One of those sessions where you can’t stop giggling because it’s such fun (every bass in the surf is still worth double!)

If I was a better angler I’d be able to tell you precisely why a good lump of swell rolling in after a period of calm often brings the bass in close, but I tend to subscribe to the most logical theory or two and just roll with it. One thing I don’t subscribe to in some areas I fish though is that spring tides are always the best, so when a lovely bit of swell rolls in and it coincides with smaller tides I am all over it. When I can go fishing I might add, which I can. With the need to be sensible. Which doesn’t tend to be high on my list but I quite simply have to be……………

Friday afternoon coincided with good tides, a lump of swell, my mate Andy having the day off work, and me having got the official okay to go fishing (whilst being sensible, starting to really despise that word!). You all know how warm it’s been recently so we both went wet-wading because the thought of wearing even BCWs in that sort of weather wasn’t really an option. Andy was braver than me and wore shorts, whereas I wanted to test out a pair of 1mm neoprene leggings I had found online as an alternative to the outstanding but slightly thicker (yet still very wearable in warm weather) Palm Blaze neoprene leggings.

I wanted to fish a spot which I find increasingly interesting. I like it when a good bit of (fishable) sea is smashing into the mixture of rocks and beach and creating all manner of currents which at times are so strong you can literally hold a soft plastic and let the current do the work for you. Then as the tide clears out you are left with what can be some decent surf fishing if the actual surf is running - which it was. Photos will never do surf fishing enough justice, but at times there were some pretty hefty sets rolling in.

We found a few bass and caught them on a mixture of SG Slender Scoop Shads around the rocks and then the SG Surf Seeker 35g when we were punching out into pure surf as such. For some reason the bass were at range in the surf and I was being a bit conscious (sensible!) that the physiologist had told me how the heart needs to work three times harder when you’re standing in relatively cold water. Andy really went for it whereas I held back a bit, caught a few bass though, but would sometimes come back to my rucksack and shoot a bunch of photos on a long lens. I obviously love shooting fishing photos like the ones you can see here, but I was also getting myself out of the water and having the odd sit down which sounds daft but for the time being it’s the new me.

I stand by my belief that any bass hooked in heavy surf conditions is worth double, and I mean that in terms of how hard they scrap in such fizzed up water and how hard they hit the lure. I absolutely love everything about flinging lures into the surf, indeed Andy and I spent the whole of Friday afternoon giggling at how much fun it was. That buzzed up fishing feeling is such a high. Nothing particularly big was landed and we didn’t catch heaps of fish, but the whole experience was as good as fishing gets in my book. For sure I could feel my exertions a bit the next day, so I (sensibly!) chose not to go back out early Saturday morning and instead messed up and caught the swell really dying off early Sunday morning and bothered not a single bass!

How about that for an opening weekend to the Rugby World Cup? Not exactly great for keeping my heart nice and calm, but that opening game on Friday night was immense, where did that England performance come from - goddam it’s not easy being an England rugby supporter! - and South Africa cruising to an easy win over Scotland looked pretty ominous. Plenty more interesting results of course, this is shaping up to be an absolute cracker of a World Cup……………

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