One crumb of comfort at not being able to go fishing is that conditions around here have been pretty crap since the lockdown began, but my head is still wrecked!
I am going to assume that we are all feeling somewhat strange at the moment, and on the fishing side of things I am finding it increasingly weird that I don’t have a clue what is going on out at the coast. I don’t know if it’s at all like last year and the bass fishing has suddenly switched on but I don’t have a clue about it, or are things still waiting to kick into life? There’s no fishing grapevine going on, there could be a dose of May rot out there already and I wouldn’t know about it, and I just feel this strange disconnect from a life which has become so completely normal over nearly thirty years now. Living close to the sea, going fishing a lot, knowing what the sea and water conditions are like because I’m out there on a regular basis, and generally just feeling pretty much in touch with things - those have all gone for the time being. In the grand scheme of things it obviously doesn’t matter very much, but it’s a strange feeling to be in this kind of fishing limbo when fishing is essentially your life…………
So I am clinging to a few crumbs of comfort. Even if our fishing life was going on as normal and this wretched coronavirus never existed, it’s still only the middle of April and for the whole of lockdown so far we have had winds out of the east down here on the south coast of Cornwall. East winds might do it for you where you live and fish, and whilst I have had some good bass fishing on east winds, and especially SE winds which I really like around here, give me persistent E or NE winds and I will often struggle catching bass out on the coast. That is my biggest crumb of comfort then - knowing my coastline like I hope I do, there would have been very little if any bouncy bass conditions out there for the entire lockdown so far. I haven’t got enough year round experience yet of lure fishing in the surf, and I had every intention of getting out in the surf as early as possible this year to see what happened, so another crumb of comfort I am clinging to here is that I would not been able to fish a single proper session in the surf since lockdown began. To fish in the surf you obviously need the right surf conditions, and from my limited experience so far plus keeping an eye on various webcams and weather forecasts, I haven’t seen a day yet where I’d have been going for the surf fishing gear - bearing in mind that I’m not out and about and I’ve got no “feel” for what it’s like out there at the moment.
But there have been a few times over the last few weeks when I’d have seriously fancied at least a sniff or two of a bass at night. I had my first bass last year at night at the beginning of April and that single fish is not acting as a crumb of comfort at all! I think it was last week we had two or three nights in a row when the tides were the right size and high water would have been in darkness, and this is what I am looking for in relation to a few locations that can fish well at night when it’s calm and clear and the conditions for daytime fishing would be a bit crap. I think it was last Thursday in particular when I literally fished a night session in my head because I was utterly convinced that things would have been so perfect out there on the coast and under the cover of darkness. I’ve got various sample lures here that are looking at me with puppy dog eyes and pleading for a bit of a swim, and last week I mentally smashed a few good bass on them I can assure you! Hell, as you can probably tell, it doesn’t take a whole lot for my fishing head to get properly wrecked.
I would imagine that Netflix and other streaming services are getting a pretty good hammering in many households at the moment, but how about podcasts? I tend to listen to podcasts a lot when I am in my car, but obviously we’re not out and about at the moment so I am finding myself in quiet corners of of the house these days, noise-cancelling headphones on, listening to various podcasts because I love them so much. I listen to a few cricket and rugby podcasts, and whilst there is obviously no live sport going on to analyse and reflect upon, what is fascinating is how many sports people are doing plenty of interviews because they are all obviously at home like the rest of us. I came across a fishing podcast the other day called “Seven Stripes Fishing”, and the first episode I listened to was a fascinating interview with the guy who made the striped bass fishing film “Running the Coast”. I have put some links below to a few podcasts which I hope some of you might find interesting. Have a good weekend, please stay as safe as possible, see you next week……………….