Is it worth exploring techniques to hold my lure that bit longer in a specific sweet spot when conditions are really bouncy?

You know how my brain works if you read this blog, and with some winter bass fishing I have been doing recently, I have got to thinking about something. It might be nothing because how I am currently going about it works just fine, but lure fishing for bass consumes me so much with how I truly believe that there could always be another and quite possibly better way to go at it. Why are we always searching for a different or better lure when what we are currently using is catching fish? Why is the next rod going to somehow be magically better than the rod which is currently doing just fine for us? The brain never stops bouncing and I am so bloody glad to still be alive to have it bouncing…………

If I set the scene then perhaps you can help with a few suggestions or ideas. This time of year the open coast fishing I do is usually based around fairly bouncy to very bouncy sea conditions, and a few specific locations I might target seem to respond well to fishing various lures pretty tight to the bottom (as per this blog post here). The 62cm bass above which David caught over the weekend was taken on the Fiiish Black Eel 150 in the no.3/20g Shore size, a soft plastic “paddetail on a jig head” which wasn’t around when I was working with the lovely Fiiish people. So I don’t know this lure, but I do know that David rates it highly, and although he eventually lost it to a snag - we were fishing very rough ground in lively conditions - it’s a lure which seems to work well fished tight to the bottom.

The Fiiish Black Eel 150 in the no.3/20g Shore size

As I would fish the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless and Savage Minnow Weedless which I had a big hand in developing. There is no point in me trying to compare the awesome Fiiish lures and the stuff I have helped Savage Gear develop. I am really proud of what we have done and I feel completely confident fishing with the gear when the situation calls for it. We don’t have enough bass to spend time fishing with crap you don’t trust. This isn’t the point of the blog post though.

Sometimes I can really fan my casting out and cover a lot of ground on some marks when “bumping” lures like these along the bottom, but occasionally I need to be fishing specific sections or perhaps gullies which by their nature might not have a big area where the bass could hold. I lost a good bass at my feet the other day in exactly this situation - dragging/bumping/subtle sink and draw the Sandeel V2 Weedless along or close to the bottom in a pretty tight area because that’s what the location calls for.

Which gets me thinking. Would my chance of a few fish potentially be greater if I could almost “hold” the lure for a bit longer in what I think of as the kill-zone? When I am bumping the bottom I am obviously having to reel/bump my lure in at whatever speed I feel is right when you take into account the depth plus wind plus sea plus rip current plus what the bottom feels like etc. But if I think about this estuary based creature bait fishing (which I am miles away from mastering but which continues to produce bass right now for anglers I know), then a lot of that is based around putting something appealing in a likely looking spot and in a roundabout way sort of fishing it more slowly and at times almost holding the lure in place. I guess that the “claws” of the crab/creature bait are waving about and doing their thing with fooling the bass?

The lures and techniques I am using are working just fine, so it’s not as if I am looking for the next big thing as such, but you know how my brain works with wanting to mix things up to see what might happen. If bass fishing only revolved around shallow-divers on shallow reefs I’d have walked away many years ago. I see no reason why bass would not be hunting along the bottom over rough ground with crabs and prawns on their menu, as well as various gobies and small pollack etc. Bumping a paddletail along the bottom works well, but how about if you could hold say a crab or goby imitation for that bit longer and perhaps give a bass a greater chance of locating it?

How about finding some heavier cheb weights and fishing a crab or prawn imitation and letting it almost wash around in all that turbulence? I could also try turning to the heaviest 15g Savage Gear Balls Clip On weights which means I can continue to use our 4/0 and 6/0 corkscrew weedless hooks which I like so much. How about the use of a Tokyo rig with a heavier than normal bullet weight on that bit of wire below the hook? I have had a few bass on the Savage Gear Gobster Shad fishing it on a more conventional straight-retrieve, but this lure looks so much like the various goby species which bass have to be mooching around for on the bottom. Any thoughts you’d be willing to share with me in the comments section below?

A 3/0 VMC Tokyo rig with a creature bait

As I said, I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong if you like, but is how you are doing something always the best approach for specifically where you are fishing? It might well be of course, but this blog wouldn’t exist if I didn’t enjoy messing around with different ideas. I know it’s nearly Christmas, but it doesn’t feel like it’s anywhere near over out there. I accept that every winter is very different, but having now caught bass every month of the year in the UK, I can’t help but want to head out for a go when the conditions are in my favour. I can’t recall every catching a fish sat here at home, although with the various heart pills I am on I am aware of very vivid dreams every single night - and wow have I caught some awesome fish in those dreams!

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Bass fishing, Fishing tackle, Lure fishingHenry GilbeyDecember 202414 Comments