I find it so exciting when you suddenly “see” a bit of ground in a somewhat different light

An amazing summer we might well be having, and if you are reading this then you are most likely an angler. How often do we get exactly what we want on the fishing front? On small tides with low water around first light, at this time of year there are a couple of specific estuary areas I would like to be concentrating on when my local coastline is as flat as a pancake - but howling east wind kills any chance of fishing them so I must bide my time and look elsewhere…………

So you get to thinking. Where can I tuck out of the way of a strong easterly wind in an estuary because I am not going to fish my coastline when it’s so calm and clear? An idea popped into my head straight away, but it’s somewhere I have fished a bit before and I am more interested in expanding my knowledge and trying something a bit different. So I did a bit more thinking - steam coming from my ears etc. - and I began to think about a specific area where I have fished a few times but never got to grips with it at all. I had only fished one tiny bit of a big area of ground, and if my head was right I was pretty sure we’d be able to tuck out of the east winds and present various lures properly.

It’s a lovely area for a good dog walk so I know the paths pretty well, but I had never quite appreciated just how much good looking ground there actually was. I hadn’t “seen” it quite right. I am not saying that this whole creature bait/crab imitation thing is the second coming of christ, but there is one undeniable advantage to my bass fishing that obsessing about it has produced - new marks, or different parts of marks I already know. The more I fish like this, the more I go looking for suitable, out of the way locations. Creature baits and how they seem to be working the best is causing me to see ground in a whole different light. Why you might ask? Because I am seeing and learning about bass behaviour I hadn’t really appreciated before, and it’s producing fish.

I asked the lads who were up for Sunday if they fancied a bit of a punt and they all agreed let’s go for it. Our choices were limited anyway with the strong east winds, but nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. When we got there I deliberately chose to ignore a little weedy point I had fished a few times before and instead took a foot path I knew because I remembered seeing a large area of just the right kind of bladderwrack setup I had noticed on a previous dog walk with my wife a few weeks earlier - and yes, I am also obsessing about bladderwrack “setups”. Areas of bladderwrack are not at all the same I am finding, more to come, I am obsessing about bladderwrack now, I need help!

Anyway, once I got off the path and down to water-level, I finally “saw” what I had had an inkling about. I was seeing it differently only because the more I fish for bass like this, the more I am erring towards certain specifics. Again, more to come as I keep on learning. It was my mistake that the time I had arranged to meet there could have actually been an hour or so earlier judging by the water level, but I crouched down and moved along the bank to fish into a shadow-line while keeping well back from the water.

I caught precisely one small bass yesterday morning about ten minutes into starting fishing, but when that small bass launched itself onto my creature bait seriously less than a rod-length from the water’s edge, I know that I yelped with excitement. Dave had a couple of small bass as well, so whilst it wasn’t exactly an epic session, what it did do was prove to me that firstly there was a hell of a lot more to this area than I had initially thought, and secondly that even on a howling east wind it’s more than fishable with the subtle stuff. Someone asked me how long I had been into fishing the other day, so I worked it out. I am 52 years old, I started fishing when I was 7, so that’s 45 years at this fishing thing for me so far - and I love it more and in different ways the older I am lucky enough to get…………….