Bang! Fish on - The Bass are here so get your lures out!
How have your Bass fishing sessions been so far this year?
The wheels are now fully in motion and the Bass are back in down here in Cornwall. (If you know where to find them..!)
At this point each year, Facebook & instagram blow up with Bass captures seemingly everywhere!
I often find myself thinking crikey Lyle, get off the bloody mark! However.. at least in Cornwall, there is evidence to suggest that we get a slightly later but more elongated season than many other areas of the U.K, due to the nature of spawning Bass movements. This makes me feel a little less bad about myself having not hooked into a nice bar of silver by the first week of April like many of you do!
Besides.. the weather was awful!
How has the weather affected your pre-season stoke? I’d love to know in the comments about how the wettest winter on record has made a difference to peoples attitudes to fishing.
For me, the onslaught of rain & wind really took the early season drive out of me. Instead I chose to focus on other pursuits, like getting a surf in where I could. The lure fishing just wasn’t worth thinking about yet. Of course, you could plow hours and hours into picking out one or two fish, and I did make a few attempts but all where fruitless until the second week of April rolled around.
A snapshot from a particularly grey session in March. Wind, Sun, Hail all in one!
The fish are finally home..
Yes!!! Fish finally found!
A very healthy screen of Bass showing recently.
Link to buy the excellent: Garmin striker 4 fish finder
Mid April, the Bass returned like clockwork. (Just like last year) After seeing some reports of local fish, I knew it would not be long until there was a fish on the end my own Line. Our previous guest author Tony, had a blinding start, discovering upon a “mother-load” of fish actively feeding below some birds that revealed their location.
What’s crazy is that I had fished in a very near area just a couple of tides before with very few signs of life. Yet, just a day later, everything had changed and life had been restored!
It really makes me think about how early season fish behave. At this moment in time, the evidence leads me to conclude that they are still in their shoals that they went out to spawn with. We know that Bass return to the same ‘home’ feeding areas in spring each year. See more here.
The fish I have come across have been really tightly packed, chasing shoals of sandeel & smelt, with very few outliers present.
Have you reported the same things or different?
The boat (SIB) has been the key so far
Specs
Boat: Honwave t38ie3 3.8m
Engine: Yamaha 15hp 2-stroke (2007)
Arguably the lightest boat package per HP available - perfect for hauling up the shingle at low tide - sort of. Future SIB posts to come.
Paired with a dingy trailer for easy retrieval.
Without the boat, my first few fish may just have come a little later. Of the shore sessions I have now done, the pickings have been slim. I think this is down to the shoals being really tightly packed together still, having a boat really improves access to these fish. Of course, it the becomes a different discipline to shore fishing but the execution of the fishing is very similar.
Sometimes you just have to confirm in your own mind that there where no fish in a particular area, but you can only in one place at once. A boat gives you a little taste of that. You can drop your lines, investigate, if nothing, blast it to the next mark and repeat! Of course, this is only a direct comparison for fair weather fishing, not out in the surf or swell.
For shore based fishing, location is absolutely critical. You have to be in the right spot at the right time in order to encounter a silver slab, and especially so when they are all so tightly packed.
I’d suggest looking for bird action to guide your fishing preference, you might be just a few meters away from the feeding shoal and blank.
Are those bigger Bass loners?
Ive held the idea that the school sized fish (1lb-5lb) are all happy to compete for food and to work together to shoal up bait to make for an easy meal.
The bigger, slower & wiser fish, you’d think, would not want to be part of the fun. And as such, they take a solo approach to their feeding. For shore based angling, this certain stacks up against my own evidence and some close friends of mine. The bigger fish are few and far between, most of the time.
This makes sense as those smaller, more energetic fish are very happy to expend energy hunting sandeel for hours on end, safe in the knowledge that they will not be in a calorie deficit as result of their fast paced feeding. A bigger fish on the other hand, has a bigger body mass, and you’d think, a bigger energy requirement just to live. As such, these bigger fish simply cannot afford to swim at a hundred miles an hour chasing food, else they might die from exhaustion. This is supported by the fact that fish that come from the surf at this time of year are very lean looking and are in need of an easy meal!
If you do hook up and intend to release, make sure you land the fish quickly and allow it time to recover, It can be traumatic to an already spent fish to have to fight an angler on its way to finding actual food.
Location, luck, patience
So, the loner theory is a thing right. And we know smaller Bass live in shoals for the most part. But how does this stack up in the early season? This is the cross roads that I am personally at.
Sure, one could go and fish a mark where there is a tonne of fish present, but the likelihood of hooking a large specimen is small. Those bigger fish are possibly somewhere else.. but where exactly?
I’ve been blanking a lot in the hunt for a single, larger fish at this end of the season. But those bigger fish gotta eat, and I have been trying my best to intercept one. I can’t help but feel there is a part of the puzzle or pattern that is missing.. it feels much like when I first began and I had only a small amount of intel to work with, but once you gain some experience, it all falls into place. I will report back on this as time goes on.
The bloody weather might have been the interruptor this season. With so much fresh water spilling into the estuaries & coves, it makes no wonder that the bigger Bass might have been reluctant to enter the inshore waters.
Manifesting a big fish
Continuing this season, I am squaring my aim for a big fish, which I am sure many of you reading hope to do as well. This looks like working the margins, fishing in big swells, paying close attention to moon cycles, finding small marks (i.e pinch points) & doing anything to turn the odds in my favour.
Scaling down to attract a bigger fish might be the way to go. Lets face it, the Bass that enter inshore UK waters feed on bait items that are relatively small, on a global scale.
If you have ever gutted a Bass, they are always full of 50p sized crabs, and this has always been true. Hooked on Bass details this very very well, with the majority of fish feeding on small food items.
Hooked on Bass
Essential reading for the Bass angler. Buy here
This also might consist of modelling my approaches slightly differently as well. Fishing different tide states, continuing with poorer clarity, thinking about lure scent more and perhaps incorporating more night time sessions in the mix.
Whats your goal with your fishing this year?
Drop a comment or message us on social media, i’d love to chat with you guys about what exactly you’re getting out there to achieve. Without sharing sensitive info I’m sure we can trade notes on different approaches & watercraft elements.
Water temps are rising fast
This week saw some lovely swell roll in and I took the opportunity to surf. Lovely light offshore winds produced some properly glassy surfing conditions.
Paddling out, I was surprised to feel a distinct lack of ice-cream headache while duck diving through the waves, a sure sign that the waters well and truly warming up. Curiously though, the water temps down on the south coast where much much colder, having swam at Pedn Vounder a few days prior.
The not so secret Pedn Vounder - some interesting wave refraction going
The fish finder is now also recording temps that are often in the 10’s & 11’s. This is a good sign as Bass are known to start feeding in these temperatures.
The El Nino winter is leaving us - Hopefully good for the lure fishing
Now that El Nino is leaving and ‘normal’ weather is supposed to be returning, lets hope that with good levels of consistent SW wind & not too much rain, the Bass lure fishing season will get under way with force!
Have you enjoyed this more chatty style of blog post?
Let me know what you think, I’m learning this blogging thing and loving it but i’m still experimenting with types of content that you guys want to see. As new or experienced fishermen Im sure you all have different pockets of interest & opinions on fishing & how we should best look after the environment.
The content should appeal as best as it can you guys! So hit me up with any comments or ideas 😊
Tight lines 🎣
(Tidework may make a commission on the links available in the website through affiliate comissions - if you do decide to buy through us, thank you!)
