Some more successful end of January bass fishing - just how different is every single year?

Friday night into Saturday down here saw just about the first bit of meaningful life out on the open coast for a while, so whilst the end of January would never be considered an optimal or even hugely realistic time to head out lure fishing for bass, one of the many advantages of living so close to the sea is that it’s always worth a sniff because you never quite know, plus what’s the harm in trying because you also tend to get a decent walk into the bargain as well…………

So Mark and I went for a go on Saturday afternoon to coincide with HW at about 3pm. There was enough west in the wind to produce what were some really good conditions - green water, good amount of bounce etc. - and when we pulled up in my Epic Berlingo, Mark spotted another angler a fair distance further along the coast but nowhere near where we were going. We thought it might be a local angler we know so I had a quick look through my binoculars and then passed them over to Mark to have a look as well. You almost couldn’t make it up, because at that precise moment Mark saw the guy hook and land a bass. Guess how fast we made it down to our chosen location?! I don’t want to have to use the words athletic or balletic to refer to our journey down the cliffs, but I feel that it’s only fair and honest to do so.

And it wasn’t very long into the session when I turned around from where I was fishing and spotted Mark grabbing a fish out of the waves and he was calling me over on the radio to say he had got one. I asked him on the radio to keep the bass in the water because I’d be over as fast as possible to take a few photos, and then because fishing like this is often a case of working backwards with the photographs, I basically hardly fish for the rest of the session and choose to shoot the living daylights out of it - we are both fishing, the light isn’t remotely epic but a decent fish then gets caught, now is the time for Henry to shoot around the capture as such to tie a bunch of different photos into the obligatory grip and grins.

See that wave breaking just in front of Mark? Just behind that is the sort of range at which he hooked his bass.

Firstly because I want to, secondly because I need to, and thirdly because the more I shoot fishing as it’s actually happening with this new Sony system, the more the camera body and me moving my hands and fingers around it while never taking my eye away from the viewfinder becomes second nature. All photography like this is of course based around some fundamentals, but every camera body is slightly different, and as much as fishing can often be periods of nothing going on, if you aren’t ready to react when things do happen then you’re missing shots - and I can’t forgive myself for missing photographs. I can miss fish with the best of them, but I seriously don’t like leaving photos behind.

I am going to give Mark a lot of credit here. He made the call on where to fish on Saturday afternoon, and he also has some very specific spots at this location that he likes to work hard when you’ve got the sort of tumbling, fizzy water conditions we had. I like to think that I am getting better at this bass fishing thing but I also hope that I am honest about my shortcomings. Mark is so much better than me at effectively working all those close-in features in and around the rocks, indeed he saw the tail of the bass swirl just behind a wave breaking onto the beach right before he hooked his bass. I do cover all these kinds of areas but I also know that I can be prone to losing a bit of patience and fall into a bit of a whack and crank routine unless I stop and think about it.

Mark is also bloody lethal with a Tackle House Feed Shallow, and I notice that he often fishes this lure in winter in the sort of conditions we found on Saturday afternoon. From memory his first double figure bass a few years ago came on a Feed Shallow so yet again that confidence thing becomes an important part of the equation, but also I must assume that he’s fishing it in a way that quite simply works. Mark had another smack from a fish on Saturday afternoon and again he saw the swirl from the fish it was so close in, and I’m about 80% confident I had a hit when I put my camera gear down for a while and clipped on a white Gravity Stick Paddletail.

I will admit to being really rather proud that a friend who I fish with a hell of a lot has chosen to fish with a rod that I helped develop (he’s a grownup, he used to work in a tackle shop, he’s going to fish with exactly what he wants to fish with), indeed by hook or by crook we have both settled on the same outfit for the majority of our fishing - the SGS8 9’2’’ 9-42g rod paired with the Penn Slammer IV 2500 spinning reel, but Mark loves the Savage Gear Silencer 8-strand braid in the 0.15mm diameter whilst I really like this braid but I properly love and mostly fish with Sufix 131 braid which just refuses to give up on me.

So the one bass may not an epic session make, but for the end of January when we were going out because there’s always a chance but in reality it’s hardly prime time? It continues to amaze me just how different every single year or supposed bass season really is. Are we still talking about some bass still hanging around from the end of last season or did that actually end but we’re seeing a small influx of bass? I know what I think but I guess we'll never really know. Last year things took a long time to get going but it seems like there’s still a half-decent chance out there. Does this mean it will go quiet at some point and then take ages to get going again, or could it be one of those years when things suddenly kick off in early April? Could there be a chance of bass all the way through? None of us know but I am one of those anglers who will be trying to find out…………….

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