Letting lures wash around in turbulence, I don’t do it enough
I was out the other day in some stunning sea conditions, and whilst it was a miserably small neap tide, for a good few areas around here I do actually prefer neaps. Not as small as it was perhaps, but the sea conditions were amazing. Only one small bass was landed by the lad I was fishing with - I blanked! - but I did finally get to clip on a type of lure I had never used before but which I had envisaged might do well with the mixture of ground and conditions I was fishing………….
Then I did what I did and asked a question on my Facebook page. I am very lucky with the level of engagement I get on my page. I tend to get really good feedback AND there will always be stuff that other anglers are doing and kind enough to share which gets me thinking about my own fishing and how I might improve my approach. That type of lure I clipped on I think is going to be really interesting in certain situations, indeed I have never come across a type of lure that holds so well in the backwash from waves and rip currents created by the waves rolling over broken ground and so on - holds and continues to do its thing really forcefully. I need more time and also I need there to be bass around, but I think these lures could give me a good option. But different anglers deal with similar situations in different and interesting ways.
This was my Facebook question : “when you are bass fishing in conditions similar to me what I am fishing in this photo here, what are your go-to lures or types of lures for holding as long as possible in the backwash and multiple tide rips and currents created by those waves rolling in over broken ground? Basically where I think the bass are most likely to be”. When the interaction started (kindly) coming in, I noticed that a few anglers were talking about how they are very confident in letting various soft plastics literally wash around in the turbulence that you can see in the photos here from the other day.
Now I know that I feel far more comfortable in my bass lure fishing when I have direct contact to my lure. My braid is tight to relatively tight - wind, waves, current etc. - and I feel like I have a direct connection to my lure. When I first got into bass fishing I felt more confident if whatever lure I was using was doing something fairly exaggerated in the water, but these days I am perfectly comfortable with less is more a lot of the time. But I do know that I am more comfortable when I have that direct as possible connection to my lure if that makes sense.
Which in turn means that I know I don’t fish this “let the lure wash around” method enough. I fish a lot of bouncy conditions out on the coast because it tends to work better around here, and twitching something like the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Pintail or the lethal OSP DoLive Stick around is part and parcel of my fishing. Whilst I might fish lures like these with a sort of “twitch, twitch, pause, let it drop a bit, twitch, twitch, pause” sort of retrieve, in essence I have that direct connection most of the time to my end gear.
But how often is a baitfish getting knocked around in the turbulence? How good are bass at taking advantage of this opportunity? How well can we imitate this kind of thing? I am constantly amazed at how effectively even small bass can obviously feed in hectic conditions, and my assumption has to be that if the bass are within casting range then they are in there for a reason. My “problem” if you like is that I know I can slightly obsess about trying to maintain that tight or tightish line to my lure, when in fact I should at least sometimes be letting certain types of lures literally wash around on their own accord and do their thing.
I had a nice bass around 5lbs when I first used one of those very nice HTO Slim Snax “twitchstick” things, and I know I didn’t have that tight line to the lure because I had paused on the retrieve around some extra turbulence which was surging around a rock sticking out of the water. The lure was basically doing its own thing. It obviously works, we all know that, but I know that one of my faults as such is that I tend to try and keep that line tight whenever possible - when in fact I should be more relaxed and allow certain types of lures to naturally get washed around when possible. Wind something like the IMA Hound 125F Glide or IMA Sasuke 120 down hard so it dives a bit, then let it wash around and hard lures like these are doing a similar thing as they float slowly back to the surface. I know I am really bad at that with hard lures specifically, but perhaps with my growing maturity (??) I will rediscover an inner confidence to simply let more lures do their natural thing in the water?
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