There’s something about that hit on a lure in the dark which seriously does it for me (but not so much the photography side of things)

A friend of mine made a good call to get the hell away from our local stretch of coastline the other night, so we met up further west and made our way to what is an extensive stretch of reef where we have done pretty well during daylight hours when there’s a decent bit of bounce on. This was going to be the first time for me night fishing this ground though, but the conditions were nice and calm and clear on a flooding tide. It felt pretty good, not least that we weren’t fishing anywhere local which has been so quiet the last few weeks……………

When it got properly dark I soon got a shout on the radio from Mark to say that he had just landed a bass around 3lbs, so I asked him if he could put the fish in a rockpool while I made my way over (like a ninja) to take a few photos. This is the bit I struggle with at night - the whole lure bass fishing thing for me is often such a visual treat for my photography during daylight hours. Once you take away any kind of light and you have to chuck a lot of harsh looking flash into the mix, that’s when it kinda kills me. I could mess around with long exposures and so on, but night fishing for bass is all about a lack of light and being stealthy, and the simple fact is that nobody can stand still for minutes on end while a camera is locked off on a tripod. Flash it is then.

Which is kinda fine for a quick grip and grin and then release the fish - note the rocks behind Mark because I am obviously trying not to kill the fishing stone dead by chucking all that artificial flashlight over the surface of the water where he is fishing. I know I succeeded with this because Mark caught another bass pretty quickly after this one you can see here, from the same bit of water he caught the first one from. The fish he had the other night came on the killer white OSP DoLive Stick which Mark rigs on a weedless hook and no belly-weight. What I know he was doing a bit differently was pausing his lure every now and then to let it fish on the drop…………….

We were talking in my Epic Berlingo on the way to the fishing spot earlier on, and I was telling Mark about some recent chats I had been having with the outstanding South Devon Bass Guide Marc Cowling. I also gleaned a lot of brilliant information from his latest book (which every single bass lure angler should buy and read, my review is here). I was telling Mark how Marc laid out in his book how so many of the bass he catches and guides at night come on the drop when he or his clients are fishing with the smaller size SG Gravity Stick Pulsetail especially - rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight Savage Gear weedless hook we made for the larger size Gravity Sticks (these bigger hooks also work well in the smaller size lures), and with a 1.8g weight spike stuffed into the purpose-designed slot we put just in front of the tail of the lure on the underside.

So to give Mark his dues he started to fish his white DoLive Stick with some purposeful pauses the other night, and it worked. I was fishing with the smaller size SG Gravity Stick Pintail rigged on the larger 6/0 belly-weight weedless hook and with a 1.8g weight spike eased into the slot. Marc Cowling and I had been talking the day before about how he had been out fishing and was catching on the white Pintail in the dark. I don’t know about sales figures with Savage Gear because it’s way above my paygrade, but I have always had a suspicion that the Pintail is the Gravity Stick which gets the least amount of love. I understand with how good the DoLive Stick is, but we didn’t set out to try and make a better DoLive Stick because I don’t think you can. We set out to make a twitch-stick style soft plastic which would fit in well with the Pulsetail and Paddletail.

After my chat with Marc Cowling I had rigged it up as I described above, but interestingly I didn’t connect with a bass the other night until I went with a non-belly weight hook and simply cranked the white Pintail in like I would have fished a white senko - whack it out and wind it in. First cast fishing like this and I nailed a fish. I did have one take on the belly-weight hook where I could literally feel a bass trying to pull the lure away from me as I fished it on the drop, but the swine fish dropped it. We didn’t land anything remotely big the other night, but it was satisfying to find some life - good call Andy - and every single time I get nailed on a lure in the dark it reaffirms to me just how exciting it is to fish for bass like this. When we had made a call to finish fishing I then shot a few photos of Andy fishing away with my rod and reel, and chucking all that flashlight around also reaffirmed to me just how much I prefer photographing bass fishing when I can use available light.

What I also enjoyed the other night was fishing with a Daiwa spinning reel for the first time in a few years. I am not a fan of their magseal technology so I was really pleased to find out via Ben at the Art of Fishing the other day that Daiwa’s good looking MG MQ spinning reels don’t use it. I also rather like how there is no bearing in the line roller assembly - I believe it’s a simple bush which to me is far less to go wrong around saltwater. A bit of YouTube based research throws up how much the US anglers especially like these Daiwa BG MQ spinning reels, so I have got a BG MQ 4000D-XH here to try out (size wise it looks almost like it sits between a Shimano 3000 and 4000). I loaded it up with the outstanding Berkley Sick braid and I strapped it to what I have now concluded is easily one of the best 9’ lure rods I have fished with - the Savage Gear SGS6 9’ 7-35g, review here. Forget the fact that it’s “only” around the £200 mark, because this is truly an outstanding lure fishing rod. It was so nice fishing with that rod and reel combination and I am really interested to see how this Daiwa reel holds up. I am not going to put it through what I know the awesome Penn Slammer 2500 can take, but let’s see where we get………………………

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