The eternal question of water clarity and when is it too murky to catch bass on lures?

I woke up at 4.30am yesterday morning excited about going out fishing yet I wasn’t due to leave the house until about 9am, and then this morning I woke up at 4.30am again - but this time it was a combination of thinking about the questions that yesterday’s session threw up, and excitement at going fishing again. Who’d want to be my head eh?

Anyway, if there is one conundrum that regularly fries my brain it’s the whole water clarity issue. I love my co-guiding work for so many different reasons, and chief among them is the chance to meet so many different anglers from all over the place. One thing that tends to come out in the mix is water clarity and what one angler might term “normal” when compared to the next person, and I guess with my tending to walk away from what I would call dirty water is perhaps a case of us being more used to finding clear water for lure fishing. But do I walk away from dirty water a bit too easily?

I couldn’t go fishing on Sunday because it was my youngest girl’s 13th birthday and she had a cross country race over in Newquay, but a friend of mine did head out and he landed a few bass in water that he described as spot on. I did manage to get out fishing on Monday morning though, but I was met by what I would call some pretty filthy water. You could see the line of it running out to about 150yds or so, but because my mate had landed a few fish not that far away the day before I told myself to get myself onto the reef and damn well give it a go. I could have looked elsewhere for nicer water clarity, but if there was one day to play around with the whole water clarity thing then this was it.

And I blanked. I tried every single lure and type of lure to see if I could buy a fish in water that I seriously didn’t like the look of, and whilst I accept completely that there were most likely a number of other variables involved which I will never know because I am a human being and not a fish, the most obviously visible difference between the sessions was the water clarity. Conditions around here in south east Cornwall have been very up and down lately and to me if feels very “fragile” out there at the moment. I love this time of year for bass fishing, but of course the weather plays an even bigger part than usual, and at the moment it’s not taking much to blow the coastline out. A settled spell will sort that out, but crumbs the weather’s been volatile recently.

Anyway, I have no problems blanking if I feel I’ve learnt something, but the issue for me has to be that my blank didn’t exactly help my urge to fish dirty water because I think I should be finding bass in it. Mark and I headed out yesterday morning to find what I would class as say 75% spot on water clarity - sublime sea conditions and nowhere near dirty like it was at the start of the week. Once again there were most likely other variables involved, but the actual sea state and tides and winds and so on were not a million miles away from my blank on Monday morning. Yep, you’ve got the jist of this now - the water yesterday morning looked miles better as regards the clarity.

And we caught bass, indeed I couldn’t help but grin when I hooked a bass almost straight away from exactly the same spot I had been blanking from on Monday morning - but this time I could actually see my lure swimming in the water. It was a blast to be fishing almost right next to Mark when he hooked a roughly 5lb bass literally right off the edge of the rocks on one of these Shimano hard lures that both of us are finding it increasingly hard to leave out of our boxes. Yep, I know that you can only catch on the lure you are fishing with, but I am liking a number of these Shimano Japan hard lures more and more over the last couple of years. There is nothing remotely definitive about lure fishing and water clarity here, but these very recent experiences sure keep my brain ticking away. You all have a good weekend.