If you Google the word needlefish and then sit down and think about it, needlefish as a name for a type of lure we might use for our bass fishing doesn’t actually make that much sense. From Wikipedia here and I hope I am allowed to copy and paste this: “Needlefish (family Belonidae) or long toms[2] are piscivorous fishes primarily associated with very shallow marine habitats or the surface of the open sea. Some genera include species found in marine, brackish, and freshwater environments (e.g., Strongylura), while a few genera are confined to freshwater rivers and streams, including Belonion, Potamorrhaphis, and Xenentodon.[3] Needlefish closely resemble North American freshwater gars (family Lepisosteidae) in being elongated and having long, narrow jaws filled with sharp teeth, and some species of needlefishes are referred to as gars or garfish despite being only distantly related to the true gars. In fact, the name "garfish" was originally used for the needlefish Belone belone in Europe and only later applied to the North American fishes by European settlers during the 18th century.”

So if you buy or indeed make a needlefish lure for your (sea) bass fishing here in Europe, are you trying to imitate a garfish when you present it to the fish? I must admit that I am not using a needlefish lure and thinking about all things garfish when I whack it out and wind it in, and whilst I believe the word “needlefish” was applied to some straight stick style of US striped bass lures which began to catch on and via some forward-thinking anglers (you know who you are) began to find their way over here, at the end of the day the word has stuck and a number of us now use needlefish as commonly as might use a shiny Japanese hard lure. As an aside and knowing as I do a bit about the lads who I believe began to first start using these lures over in Jersey some years ago now for their bass night fishing, isn’t it interesting how these “straight sticks” have now become an essential item for so many of us these days when only a few years ago the idea of fishing “no action” hard lures for bass in the middle of the night would have been ignored by the majority of us.

Anyway, so it seems that more and more us venture out for more and more of our bass fishing when most regular folk are tucked up in bed and us ninjas wander the coastline like shadows and try our best not to trip over rocks because we’re using minimal light, and then when you do trip over the first thing you do if you’re fishing with a mate is to look around and check that they didn’t see you mess things up! Sorry, I digress. If I think back to the lure fishing I did at night for bass last year then I reckon at least 75% of the fish I landed were on needlefish. A certain bloke I know decided he would have a go at making his own needlefish lures a few years ago during one wet and wild Welsh winter, so I imagine he disappeared into his shed and reappeared some months later with what are some truly stunning and incredibly well made lures that cast great and smash bass. I reckon nearly every single needlefish caught bass of mine from last year and a lot from the year before were caught on these needlefish lures made by this particular bloke. He isn’t trying to make a business out of it but word has got around a bit and he does his best at making lures for anglers who ask. I know how much time he puts into the lures and he obviously has to charge for them, but damn they work well. This is not an affiliate link by the way and it’s because his lures are stunning and he is a seriously nice bloke who is properly obsessed with bass fishing - if you want to try and get some of these lures then contact Charles Nelson (aka Merman) on Facebook here.

You’ve obviously got those stunning new Marc Cowling Signature Needlefish that I blogged about the other day and which bring me back around to what a needlefish lure is trying to imitate because these sure as the proverbial ain’t trying to be garfish. I know that sneaky ninja Marc was out the other night and caught bass on his own Marc Cowling Signature Needlefish which I bet was a proper buzz, and I implore you to take the time to read that blog post from the other day which has got so much good info on these lures and how to fish them - info from Marc I might add, not from me! If you are looking for some not too expensive and off the shelf needlefish then I have used and caught plenty of bass on the 28g Yankee Lures Needlefish, the 17g and 28g Spofford’s Lures needlefish which are about as simple as a hard lure gets but damn they work well, plus Jim’s Lures needlefish which are not cheap but they are made by Jim in the UK and they work well.

I want to bring you back to the title of the blog post though and the questions I asked, because on one of my co-guiding trips over in Kerry last year I had managed to secure four or five samples of the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 lures which are now on the market of course - and I would suggest that the name of the lure kinda gives a hint as to what it’s trying to imitate! We were doing a brief night session with our lads and I asked one of them if they would mind me clipping a sample Sandeel Pencil 125 lure on for them. I advised whacking it out and winding it in (pretty technical eh?), exactly as I would a regular needlefish, and hey presto if they didn’t go and land a few bass. So is the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 also a needlefish lure or does it actually matter?

What I was leading into was how excited I am about the new larger version of this lure, the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 150 which again I would suggest is imitating a sandeel and not a garfish! Distance is very obviously not everything in bass fishing, but on the right rod it’s almost obscene how well these 30g Sandeel Pencil 150 lures get out there, and whilst this will help me in windy and gnarly surf conditions especially, I did actually experience a few occasions last year when I wasn’t getting a sniff at night where I’d expect to find bass so I banged one of Charles Nelson’s needlefish right out and hooked a few better bass at range. I like having options and I am absolutely itching to press these 125 and 150 size Sandeel Pencil lures into proper service at night. I have done a lot of playing around with them and I really like how a straight retrieve even at a relatively slow speed still brings these lures nice and high in the water plus of course you can put a tight or a slack line spin-stop on them.

Another type of Charles Nelson needlefish

And then I come back around to me getting into this whole lure fishing for bass thing and how for so long I didn’t feel confident unless my lure was doing masses of jingling and jangling in the water, but these days I might go out fishing at night and I feel 100% confident fishing with a soft or hard lure which is often doing what seems to be just about nothing when you wind it in. How often is less actually a whole lot more in bass fishing I ask yet again? You all please stay as safe as possible out there and have a good weekend.

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So what exactly is a needlefish lure, and surely a bunch of other lures work in a similar way?

© Henry Gilbey 2023