Innholdsfortegnelse for #7 Bass Fishing i Sea Angler Guides

Bass must surely rate as one of the most sporting, beautiful and revered fish in our seas. The sight of a bristling bass with its shimmering silver sides and trademark spikey dorsal fin standing erect in defiance is hard to beat. It’s not just that they are simply stunning fish, but the amount of time and effort most dedicated bass anglers put in to catching them makes it a very rewarding pursuit when it all comes together. To some, bass fishing is akin to a religion, and the places it can take you to are often some of the wildest, most scenic and remote out there, which holds great appeal for many. My first bass was caught as a little boy while casting a lugworm into the surf on a…

I saw this fishing prayer somewhere: “When I die, please don’t let my partner sell my tackle for less than three times more than what I said it cost.” Fair enough, a lot of anglers view their credit card limits as challenges: “Mastercard’s raised me to 2,000 quid, let’s see how quickly I can spend that lot.” Rods or reels, there is always something exciting to buy. Most of my tackle falls between cheap and mid-priced. I scramble to marks that ought to be off limits to an uncoordinated stumblebum with arthritic knees, so the last thing I need is to damage expensive gear every time I fall on my bottom. But if you take care of your stuff, and if it gives you pleasure to fish with something beautifully…

There is nothing better than the feeling you get when a good bass slams your lure, particularly when it is an area that you have found yourself by identifying features on the coastline that you think might hold a decent fish or two. The simplicity, practicality and efficiency of lure fishing is very appealing. There is no need for fresh or frozen bait, nor lugging lots of heavy gear across the rocks or miles up a beach. Basically, all you need when starting off is a rod, reel, waders, a handful of decent lures, and away you go. With the correct tackle and lures, it is watercraft and weather that are vital elements of taking your bass fishing to the next level. Watercraft is an understanding of the environment you…

My youngest daughter is obsessed with distance running. She trains religiously so that when the opportunity arises in a race she is in a good position to try and break her Personal Best (PB) time for certain distances. A PB is a PB for a reason, and it’s therefore not easy to beat it. However, by training hard and running the best she can, she is giving herself every chance to do so. Plenty of variables, such as the course, the weather, the conditions and other factors will all affect her ability to do so. It’s all about being as well prepared as possible to better her times when the situation arises. I would suggest that fishing shares much of this DNA. I don’t remotely class myself as a specimen…

Due to the strong tides that can be found on our piece of the English Channel coastline, Poole is one of the top ports in the UK for targeting bass. A variety of different features and depths provide us with the luxury of being able to target these wonderful fish in many ways. Over the past few years, boat anglers have changed from fishing mainly with 12lb-class rods and 10oz leads to some more sporting techniques. Perhaps this is something to do with the limits that have been put on the number of bass we can bring home for dinner. Anglers have been forced to focus their efforts on maximising the sport factor from each fish, and the best ways to do this are float-fishing and slow jigging. FLOAT-FISHING Using…

MY FAVOURITE RADIO programme is the Shipping Forecast. The names of the sea areas are so evocative: Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle… I’m happiest of all when the bulletin begins with the words, “There are warnings of gales”. I feel guilty smiling at the prospect but storms mean bass. Mostly a heavy blow’s about good fishing. This may seem obvious but it’s worth asking why. The other week I popped into the village shop after an early morning outing in a wet Force 5 or 6. The owner was surprised I was daft enough to stand around in a horizontal monsoon. “Perfect conditions,” I told her as I dripped rainwater and flecks of seaweed on to her floor. The bass population doesn’t increase when the barometric pressure drops. It’s…

There has been an obvious increase in the number of people turning to angling for the first time, or returning after many years of absence as a consequence of the pandemic which has changed so much in the last few years. To a degree, this has been mirrored in the BASS membership. For many years, new BASS members tended to be anglers of some experience and very often, bass-specific at that. BASS now finds itself with a wider range of angling ability and experience amongst its members than perhaps ever before. With this in mind, it seems like the perfect time to offer some material aimed predominantly at those that are new to chasing bass. That said, the learning never stops in any form of angling so hopefully there is…

As a full-time, professional guide, I am very fortunate to be in a position where I can ‘borrow’ one of my clients’ rods for a play during, or indeed after most guided sessions. This means that over the past four years I have used the shortest, longest, flimsiest, cheapest, nastiest and probably least suitable set-ups (including those awkward and almost obsolete ‘spinning rods’) all the way through the spectrum to the most expensive, most exclusive and seemingly ‘best’ lure rods out there. So, if you’re new to this type of fishing, or indeed if you’re looking to upgrade, where precisely should you start? SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT The more anglers I engage with about what can be a convoluted and even divisive subject (hence why I won’t be listing specific rods…

