When you haven’t fished a particular method for a while, I sometimes wonder if I can really feel it. And then you get hit!

My alarm went off at 3am on Saturday morning because I wanted to take advantage of a forecast which promised a lot for a mark I had in mind. I need a decent bit of sea to get it going, but too much and I can’t fish it, and too little and it doesn’t fire. What can I do but trust in the forecast and give it a go? When I got there though I’d have given the conditions as 50/50 at best, and as the tide ebbed it got calmer instead of more lively as the forecast had kindly suggested…………

I was on my own so I couldn’t do something different to a mate to try and find out where in the water column the bass might hit something if they were around. I started off fishing a Gravity Stick Paddletail 120 rigged on my new best friend, the 3/0 Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head, and because it was relatively calm I went with the 5g head. It continues to surprise me how well this combination of lure and jig head casts, but with as much ground my lure was covering, there was a distinct lack of fish. I then changed over to a DoLive Stick in that Sight Special colour which to me is a handy alternative to the solid white which I can’t find anywhere these days. I deliberately targeted any areas of white water around the base of various rocks and allowed the twitch-stick to wash around with the movement. Nothing though.

I haven’t been near the open coast recently with all this amazing weather and calm seas. My bass fishing recently has been based around exploring different estuary locations, and as much as the creature bait stuff is based around gently trundling lures along the bottom, it’s miles away from whacking something fairly heavy out and deliberately bumping it back to you over some seriously rough ground. All those bangs and taps and near-snags and “hits” from all the rocks and reef and gullies could feel like a bass if you weren’t used to it, indeed when I haven’t fished like this for a while and I make those first few casts, I sometimes wonder if a bass hit is really going to feel like a bass hit - and not just another bang from a rock.

Because this was my chosen method to turn to as the tide started to strip out and I could access a specific bit of reef which gives way to a gully, another very shallow section of reef, then behind that is some slightly deeper and very rough ground. I have caught a few bass from directly behind the second very shallow section of reef when one might be tempted to crank the hell out of your lure to get it back in. I have tried so many different types of soft plastic and jig head combinations for this “bumping over rough shallow ground” style of bass fishing, from the lethal Fiiish Black Minnow when I started doing it (thanks north coast lads!) through to what I turn to most times now because it keeps on working over and over again - the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless in either of the two sizes depending on depth and sea conditions and so on. Yes I work with Savage Gear, but it was my intention from the off with the Sandeel V2 Weedless to make it a lure which was killer both for swimming and for bumping. My turning to this lure so much is down to my trust in it, pure and simple.

So there I am fishing away on my own in the early morning and it feels like the world is still asleep. It’s rather lovely save for the lack of bass and a load of bumps and taps and so on that I keep getting as I work the lure along the bottom, while wondering if I could actually feel a hit with all that’s going on at the end of my line as the lure smashes into and over a lot of rocks. But then I do get hit, and it’s completely and utterly unmistakeable, and it’s absolutely glorious! It’s not a big bass, but it’s a fish, and later on I get hit again and it’s a chunky wrasse - which tells me that it is definitely too calm for this reef!

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