It’s so satisfying to flip what you think you know about a bass mark on its head, do things differently, and catch……………

I had to head out fishing on Monday morning with a forecast like that. The water around here had finally cleared up via some north winds, and the forecast from early on Monday morning was for a freshening southerly wind which I’ll take all day long thank you very much. I work for myself and I can sometimes nip out for a quick fishing session to try and take advantage of certain variables, and Monday morning around the high water was one of those times when I simply had to get out and about………

Where to go though? With good clarity and a weather forecast that for once was spot on I knew I wasn’t going to have to search around for decent water, and with a morning HW and a size of tide I really like around here there were any number of options I could think of. Mark and I had caught a few fish at the end of last week from a spot that we both know pretty well, and because we have tended to catch at a certain state of the tide we have naturally fished there mostly around those times. When conditions are in our favour I love this time of year here in south east Cornwall.

I guess that because we have fairly consistently caught bass in a roughly two hour window I have ended up looking at this spot from that point of view, but for whatever reason I got to thinking about this place a bit differently the other day and a plan began to come together in my head. On Monday morning I could have gone to a number of places and seriously fancied my chances of catching fish with the conditions like that, but if there is one thing I have always enjoyed in my fishing it’s taking a bit of a punt - with tide and weather variables stacked in my favour of course. Why not load the dice as much as possible, and especially if you’re on a bit of a gamble?

So I went with what had been coming together in my head. Mark was working so it was just Storm and I striding out across the cliffs. Me the majestic gazelle and Storm my four-legged companion roaming ahead. Or perhaps not. I wanted to fish a different part of this particular spot and also at a very different state of tide to when I might usually have been down there before, but an hour and a half of flogging some stunning green and fizzing water and high water arrived with not a single sniff of a fish.

The small but deadly Shimano Exsence Silent Assassin 99F

I had a quick sit down, drank some coffee, gave Storm a bit of attention, and changed my lure. I had tried a few different soft and hard lures in the increasingly bouncy conditions (these modern auto-inflate lifejackets are SO easy to wear), but I do have a bit of a thing for a select few smaller hard lures which for whatever reason work well for me. I know a lot of lure anglers swear by bigger lures, but I have so many good bass caught on what might be called smaller to regular size lures. I have a growing obsession with the long-casting, very well made, and incredibly “grippy” for its size, “little” Shimano Exsence Silent Assassin 99F, but I had forgotten to put one in my box for whatever daft reason. I did however have another smaller lure which I also think is absolutely lethal, the APIA Dover 99F. If lure fishing is so much about confidence, then my own confidence was high as I put my coffee flask down and got back to fishing. I’ve got a lure in which I know has caught me a bunch of nice bass now, the tide has just turned which I tend to like, the conditions are epic, and if I don’t catch at least a bass I have decided that the dog’s going to get a thrashing and I’m selling all my gear………..

The APIA Dover 99F

If you were within a few miles of me on Monday morning you might well have heard an excited yelp when about ten minutes into the ebb tide a bass of 3lb+ slammed into that little APIA lure. Okay, so we’re not breaking any size or catch records here, and my further efforts were rewarded with a few horrible garfish chasing my lure - but I had scratched an itch and caught a fish doing things a bit differently to my norm on this spot. Was it the change of lure or the change of tide that did the trick? I will never know, but that one single bass has now got me thinking all over again about a spot I thought I knew pretty well. So much of fishing’s eternal appeal to me is being forced to keep learning all the time. I wanted to stay longer but I needed to get back to work and then perhaps have a quick surf lure session before it got dark. How could I not with those conditions? You all have a good weekend.

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