, in a bit of surf, and then around some rocky points which tend to create some good looking current rips. There were some nice waves rolling in yesterday, so in the rucksack went my auto-inflate lifejacket - what’s the point in not wearing one when they are so lightweight and easy to wear? - and down the path I went.

I didn’t have very long until I needed to get back home, so I started off fishing around the boulders with some lures I have here for testing. Chopping and changing lures to see how they cast and swim and so on is never going to maximise the chances I have at connecting with fish, and especially when I am on my own and there is nobody else to fish more regular lures which we might normally turn to and trust to do the job - but I am loving this work with Savage Gear that I am doing like you would not believe. It’s fascinating to work with successive generations of items of fishing tackle and start thinking about what might need changing and then the feedback that I need to give. Anyway, I did find a few things out about these sample lures which was really helpful, but I didn’t get a sniff of a fish around those boulders.

So I moved further along the mark to access the waves rolling in and the currents they were creating around various bits of structure. I delved into my lure box and picked out a Hound Glide which I know and trust completely. I will admit to being rather pleased with how the lure was getting out there on a rather interesting lure rod, but for all my casting smugness I still remained resolutely fishless. I unclipped the Hound Glide and put on a Shimano hard lure which you can’t buy off the shelf here in the UK but which I also trust implicitly. It’s not cheap but it casts like a missile and really grips in well - nothing though. I went back to the samples I had been fishing with around the boulders to see how they would react in the conditions, and although I was happy with how the lures were fishing and I really fancied at least a hit from a fish, things were rather quiet on the fish front to say the least.

For all the nice and shiny and not remotely cheap lures I might carry with me in my two medium size washable lure boxes, for a fair while now I have made sure to stick a Seeker in any lure box I take out bass fishing with me. They are not very expensive and they are distinctly unsexy, but the 23g and 28g Savage Gear Seekers cast a frigging mile and they have caught a bass or two for me on numerous occasions when nothing else has worked. I started carrying a Seeker or two outside of my surf fishing lure box way before I ever started working with Savage Gear, and if we forget about what the actual lure might be, I wonder how many of you reading this also carry a few simple metals which might well be far cheaper when compared to something like a Hound Glide. Bass are still bass and simple metal lures will often get you out of a jam.

So on goes a 28g Seeker yesterday morning, and because I know just how far this thing can fly - remember how smug I was feeling about my casting yesterday morning - I take aim at a lovely looking bit of swirling water which is breaking up the waves and producing just the sort of water we would all want to put a lure through. First chuck and I get a definite bump off a fish on a simple straight retrieve, but no hookup. I look around to check if Storm is nodding her approval at my casting, but I remember that she’s out with my youngest girl, so I reset, relaunch, and lo and behold my rod tip bounces over as a bass engulfs my simple metal lure. We are not talking about a very big bass here I might add, but I caught a fish, I didn’t blank, yet again the Seeker sorted me out, and I didn’t get another sniff of a fish in the short time I had left before I needed to head home. The waves were lovely though, so after a fantastic Sunday lunch we headed off to a quiet part of the beach - with Storm of course - and my girls had an hour or so of surfing while my wife and I alternated between walking the hound along the beach and keeping an eye on our girls in the waves. Gotta love living in Cornwall………….

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