It’s not every day you see a bass like this in the UK in the middle of February

It felt so strange to make that first easy cast with a little 8’6’’ 32g lure rod a couple of days ago when I had been blasting stuff out on far more powerful 9’8’’ and 10’ rods in Portugal the week before, but yet again it’s this amazingly wide variety of lures, techniques and locations for bass fishing which continue to consume me. From warm weather bass fishing to freezing my proverbials off in a brisk east wind the other day with Marc Cowling of South Devon Bass Guide. Another of those sessions when my mind was blown all over again……………….

We were both fishing with the MegaBass Sleeper Craw lures, with my experience of this style of bass fishing being far less than a few very good anglers I know. I was alerted to some online “unpleasantness” the other day - based around this creature bait/crab imitation thing - but because I use the block button a good bit on social media and I am not a member of certain Facebook groups, I simply don’t get involved. I am a 52 year old father of two girls and it would be beneath me and what I stand for to be unpleasant in the online world. I personally find the whole trying different lures and techniques and locations to be a primary driving force in my own fishing. You may feel differently, but if you regularly read this blog then I am going to assume that you at least have a passing interest in how lure fishing for bass almost refuses to stand still.

So Marc and I were fishing together for a few hours, plus we had plenty of stuff we wanted to talk about. At some point he moved off to access some different ground, and when I wandered over a while later and saw where he was fishing, I don’t mind admitting that I thought, bless his cotton socks, he’s gone and lost it! I’d love to talk about the specifics of the exact type of ground he was targeting, but I know it’s early days for Marc and something he thinks might have some real traction, and I know he wants to see if he can find some patterns to this before he goes public as such.

Suffice to say I thought “at least it makes for a slightly daft photo to sort of show where not to fish for bass!”. I was standing back with my 70-200mm lens and I heard something like “I’m sure there’s a bass in here” wafting across the cold wind, so I probably nodded sagely to myself and carried on with shooting a few photos……………..

And then he only goes and hooks up. I almost couldn’t believe it, but I have sworn to never say never in bass fishing for a long time now. The more I learn about these magnificent fish, the more I know that I don’t know. In no time at all Marc was cradling a glorious 63cms bass in some muddy water, and when that fine fish swam away I couldn’t help but immediately start thinking about a lot of ground I know pretty well - and which I am already starting to look at and explore all over again with a different set of eyes. You know as well as I do that every single day in fishing is a learning day, but how much you choose to take on board and use it to motivate you depends on what kind of person you are I guess. You all have a good weekend, bloody hell my brain is bouncing away like you would not believe!