Okay, so nearly catching a fish might be slightly clutching at straws, but later into January isn’t easy to catch bass on lures from the shore, and especially with the winter we’ve been having. First thing yesterday morning felt good though. I made the call on a reef mark which is incredibly fickle with water clarity, but both Mark and I have had bass here before in previous Januarys. It always interests me how some reefs can be approached a bit differently on springs and neaps, and this one in particular I find rather interesting on the bigger tides and how the gutters fill with water and provide what I think of as extra killing channels…………..

Me fishing away against a sky which was really showing off!

I didn’t expect to find much bounce on the water with the forecast, but to be fair to XCWeather they were saying there’d be a little bit of onshore breeze and I liked the time of high tide in relation to first light. We pulled up in my Epic Berlingo and were pleasantly surprised to feel a bit more breeze than was forecasted and also the sound of the sea moving around. It may well have been dark when we first rocked up, but I know we both felt pretty confident.

Some people think that cameras are unlucky, but the number of times I have had a lens trained on an angler and they go and hook a fish is uncanny. We fished away for a while and covered different bits of ground to no avail, but the light started to get more and more interesting. Eventually I could resist no more and because Mark is an incredibly kind angler I radioed him and asked him if he wouldn’t mind using my lure rod for a while so I could shoot some photos of it in action. He knows me well and had been expecting my radio transmission with the light that was developing!

I happened to be fishing a really good looking bit of reef where there was a little bit of rip caused by the water trying to get out a gully which ran parallel to some rocks sticking out of the water. As much as I wanted to get a few photos of Mark fishing with another of these awesome new Penn Conflict Elite lure rods I am playing around with - the 962M 9’6’’ 6-32g, review to come - I also wanted him to at least be standing in a decent area and fishing properly so I didn’t waste his own valuable fishing time.

So I handed the rod over and walked away to lie down with my camera and a longer lens to isolate Mark against a beautiful winter morning sky that was developing and ended up going pretty loopy. On my rod which Mark was kindly fishing with I had the smaller Gravity Stick Paddletail in the khaki colour rigged on its 4/0 belly-weight weedless hook (which comes in the packets together with the lures). The light was getting a bit better literally by the second and then I suddenly heard a familiar yelp in the half-light.

I was holding focus on Mark’s head and snapping a few shots of him fishing and casting so all I had to do was press the shutter down and fire away on the motordrive when I heard that yelp. I was framed up to include the whole rod at whatever angle Mark chose to fish at and cast, and obviously as an angler I was over the bloody moon that one of us had gone and hooked a January bass. The bend in the rod looked good against the sky and I then started thinking about mixing flash with that sky for the grip and grin shot when the bass was landed.

But then I heard another kind of yelp which I know means a lost bass. I didn’t realise until I got home that I shot a silhouette of Mark’s surprise/dismay as you can just about see above from a tight crop of the original photo, but the swine fish didn’t connect properly and it came off. Mark reckons it was a decentish bass with how it felt when it hit and pulled back, and although we fished on in some increasingly beautiful light and sea conditions we found no more signs of life. For the 22nd January though I will take our fairly cold early morning session as a success, and it obviously fires me up to keep at it and see what might happen. I had my first ever February bass on a lure last year and I shall be trying again in 2023. Why the hell not when there’s a sniff of a chance and you get to spend time wandering around such a beautiful and quiet coastline? Hell, at the very least it’s a good bit of exercise, Storm loves it, and I get to keep playing with interesting lure fishing tackle as well………….

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January bass are not easy to come by, but one was nearly caught early yesterday morning (clutching at straws?!)

© Henry Gilbey 2023