Successful Slow Pitch Jigging is all about getting several individual components to work together, the more components you can get right the better your chances of catching quality fish become. For example, it is best to use a dedicated ‘SPJ’ rod which are lightweight and have a high carbon content, and which by normal boat rod standards are relatively short, usually from about 6ft - 6½ft long. The rod is designed to impart the best action out of the jig and it’s very important to use a rod rating that suits the weight of jigs that you are fishing with. Most rods will work a jig well in the middle of their rating, and then provide a slower action as the weight of jig goes up along with a faster…

There is something very touchy feely about letting a live fish swim free to catch an even bigger fish. Bring a bass into the equation and you have the making of some dynamic fishing. Is this how bass fishing should be? No special tackle, just a baited hook tied to the end of the line and allowed to drift away on the tide. The simplicity of the gear, bite detection consisting of a sensitive finger holding the line, is bottom line basic yet so sophisticated. There are no expensive lures and no complicated rigs. This method is sea angling’s ‘basic instinct’ at its best. It is a method limited only by your imagination and a light touch grasp of the realities. You wouldn’t fish like this on a crowded harbour…

Although I consider myself A kindly soul, I’m not giving anyone an Ordnance Survey map with my bass hot spots highlighted in magic marker. This is mostly because coves and beaches that develop a reputation on the grapevine attract interest from those who set illegal nets too close to shore and peddle undersized fish to restaurants out of the backs of vans. Therefore, my geographical advice is general. Locating bass is actually fairly simple. Go where their food is in good supply and where the fish won’t need to work too hard for their meals. It is unfair to describe bass as lazy though, but it’s anglers who can be lazy. They’re the ones who can’t be bothered to roll out of bed at half past daft to catch a…

Targeting bass in the surf was once described to me as an art form. I was only 14 or so at the time and didn’t understand how accurate that statement was. What I’ve come to realise is that to become an art form a compilation of factors must come together to create a finished product. To be successful at surf bassing you need to break it down into its individual components then bring them back together to form the work of art. WHEN & WHERE TO FISH You could argue that seeking bass in the surf is a 12-month occupation, and to some extent that’s true with bass being caught, especially along the western coast of the UK, throughout the year. However, we need to narrow this down to better…

Most anglers simply change their daylight tactics during the summer, reverting to lure fishing and float-fishing for species like bass, mackerel and garfish, while other options include heading for the roughest, kelpiest sea beds to fish for wrasse, pollack, dogfish and codling, targeting mullet with bread in the marinas or fishing for pollack, coalfish and scad around the pier walls and piles with wriggling ragworms. If you are prepared to venture into darkness there are big fish to be caught on even the calmest nights. Bass, smoothhounds, rays, congers and soles are among the species that are nocturnal feeders and move inshore under the cover of darkness during the summer. A bonus is that you don’t need to be a mega-caster to put your bait among the fish. Some shingle…

Autumn may make us think of impending winter, yet the reality is that the sea temperature peaks in mid-September and then falls slowly through to December in average years not reaching its lowest until around late February or early March. In the past decade or more, baitfish like mackerel and sandeels have arrived later than normal but have extended their time inshore by four weeks or more due to higher temperatures throughout the year. This also applies to bigger bass that seem to stay on the inshore grounds right through to Christmas Those baitfish provide a major food supply to sustain the bass through the winter and this creates late-season opportunities for anglers wanting to target bass over the inshore reefs and wrecks, and inside small harbours. Lure fishing can…

Having been working the mouth of the estuary with some metals for about half an hour, I hadn’t had a knock. I was fishing a location on the south-east coast of Ireland, the tide was well on the drop and I was thinking any fish would more than likely come out now. Making my way along the edge of the estuary, edging towards where it opens out into the sea, I knew that it was possible to get a bass or two just outside the mouth. Here you can pick up a fish waiting on the shore side of the mouth for the last of the baitfish coming out. It was about 30 minutes from low water at this stage. I looked over to Brian Kinsella, who had travelled with…

WHEN I FIRST MET MY mate Roger Cooling he had a Merry Fisher and we used to fish the shallow water marshland in The Wash, then he swapped it for a 38-footer, which is now moored at Grimsby. However, the call of the marshes soon had him investing in a small, open boat, similar to those you find on trout-fishing reservoirs, solely for the purpose of getting us back out on the marsh again. Unlike when we used to fish out of Fosdyke Marina in Lincolnshire, where we would travel 45 minutes down the River Welland before we hit the open sea, Roger’s new boat is situated at Boston, which is just a 30-minute steam to reach The Wash. It may only be a saving of 15 minutes, but it…