It never ceases to amaze me how close in bass can hit lures when it’s really bouncy

Andy and I found some fairly good looking water on Friday afternoon (good shout Andy!), although if I had been on my own I am not entirely convinced I wouldn’t have walked away to try and find better clarity. The actual sea state was about what I wanted for this mark - steeply shelving bit of beach on a tiny little cove - but the water looked 50/50 to me. Beggars can’t be choosers though with the current state of the weather and coastline, so down we yomped……………..

Now the fishing wasn’t epic, but we found a few bass and yet again I know I’d have probably caught a few more if I wasn’t running around shooting photos a lot of the time. The thing is that I can’t help it though. A few fish were obviously around so I want to try and catch them, but as hard as I might try to resist, I simply can’t not shoot photos when the light and/or conditions look good. Call it an addiction, same as fishing I guess, but it’s the way I am made and at the age of 50 I gave up a hell of a long time ago trying to find any logic to it. Fishing and photography are almost the same thing to me.

I don’t have a lot of experience with this tiny little cove, but what I do know is that I have not caught many bass there outside of what you might call the gutter. You can fire lures way out if you want to, but it’s not until you are fishing them in that precise little area just before where the waves collapse and dump onto the beach that you catch fish. It was quickly evident on Friday that any bass we might hook were feeding in this gutter, so the trick was working out to fish it effectively when the waves were rearing up and then dumping hard. Andy had a few bass on the MegaBass Zonk 120SW (I had almost forgotten how well that thing bites into a hectic sea, it’s incredible), and then he finished up catching a few more on what must surely now be one of the all time great bass lures, the Fiiish Black Minnow. A paddletail on a jig head allowed him to whack it out, let it hit the bottom, and then literally hold it in that gutter area until the sea spat it back out.

My answer to the Black Minnow was to fish with “our” 12.5cm/28g Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless in the khaki colour. You probably have half a clue how many different lure rods I can get access to, but it continues to tickle me how much I absolutely love the cheaper SGS5 9’6’’ and 10’ 12-46g lure rods when the sea gets bouncy. I was fishing with the 10’ version because I kinda like how a slightly longer rod helps you keep more braid up above the dumping wave when you are trying to hold a lure in there. I know it then sort of kills the budget feel of the setup to be fishing the sublime Penn Authority 3500 on a rod like this, but I can do so because of work and I honestly think this SGS5 10’ 12-46g rod is just about the best slightly longer and more powerful lure rod I have come across. As I said the other day, if Savage Gear finds me surplus to requirements one day, they ain’t getting this setup back!

There was one specific point where I put my camera gear down and was properly fishing away. My Savage Minnow weedless had literally broken through the water tension in the gutter and I was holding it there in the backwash until the wave washed away and it was easier to reel it in - and a nice chunky bass went and smashed it. I couldn’t quite believe it with how shallow and turbulent the water was, and how quickly the bass would have had to move around for fear of being left high and dry when the water receded. There is no way we could have managed to remain upright if we tried standing where I hooked that bass.

I didn’t take any photos of the bass from Friday afternoon because there was nowhere to safely retain the fish in water while I fired away. Back they went the moment they were unhooked and that’s the way it will always be for me if I can’t do things properly because of where we are fishing. We didn’t exactly set the bass fishing world alight with our exploits, but it felt great to find a few fish when the coastline is in such a state. As ever I am always looking for stuff to learn, and if I can use a specific experience from each and every session to further me as an angler then that helps keep my brain bouncing away………….

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