When’s the bass fishing going to kick off this year? When do you tend to see your first fish? Horribly overexcited!

I am increasingly interested in these so called fishing seasons and whether it’s all because of global warming or bait shoals and so on that we are tending to see bass for longer and longer each year (or season), or is a lot of it down to the fact that more anglers are trying to catch bass on lures for longer each year? I don’t actually know by the way, and I seriously doubt that we will ever know for sure, but it’s the middle of March and I am about as excited for things to get going as I can remember………….

Now what freaks me out a bit is that I caught my first ever bass in February this year, and whilst March isn’t remotely over and I haven’t put any meaningful time in yet this month, I have not given up hope of my first ever March bass either. I have no idea whether an early or indeed particularly late bass - I don’t know how to refer to my minor successes in February - means we are in for an early or late start to the 2022 bass season, but without a doubt things were really slow to get going last year. Did those ten+ days of April 2021 frost affect things that much?

I have gone through my photos and records and I am pretty sure the first bass of what I would call the new season was a fish I had about 4am on 2nd April 2019 (not the fish above). April 2020 was obviously messed up because of lockdown so I don’t know how early things might have kicked off that year, but whatever does or doesn’t happen with my continued efforts, it’s around early April when I start to really feel like now’s the time. It might well not be of course, but so far it hasn’t been a cold winter down here (the kiss of death?!) and I am itching to see when things might get going.

How about you though? I know that the Channel Islands can get some serious bass fishing from the shore in January and February, but how about you and your fishing in the rest of the UK and Ireland? I was speaking to John over in Kerry a couple of days ago, and he reckons that if he can get out with the current tides and warm weather that his chances of seeing bass are very, very good. Sometimes their spring fishing can be fantastic over there. We are driving four hours up to my folks later on and I hope to be able to see my dad in hospital tomorrow (one hour a day, one visitor only) while my wife takes our youngest girl to another cross country event somewhere in Kent. You all have a weekend, see you next week…………….