I get that bass of all sizes can eat relatively big fish and crabs and so on, indeed my mate caught a bass a few days ago that I swear was the same size as the Patchinko 125 surface lure he was using, and I get that big lures can obviously work well for big bass. One thing that is increasingly frustrating me though is the simple fact that I don’t know enough about exactly what bass are feeding on at certain times of the year when we we might catch them from the shore, and then to follow that, I know little about the life cycles and behaviours of say sandeels and prawns and pollack and crabs - and yes, it always interests me how much striped bass anglers over in the US talk about the different bait species and how they look to “match the hatch” as much as possible. I know our bass are different fish, but fish are still fish and like us they have to eat. When you know there are plenty of sandeels around because they are rushing away from you as you gently wade around a beach at night, have you noticed how small so many of them seem to be?

Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90 (top), Sandeel Pencil 125 (bottom), both in the rather lovely “Black Silver” colour, both rigged with #4 treble hooks

And if there is one thing that not being able to go fishing did to my head, it was to get me thinking even more about a few theories and ideas and what have you. You know that I am doing some work with Savage Gear and I am finding the whole process absolutely fascinating. It does mean that I can contact some of the grownups at HQ and get access to various bits and pieces to try if they are in stock. So when those fixed versions of the Line-Thru Sandeels came to market recently - the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 and Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 150 - I naturally emailed one of the grownups to get hold of a few in the various colours. When the parcel arrived in due course, I was surprised to see a few Sandeel Pencils in a little 90 size in the box. I hadn’t asked for the 90 version because at the time I had no idea they were doing a “fixed” version of the baby 90 size Line-Thru Sandeel, and to be honest even if I had known I am not sure I’d have asked to see such a relatively small-profile lure for my bass fishing. But I guess that somebody at Savage Gear HQ had other ideas and surreptitiously slipped a few Sandeel Pencil 90 lures in there, and because we couldn’t go fishing at the time, I started looking at them and thinking about them………………..

Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90 in the Matt White Tobis colour

Do you carry any lures this small for your bass fishing? I’ve had a serious thing for the little IMA iBorn 98F (98mm) for a while now, but it’s a fairly chunky lure for its length when compared to the little Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90 (90mm, 13g). I know of plenty of anglers who do really well on the little Fiiish Black Minnow 90 as well. The little Sandeel Pencil 90 has the one point on the rear for attaching a hook so I put a size 4 treble on the back of a couple of them in the “Matt White Tobis” and the “Black Silver” colours. I have also done the same with the longer Sandeel Pencil 125 - one size 4 barbless treble on the rear (if you own any of these Sandeel Pencils in any of the sizes and you’re going to use them for bass, I would recommend you replace the supplied freshwater hooks and instead replace them with stronger trebles and singles if you are so inclined). I cannot confirm or deny various saltwater specific plans with these Sandeel Pencil lure for the future, but for the time being these two colours are as close as I can get to a white and a black for my growing theories about last light and first light and then proper darkness.

Matt White Tobis and Black Silver, the two colours I have tried at night so far and had bass on, now to see how the other colours in the range might work

So it’s been rattling around my head for a couple of months now that perhaps it’s worth a go with smaller lures earlier in the season especially. As to why and I could bang on about a number of theories, but I can assure you that it’s a lot to do with lockdown and bouncing brain syndrome. If you were anywhere near the south coast of Cornwall the other night and you heard an excited yelp drifting on the breeze, well that was me hooking into a bass a little bit before I would class it as properly dark on the Black Silver coloured Sandeel Pencil 90. It wasn’t a big fish but damn it slammed the lure good and proper. I do like lures which work well when you can simply whack them out and wind them in at whatever speed you feel comfortable with or which suits the depth of water and so on, and this was all I was doing with this particular Sandeel Pencil 90. For a little lure it frigging flies, and I really like how the three different sizes all have internal rattles. The 125 and 150 are serious casting machines.

Over a few night sessions now it has been really interesting fishing with, catching on, and getting to grips with how these slim-profile Sandeel Pencils in the 90 and 125 sizes might work in the dark. I’d back my mate Mark to outfish me most of the time, but my first night session with these Sandeel Pencils and I had maybe six or seven bass and Mark didn’t get a sniff on a white senko. I dug a couple of the lures out here at home, gave them to Mark (lobbed them in fact, social distancing and all that!), and bang, the next night he’s into bass on them. You can fish the 90 a little easier than the 125 over very shallow ground if you like winding lures a bit slower, but on what I would call a “normal retrieve” the 125 swims really nice and shallow as well. The term needlefish seems to be a fairly loose word for describing more and more lures these days and I know that the Sandeel Pencil by its name is obviously meant to be imitating a sandeel, but in some respects they are also a sort of (straight stick) needlefish lure which for our bass is surely imitating a sandeel anyway, and at night I am fishing them no differently to any needlefish lures I have tried so far. Whack ‘em out and wind ‘em in. They have got a subtle kind of “shimmer/vibration” in the water and the baby 90 size swims with a little bit of a slalom presumably because it’s a bit fatter at the rear end, but at the end of the day for my night fishing I am looking at these lures in a similar light to any needlefish I might carry.

Nailed right under Mark’s rod tip on the Sandeel Pencil 90

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this blog post to turn into a Savage Gear kind of thing. Aside from pleading with Savage Gear to make a fixed hook version of their Line-Thru Sandeels literally the first time I ever saw the lures and way before we ever started working together, I am nothing to do with these Sandeel Pencils but I am so damn excited about them for so many different bass fishing applications. Ever since I got my hands on some Sandeel Pencil 125 samples last year and caught plenty of bass on them in the surf, I have been itching to start giving them a proper workout at night. Then somebody at Savage Gear HQ went and slipped those little 90 ones into my parcel and I began thinking about smaller lures earlier in the year and all that kind of stuff. I get such a kick out of catching fish when I am trying something a bit something a bit different to what I might usually do. Now to get the 125 and the bigger 150 out into the surf, and I am also fascinated to see how the Sandeel Pencil 150 might end up working at night as well. There’s a spot I sometimes fish at night where for a few sessions last year the bass were hitting my lures significantly further out than tends to be the norm there, and that 150 size is so easy to put out a long, long way if needs be. Holy cow this lure fishing thing is a sickness, and believe me, I’ve got it bad! You all have a good weekend, please stay safe and well, catch you next week………..

Sandeel Pencil 125 in the Matt White Tobis colour

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Some interesting results at night using somewhat smaller lures than I usually would

© Henry Gilbey 2023