Stunning New Year’s Eve bass session, absolutely bouncing, Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I was away with my family seeing my in-laws on the Isle of Wight, so I wasn’t fishing, but for a good few days I had been eyeing up the tide and potential conditions to get out yesterday on the last day of the year. I had a specific plan in mind but I needed things to come together. Just sometimes the long-range forecast is actually correct so I was on the rocks for 7am and found a seriously lovely sea rolling in. It was too dark to see much but what I hoped to see once it got lighter was green fizzed up water…………..

And in no time at all I briefly hooked then dropped a bass on the regular size Gravity Stick Paddletail rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight corkscrew hook. I had said to my mate that I’d be pretty surprised if we didn’t see a fish or two with how good the conditions looked, so at least there were signs of bass around. A bit later I heard a strangled cry and raced over to find Andy into a decent looking fish which he had smashed on the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight hook. He had wandered off and found a really good looking gully where there was a lot of water swirling around to “grab” his lure. We gave the fat and obviously well-fed bass an easy 6lbs. I know it was the last day of the year, but it’s Cornwall and there’s some decent bass fishing out there if you know where to look and you are prepared to keep at it.

A bit later I changed over to what has worked well for us before on ground like this as it strips out with the ebb tide - bumping the bottom with some sort of paddletail rigged on a weedless jig head. For me it was the 33g Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless in the khaki colour, and although you’re bumping it along over some seriously rough ground, you know when you get hit. In no time at all I got a very sharp tap from a bass, and I am convinced the fish followed me in and then over a somewhat shallower bit of reef, then it nailed my lure on the bottom as the water got a bit deeper again literally right in front of me. Such fun and I gave the fish an easy 5lbs as it came to hand and I allowed my leader to go slack so the lure could simply drop out for the bass to swim away.

Dave then took over and landed a few 60cm+ chunky bass on the Fiiish Black Eel 150 in their good looking khaki colour. He has been catching a bunch of good fish on this specific lure recently, fished along the bottom and accepting the odd lost lure because that’s the nature of this fishing. Dave properly christened his brand new, rather interesting Zenaq Inqlude IS90-M7 Jaw Breaker 9' 10-50g lure rod which the Art of Fishing has just started bringing into the UK. Not cheap, but we’re talking about some serious high-end Japanese rod technology and I can’t wait to have a proper go.

In due course we seemed to lose the bass so we moved around to try and find them again. One section looked really good with some decent waves rolling in, but it was full of weed and I had to pull away after a few casts because it was unfishable. I moved across the rocks and found a good looking gully and pulled a chunky bass out on my first cast on that Sandeel V2 Weedless again. A good few bass were landed during the session and they were all in incredible condition. We saw gannets diving further out and there were a couple of cormorants feeding very close in. The place felt alive and for New Year’s Eve I don’t think you can ask for much more really. Happy New Year, here’s to 2025 and as much good fishing as we can all find out there. I see no reason to put the bass rods away with how it’s been fishing recently…………….

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