The angriest bass I’ve ever caught?

It had to have been there or thereabouts, indeed I was genuinely shocked at how hard the roughly 6lb bass in the video here hit my lure. It was my last day in Kerry before I headed for the Copper Coast and a couple of days of photography for the Favorite rods tackle company, so I wanted to make the most of my actual fishing time. The lads I was in Kerry with had a few more days left so they had headed out earlier whilst I was trying to clear some work before nabbing a few hours of fishing, then packing the Epic Berlingo up and hitting the road to the south coast…………….

Something which has really stuck in my head for a while now is how good a lot of these paddletails we might swim can be when rigged on weedless hooks with no added weight - no belly-weight, no cheb weights etc. Almost by default I tend to use some sort of added weight when I swim something like the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletails or Slender Scoop Shads and so on, but a very good angler over in Ireland who hammers a lot of good bass on the white Gravity Stick Paddletail especially got me thinking a lot more about swimming the lure “naked”.

And where I chose to fish that last session in Kerry was basically crying out for this approach. For sure it’s most likely going to be one of the Savage Gear paddletails for me because I trust a select few of them so much, but of course it might well be something completely different for you. I like the look of the Slender Scoop Shad with no extra weight in really calm water when you can slow the retrieve right down, but I do prefer how stable the Gravity Stick Paddletail swims with no added weight when there is some bounce on the sea. I was fishing a location that exposed more and more lovely looking boulders as the tide stripped out, and with the wind in my face and a nice bit of bounce I was feeling pretty confident of at least a bass.

But I still got a shock when the bass here slammed into my lure. You know when you get one of those jolts which slams right through the rod and into your hands and you couldn’t actually miss the bass if you tried? It always interests me how each bass seems to hit and scrap a bit differently, and this fish was angry. I gave it hell when it was hooked up because I was very aware of a lot of bits of sharp barnacles on the top of lots of rock all over the place, and as good as the actual fight was from the fish, it’s that hit which still gets me. I know I yelled with pure joy, and I know I was grinning like a loon when I got the bass to hand. You all have a good weekend and I will catch you next week………………

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