Was it a fluke? Only one way to find out - get back out there!

There is absolutely nothing I can do about the current open coast conditions I am seeing on the various Cornish webcams I check on a regular basis - I signed up to the yearly SurfLine plan, no more waiting for adverts, much better! - but there is no complaining here with how targeting bass gives us so many different options……………

If you haven’t done so already, please have a read of my previous blog post here, because in the grand scheme of trying to prove something to myself, that single bass means a lot to me. You know as well as I do that when you try something a bit different, you simply have to catch a fish to fully convince yourself that it works. I wasn’t going to go fishing the next morning, but I woke up so early thinking about fishing that I managed to clear a load of work and I thought why the hell not get out there again and see if the one bass was a fluke or not. I think the Sleeper Craw is an outstanding lure, but enter the (freshwater) creature bait rabbit hole and I start wondering about the different options.

That one bass meant a lot when you’re on a mission to learn as much as possible about something specific, so with only a small jump in the tide and essentially the same weather conditions, I had to have another go and scratch an itch that I had been thinking about non-stop on some recent runs. You know that I have no freshwater lure fishing background, so Google and my Facebook page are most often my resources for trying to find stuff out.

So Mark and I headed back out to a very quiet and out of the way estuary mark we had been thinking about for a while, but finally got around to actually fishing fairly recently. I had walked around the area with Storm a couple of times and had a good look at access points etc., but the other day I managed to remotely “guide” Mark in there when I couldn’t get out fishing myself. I am literally still jumping for joy that he went and landed his first chunky bass on a creature bait from this exact spot, but it’s a big area and we have a lot to learn.

It was very bright and still when we got there, but pretty quickly we were seeing a good few mullet mooching around, and from time to time it looked like the odd bass moving through. While there is still a bit of water it feels like the fish are going to be hugging the bladderwrack close to the bank, and sure enough Mark soon hooked a bass on the Sleeper Craw but the fish didn’t stick. I chose to persist with my Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' creature bait rigged on a 3/0 10g Westin Swimming Jig Head jig head because I was trying to scratch that itch and prove to myself that the one previous bass on this approach wasn’t a fluke. One thing I am really starting to like is this Savage Gear SG8 Revenge Finesse 8' 4-18g lure rod. It’s designed primarily for freshwater perch and zander fishing and it’s got this weird, softish solid tip on it which blends into a very fast blank. When I first picked it up I didn’t like it at all, indeed I was about to put it back in the neoprene rod bag and send it straight back to the grownups. It felt horrible on the waggle test! But I asked a lad I know to explain to me the thinking behind a freshwater lure rod like this, and then I thought what the hell, let’s at least give it one go. I am so glad I did. For this bottom contact style of fishing at no great range, wow can you feel literally every single thing and this level of feedback when you are bumping stuff is invaluable. Old dogs learning new tricks.

So while we had enough water I was deliberately targeting the bladderwrack areas literally beneath our feet, and then out of the blue I suddenly felt my lure getting picked up off the bottom. I kinda went with it if that makes sense, then struck hard the moment the rod tip slammed over. It all happened in a split-second, and that is what I am starting to think this style of bass fishing is so much about. You aren’t winding into a fish or watching a surface smash. You need to be able to react quickly and decisively to something happening very suddenly during periods of nothing, and in that split-second I think you need to be able to sort of gauge what is going on and make the right decision.

As with the previous day the bass couldn’t really go anywhere, indeed the soft solid tip on the Savage Gear SG8 Revenge Finesse 8' 4-18g lure rod really helps with cushioning the scrap. I managed to negotiate the muddy bank with my camera in one hand and the rod in the other to snap a few close up photos of the bass before releasing it. Okay, so only the one bass was landed during that session, but if I think of my lack of early season success in the estuaries here in Cornwall and the fact that all this is going on and it’s not even mid-May yet, well I for one am bouncing away with plans and ideas and theories! I should be complaining about all this gorgeous weather being so useless for my open coast fishing, but I can’t with how this amazing fish keeps me learning……………

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