So why on earth did I go fishing on Monday when there had to have been at least a 90%+ chance of blanking?

Last Sunday I took my youngest girl to a cross country race down in deepest, darkest Redruth and the weather was vile, but she thrives in running conditions like that and she had a blast. Even if I hadn’t been on running duty there would have been no chance of getting out fishing on my local coastline with such strong onshore winds, so come Monday and with the forecast for the rest of this week offering up a vision of armageddon, I was itching for a go………..

The photos here are not from Monday by the way.

I know it’s February but there are a few bass about on the open coast around here and I don’t have a clue how long they might stick around or even if these fish are going to disappear for a while and then come back and so on. There was every chance that the water wasn’t going to be in great shape after Sunday, but with how bad things are looking for the foreseeable future it couldn’t hurt to have a look out there on Monday afternoon. It wasn’t only about the fishing though, because I had a few things I wanted to check out and I could combine the whole thing into what at the very least would be a good dog walk if the coastline was unfishable.

Which it was. The water clarity was about 50/50 at best, but as per this blog post here I was geared up to bump the Savage Minnow Weedless and Sandeel V2 Weedless lures along the bottom on the hunt for bass. What was apparent from my very first cast though was that the water was full of weed. It can happen when things blow up around here but it was frustrating compared to recent conditions when there has been little to no weed to mess things up. I can’t complain with it being February though, but it was seriously unfishable and the surge was that much I stayed on the beach and didn’t venture out onto any rocks. I am perfectly comfortable fishing rougher conditions in the right places, but I don’t believe in being stupid, and especially when I am on my own and nobody knows where I am or even that I am out fishing. I would also suggest that “rough conditions” can be very different things depending on a bunch of different factors.

Unfishable conditions didn’t really matter though. I had ulterior motives plus Storm needed her third walk of the day anyway. I have lived on this side of the water for about eleven years now yet I am still finding areas of my local coastline that either I have never fished, or which I suddenly “see” with a different set of fishing eyes because something a bit different goes and happens and the brain starts churning. I obsess about tide times and sizes enough as it is, but I wanted to see if I could access a bit of coastline via a different route because I knew that certain tide sizes were going to stop me accessing it if I came in from my more usual way. I know of only one way to find out and that’s to go for a bit of a yomp and see what the lie of the land is. Before I tried fishing on Monday I dumped my rod and rucksack down and went for a scramble with Storm to see if I could get around. You know that saying that you learn something new every time you go fishing? Unfishable Monday was a good case of that for me.

Another reason for heading out in iffy conditions was that I wanted to try the (truly awesome) Slammer IV 2500 spinning reel on a specific lure rod sample I have got here and which is seriously floating my boat. You can strap a reel to a rod and have a bit of a wiggle at home, but nothing beats getting the gear out into the real world and seeing how it feels and reacts when you are really fishing………or catching weed as I was on Monday. I did actually get a really good bite from a bit of weed that must have hit me as a wave started breaking and for a split second I did think I was into a February bass. So in pure fishing terms my Monday afternoon efforts were a waste of time, but because I live near the coast and I really enjoy planning ahead and trying different things it was am interesting few hours with a good dog walk thrown in. I won’t be out and about at any point in the near future though, not with this forecast. I knew we would have to pay for the benign winter weather we’ve been getting recently…………….

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