What’s the one thing we don’t really imitate in bass fishing, and what’s the one thing so many bass feed on? Rabbit hole warning!

If there is one thing that floats my boat in the whole global fishing thing it’s knowing and communicating with a whole range of different people/anglers from around the world. I have been around more fishing on this earth than most people will ever realise, and it fascinates me - but of course it’s lure fishing for bass which does it for me in my home waters. We have this single species of saltwater fish which is far more diverse and interesting than many of us ever knew………….

So we chuck out all these different lures in all manner of different locations which might try and imitate sandeels or baby pollack, small mullet, mackerel, sprats, garfish, gobies, scad and so on. Who knows how many different prey species bass really feed on in the range of different types of location we might chase them? I don’t personally take any of my bass to eat, but the one thing I always hear about from anglers who do is how often the stomachs are full of crab. Peeler crab is obviously a prime bait for bass, but how much do you stop and think about how often bass might actually be head-down and feeding principally on crab?

In estuaries it’s surely a given a lot of the time, but out on the open coast there must be plenty of bass which move over shallow reef systems on the hunt for crab as much as they do say prawns and sandeels and gobies? What though is the one food source we don’t tend to imitate? See where I am going with this? How many times are we fishing estuaries especially and potentially missing out on good fish which ignore our lures because it’s nothing like what they are dialled in on?

I have been having some really interesting conversations with a very talented angler called Danny Parkins recently. We have known each other for years and Danny is a far more rounded angler in UK waters than I will ever be (freshwater lure fishing, fly fishing etc.). He approaches his bass fishing in some interestingly different ways to how I might with my formative fishing background of two beachcasters on a tripod and “spinning” being a bit of something to do when the bait stuff wasn’t happening. You might have noticed some serious bass fishing by Danny and his mates on Facebook especially over the last few years, and we got to talking recently about some observations he had and some stuff he started to mess around with properly towards the end of last year……………..

You may remember me talking a bit last year about this whole creature bait thing. I started to try some stuff out but my heart attack came along at just the wrong time and threw a bit of a spanner in the works. To freshwater lure anglers, creature baits (which to me look SO much like a typical crab a bass might be looking for) are nothing remotely new or different, but to an angler like me who fishes in saltwater and does not have a lure fishing background of any meaningful intent, well they are somewhat different with how they look and might be fished and so on. Last year I started to think about them in relation to different places I might fish for bass, but I got nowhere close to really understanding them or how I might best present them for bass…………….

Until Danny and I were yapping the other day and he said a few things to me which got my serious attention and my brain started bouncing away like you would not believe! I am running at least three times a week these days, plus doing a gym based heart rehab session once a week, and yep, you’ve guessed it, I think about fishing most of the time I am doing all this exercise! I am not going to go down this rabbit hole in any meaningful way today, but when Danny started to describe to me how he he was literally “skull-dragging” his various creature/crab style baits directly along the bottom to be more like a crab might move - when did you ever see a crab hopping up and down on and off the bottom for example? - well my brain started to hurt. I know what he has caught so far fishing like this - proper bass! - and it’s pretty bloody fascinating.

It might sound so simple, but when did you last go out and very deliberately try and imitate a crab which might be scuttling around and perhaps defensively looking for cover? I have seen enough in freshwater and saltwater fly fishing around the world to firmly believe that our lures and indeed flies are being refused far more often than we ever realise, so going down that route, do you ever wonder how you might appeal to a bass which is head-down and very intently feeding on crab and quite happily ignoring your lure swimming overhead? If you follow Marc Cowling of South Devon Bass Guide on Facebook then you will be able to access this link to a recent post of his. Marc is a friend and we often talk about all things bass fishing, and I think it’s safe to say that the January session he is referring to on that Facebook post blew his mind a fair bit. No doubt there will be more to come on this, I need to go for another run to access some more thinking time…………….