Why do we assume that if there are loads of bass around they’re going to hit literally anything? Match the hatch?

I got back from Ireland yesterday evening to a very quiet house. I picked Storm up on the way so it’s just me and the dog for a few days until my wife gets back from France. I do love this guiding work I do in Kerry, but I cannot tell you how much I love coming home. Going away has always been a big part of my work, but something has definitely changed since my heart attack and I find the going away a bit harder………….

In between listening to various cricket and rugby podcasts on the long drive home, I was obviously analysing how the last couple of weeks have gone with our anglers. It’s a genuine pleasure to hang out with good people and help them catch a few fish in a great part of the world, and of course John and I are always thinking about the actual fishing and how we might better their chances. The one thing that really stood out to me is how the bass were definitely dialled in on small bait - mainly sandeels it seems - and how you needed to match the hatch or size to be in with the best shout.

You know how I will back a Gravity Stick or a 13cm or 15cm Slender Scoop Shad to catch me bass in so many different situations for example, and you can never ignore how deadly something like the regular Xorus Patchinko or the IMA Hound Glide lures are - but for the most part they just weren’t cutting it. Okay, so the bass were mainly on the small side, but we have all caught plenty of small bass on regular or bigger lures and it’s not as if they can’t hook up on them.

Which is not to say that the lures which many of us trust so much have suddenly become rubbish! My understanding is that when there are large concentrations of bait around which the bass have obviously switched onto, your best bet is to try and at least imitate the rough dimensions of it to stand the best chance of catching a few. It definitely happened a few weeks back when I was out fishing, check here. I know the experts say that bass will hit literally anything when they are on it, but I don’t agree this is always the case. If the fish are on it, and “it” happens to be small sandeels, are they going to just smash a larger size “it” which the angler has presented to them? I stayed with a friend on the south coast of Ireland on Monday night, and he was telling me how that even with a massive shoal of busting tuna in front of you off the south coast of Spain, if your “it” isn’t the size of the “it” which they are feeding on, AND that your “it” isn’t dropping at the right speed (leader diameter), those crazy fish ain’t going to hit your lure just because they are in front of you and feeding.

So why do we presume that bass are going to hit almost anything we put in front of them? I happen to believe that bass refuse our lures way more than we think they do, and my thinking this is partly borne out by a few anglers I know who have done basic underwater filming which has shown large numbers of bass simply refusing what was being put right in front of them. Just because the fish are there doesn’t mean that they are going to automatically nail your lure. Sometimes this may be the case, but how often do you deliberately change the actual size and/or profile of your lure, instead of just changing your lure to something different but still about the same size?

Without a doubt the bass we found in Kerry wanted smaller lures, but the unavoidable fact is that most of us ain’t carrying somewhat smaller lures a lot of the time. What if you need to cover a lot of water as well? The plethora of smaller paddletails and so on can be really handy, but trying to cover plenty of water on a very shallow reef or reach some current in an estuary isn’t always possible with a much lighter and smaller lures - which is why we keep coming back to the little Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90. Yes I work with Pure Fishing/Savage Gear, but when they find me surplus to requirements I can assure you that I will bang on about these amazing lures just the same. I wish the largest 150 had not been discontinued, but as much as I like it I find myself using the 125 and 90 sizes way more.

I am sure there are other lures out there that can do a similar thing - small, slender profile, casts a mile, swims very shallow, good colours - but for the time being when I or we need to cover a lot of water with a much smaller lure, it’s the little Sandeel Pencil 90 we turn to. So many times we suggest to our anglers that they should think about clipping on this specific little lure out in Kerry, and I always make sure to carry a few with me to be able to hand out if somebody hasn’t got one. I didn’t get any advance warning that the grownups were going to discontinue the 150 size Sandeel Pencil, but if I ever hear of the 125 or 90 sizes going the way of the dodo in the future, I’m going to buy as many as I can find and then trust that I’ll be long gone before running out of them!

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