When I was at Plymouth Uni I walked literally all the coastline between Plymouth and Brixham on the hunt for fishing spots. I don’t come from this part of the world so I was essentially starting from scratch. Ordnance Survey maps plus a rope, spike and a hammer, a good pair of walking boots, and I was out there as much as possible looking for places I might try for fish such as huss, conger, cod and rays. Studying? What the hell was that! Any bass I caught back then were by mistake I might add…………

I’ve never lost the thrill that comes from fishing good looking ground which I have never fished before, then the excitement levels go through the roof if you actually go and catch fish from these brand new spots. For sure there are most likely other anglers who treat those spots as their local haunts, but that is the same all over the place. Loads of marks around here which I fish again and again will at some point be a new spot for another angler. These days we most likely use a lot of online resources such as Google Earth and Bing Maps before we even lay real eyes on these potential new marks, but at some point you’re going to get out there and try actually fishing the place or places.

Which is exactly what Andy and I did on Friday. I like to think I can decipher swell forecasts and how they tend to behave on the different coastlines, because something like a solid one metre swell forecast can be a somewhat different proposition on say the north coast of Cornwall compared to the south coast of Cornwall. I had spent a good bit of time on Google Earth to identify some good looking bass ground on a stretch or coastline I simply don’t know at all. There looked to be a path down some big cliffs to access it, but you never really know until you are physically standing on top of the cliffs and looking down. Thankfully there was a path, and wow did we race down it to start fishing. Stunning looking conditions rolling in, overcast skies, clear water, and truly savage ground which said one word to me - bass. I have no idea if or when the area might or might not fish well for these fine fish, but I had decided to try it for the first time on the ebb tide.

I was doing a good bit of thinking on the rush down the cliff path about where to actually start fishing without getting washed in, so I clipped on a new Savage Gear hard lure which is coming out next year - LONG-casting, really grippy, very intense action, great colours - and started to cover a bit of ground. From Google Earth I had a fairly good mental image of lots of big boulders and gullies and channels which lay beneath the surface of the lovely looking water, and on about my fifth cast at a brand new spot which I had picked because it looked so interesting and which was on a stretch of coastline I had never been to, I got hit. I saw an admittedly not very big bass come out from underneath the rocks I was standing on and swipe hard at the lure. I felt the hit but the bass missed it, indeed there’s an argument for the bass missing the lure because I think I yelped so loudly with excitement!

That one hit to me almost instantly justified my hunch if you like. I have no idea if the location is going to turn out to be of serious interest moving forward, but knowing that just after high water on a random rock on a great big stretch of wild north Cornish coastline there was a bass or hopefully a few bass around made the punt very worthwhile in my mind. After a few more casts I moved across and further out on a specific point, and because it looked a bit shallower and very bouldery in front of me, I clipped on the white 12.5cm/28g Savage Minnow Weedless and started to fish it exactly like I talked about in this blog post from the other day. I was also fishing my first session with the Major Craft Seabass Custom Marc Cowling Edition 88ML 8'8'' 6-32g lure rod. It’s not cheap and I need a good bit more time with it, but early impressions are along the lines of wow! Talk about steely and lightweight.

Anyway, a few casts later as I was swimming/bumping the soft plastic along the bottom I got properly nailed. I struck into what felt like an okay bass and I started to get its head up and away from what felt like an incredibly rough sea bed. Thump, thump on the new-to-me rod tip and then the bloody fish came off. Gutted. It wasn’t a monster but I’d have loved to land a bass from this brand new spot. Plenty more fishing time left though.

It’s a good example of Google Earth versus actually being there though. We were fishing a big and very rocky bay with high cliffs behind us, and from Google Earth it looked like we should be able to cover a lot more ground walking and scrambling north. But when I was actually on location as such I could see that just to the north of us there was a big rocky point which was much higher than I realised and we would not be able to get around it. I wasn’t bothered because we had so much ground to fish anyway, but nothing beats physically being on the ground.

Later into the session and I was lined up on Andy with my 70-200mm f2.8 lens to shoot longer lens photos of him fishing with the waves rolling in. Get low down, wait for the right sets of waves, and with a longer lens at f2.8 you can get that slight compression affect where it looks almost like the angler is fishing either right in amongst the maelstrom, or has those walls of water rearing up in front of him. Literally every single cast we think we could get nailed by bass because it all looks so good, and as I am lined up for these specific shots Andy does actually hook a fish.

Now it’s starting to look a lot more interesting as Andy is hooked up

So now it’s a case of me hoping firstly that Andy stays connected to the bass, secondly that he doesn’t get into any trouble with all that water rolling around, and thirdly that a proper set of waves does roll in if he gets the fish to his feet and has a shot at landing it. For photography purposes! Just sometimes everything comes together with fishing photography, and this was one of those times. The light wasn’t anything epic, but everything else was just about perfect and I came away with a bunch of photos I am really happy with. I love trying to show bass fishing off in an exciting way and I hope that photos like these do a bit of that.

Andy had another bass a bit later on and I had another couple of hits, but that was it. Hardly an epic session in terms of numbers or size, but fishing new areas and locations is never going to be about that to me. Bass were caught, bass were dropped, and the simple fact that we saw any sign at all of bass means to me that there is every reason to spend more time up here exploring and experimenting. Seriously exciting ground and there’s so much of it. I love fishing marks I know well which might often be fairly close to home, but I also love that feeling of taking exploratory gambles to see what I might find……………….

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Is there anything more exciting in fishing than taking a calculated punt on new ground and then catching fish?

© Henry Gilbey 2023