I have caught my biggest ever bass and it came on one of our new Gravity Stick lures. I am one happy angler!

It’s not every day of the week that you go and land your biggest ever bass from the shore, and whilst the bass you can see in the photos on this blog post was bouncing around the 11½lbs+ mark in my rather clever Mclean Short Handle Medium weigh net, I don’t obsess about ounces and centimetres so I have chosen to give my fish a weight of 11lbs because I think that’s fair. I didn’t measure it because I had a net with a weight-scale built into the handle, and I think weighing or measuring a fish is plenty enough as it is. You will see no photos of me with my bass because that’s not my thing. When a fish like this comes along my only interest is to get the best photos I can with the light and location and then get her back and watch such a magnificent fish swim away. Me trying to shoot myself with the fish doesn’t sit very well with me and my complete photo snobbery. My eternal thanks as always to Mark for helping me get these shots, and if Mark hadn’t been there I’d have tried to get a few quick shots of the head of the fish in my hand and then slipped her back. I have got the memories locked away in my head and that is really all I need………….

I understand the whole “double figure bass” thing completely but I don’t obsess about big bass, and I guess that with what my work in fishing has entailed, my own fishing has become more and more about the whole experience rather than the one special fish. Boat fishing is obviously awesome and I used to do a lot of it, but it doesn’t float my boat as much as shore fishing for three main reasons - boat fishing can kill me photographically if the light is awful especially, I know nothing about boats or finding fishing locations when on a boat so I am relying on the skipper, and I can’t walk and scramble around with my dog on a boat like I do when I am shore fishing. A 10lb+ bass is a bass of a lifetime however you might manage to do it from boat or shore, but what means a lot to me about this fine fish is that I myself made the decision on where and when to fish based on my little bit of knowledge and experience - and then it all came together for a brief moment and I was lucky enough to land this particular bass.

But what does it for me the most about a fish like this coming to my rod is the fact that I caught it on one of our new Savage Gear Gravity Stick soft plastics. I went and caught my bass of a lifetime on a lure which I have been 100% involved with from day one and which didn’t even exist a year and a half or so ago. I knew these Gravity Sticks were going to be really interesting from the first meeting I had about them over in Denmark when jumping on a plane was as normal as sitting in a restaurant beyond 10pm - remember those days? - and my thrill has got nothing to do with the money that Savage Gear pay me or if any of you kind people choose to buy any of your fishing tackle via these highlighted affiliate links. Nope, being so involved with bringing products to market that I seriously want to fish with is some buzz. I decided where to go fishing and when to be there, I chose to fish with one of “my” new lures because I believe in them completely and I feel incredibly confident when I am fishing with them, and I went and caught the biggest bass I have ever caught. Now that is a serious thrill………………

Some people will accuse me of fighting my fish too hard when I tell you that this bass took no line from me at all, but the drag on my reel is set so that a fish like this can obviously take line off me if she wants to - but she didn’t. I pulled the hell out of her and I am guessing that this bass was in my hands in under fifteen seconds from me hooking her. I do sometimes wonder if you pull the living hell out of a bass from the moment you strike whether this almost puts them off their stride and confuses their ability to try and run. For the last few yards of the scrap I pointed my rod directly at the fish and straight-sticked her up and over the bladderwrack before grabbing her. I had caught a glimpse of the size of the bass in the water and I knew that it was over 10lbs, but I wasn’t panicking and I trusted my gear and my ability to deal with a fish like this. What’s the point in me writing about fishing tackle and knots and techniques so on if I don’t trust in it all completely if and when the time comes when I am lucky enough to hook a bass like this? If it is of any interest, I was using my beloved little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG spinning reel filled with what is for me the best braid I have ever fished with, Sufix 131 in the 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1 size which I tend to use the most, a 0.405mm/29.3lb Seaguar Yuki Neox fluorocarbon leader secured to my braid via the FG knot, the little Breakaway Mini Link lure clip, and the rod was one of these sub-£100 lure rods I have been looking for and playing around with - as per this blog post here. I guess it works!

And the lure was a Gravity Stick Paddletail in the white colour, rigged on one of our 6/0 weedless belly-weighted hooks. I practise what I preach and the barb on this hook was flattened right down. Of course I am happy as can be to catch a bass like this, but beyond this size of fish thing is a huge amount of personal satisfaction. My working with Savage Gear is the first time I have worked so closely with a fishing tackle company on the actual product development of lure fishing gear for bass. I will obviously never know if I’d have caught this bass with a different lure on the end of my line, but the fact is that the biggest bass I have ever caught from the shore in the UK or Ireland has come on a soft plastic lure which I have had a very close hand in developing and bringing to market. I cannot tell you how proud this makes me feel. I had actually delved into my lure box to get a white Gravity Stick Pulsetail out, but I didn’t have one pre rigged on a belly-weight hook and I wanted that bit of extra weight to hold me a bit better as the lure came through the bladderwrack. I had a white Gravity Stick Paddletail pre-rigged on our 6/0 weedless belly-weighted hook so I clipped that one on instead……………..

On my very first cast with this white Paddletail and a medium sort of straight retrieve - I do love white lures in bright sunshine - I got a hard bang on the rod tip. I didn’t strike straight away but momentarily went with it if that makes sense, and a second later everything goes very solid. I did what I always do and I pulled down really hard on the bass, and in no time at all I got a glimpse of the fish in the water and of course my heart rate went up a notch or two! But I didn’t panic and I knew where I wanted to try and land the bass. Anything can go wrong in a situation like this as I am sure plenty of us here know all about, but for whatever reason everything happened to go right this time. I trust my knots, I trust my gear, I trust my technique, and I trust my head to work right when a fish like this suddenly comes along, but of course we’re trying to beat nature and nature doesn’t always want to get beaten up by us clumsy human beings.

So if first on the list of satisfaction with this bass is that it came on a Savage Gear Gravity Stick soft plastic, then I’m going to put the weight of the fish at third place, because second has to be where I caught it. The biggest bass I had caught before this one (check here) was taken from an estuary spot which my mate Mark and I were fishing fairly regularly and enjoying the fact that it was nice and peaceful and tucked out of the way a bit. None of us own where we fish but for various reasons we tend to do what we can to keep where we fish as quiet as possible. Some people don’t though, but hey ho it’s only fishing at the end of the day. As frustrating as this was at the time, the location being kinda blown has actually done us a favour in the long run. Combined with the coastline around here being very fickle this year, Mark and I took the decision to fish that particular spot far less, leave it to other anglers, and get out and about and find some different estuary marks especially. We got a gap in the weather, we had a high water time I liked, and I was the angler who got lucky this time around.

So there we go. I don’t feel any different as an angler as I was before I was lucky enough to hook this bass, and the fact that I caught this “double” only makes me want to get out there even more and see what more I might learn about the estuary fishing in Cornwall and Devon. My mate Mark had a horse of a bass come off the other day on one of those silent IMA Salt Skimmer surface lures, and the more I go looking around here, the more I realise just how little I know about the vast amount of estuary based bass fishing we have. I cannot tell you how excited I now get when I go for a yomp with the dog and come across big areas of lovely bladderwrack especially, or subtle areas of current and choke points and so on. As much as Ireland is my favourite country on earth and I hope to spend lots more time over there when the world gets back to normal, I am so pleased that my biggest bass from the shore so far has come from the UK, and the fact that it came on a lure which I am so completely involved in is like the icing on one of the amazing cakes my wife and/or girls make from time to time here at home. Thanks for reading and you all have a good weekend………….

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.