My Year in Review 2023
(My Catches)
If you’ve read My Year in Review 2023 (Client Catches) then you will already know that the overall theme to my guiding season was that it was evidently ‘wind driven’. Therefore, instead of covering the same ground (and moaning about it even more!) what you’ll discover in this, the ‘My Catches’ Review of 2023 write up that many of you have been enquiring about, is the seasonal and month-by-month contrasts in relation to the different lure types that accounted for ‘my’ bass, alongside what I believe could be the reasons behind these shifts in bass behaviour.
In conjunction with this, I will be adding some further context by concentrating on the biotic and abiotic elements (the ecosystem surrounding our quarry that I cover in great detail within my second book ‘Bass Lure Fishing – A Guide’s Perspective Volume 1‘) to my 2023 adventures. Additionally, it is my intention to share with you how my tactics, both in regards to where I decided to cast my lures, and indeed, how the methods I’ve administered have progressed in association with the 12 month bass lure fishing season that I am extremely fortunate to enjoy here in south Devon.
To be located in a region where heading out with a wader pocket stuffed with lures, a woolly hat and my trusty headtorch, on a freezing February night with a very realistic chance of connecting with a silver assassin truly is a blessing (and I am not remotely religious!).
January
Are they here…?
As The Bells rolled in 2023, I was tucked up on the sofa, enjoying the flames in the fire as I drank a cup of tea whist suffering (a little) from COVID. So when I subsequently tested ‘negative’ on the 5th January, I decided that a spot of fresh air and fishing was required the following morning. With the water crystal clear and only 18″ deep over the sandy seabed, I had to rub my eyes in disbelief as I spotted not one, but two bass swaying in the flow close to a standalone patch of rock and wrack.
Rummaging through my inner wader pocket, one of my New Year’s Resolutions (I’m not kidding either!) was to ensure that I always carried an easily accessible ‘Creature Bait’ with me following the numerous bass that I had observed at exceedingly close quarters over the previous season. I attached it within seconds, and with a quick flick just in behind them, typically, the smaller of the couple turned, swam and engulfed the 9cm Fox Rage Critter in a spectacularly ‘natural’ fashion.
With the writing of my third book ‘Bass Lure Fishing – A Guide’s Perspective Volume 2‘ taking precedence over everything else in my life, I only ventured out a further four times, at night, over the next two weeks – the unsettled weather actually doing me a favour by keeping me rooted to my office chair. But when I did manage to escape, it was quiet out there, and I mean VERY quiet with no bites/hits, which did get me thinking that perhaps my theory about more bass migrating than usual (as mentioned in my 2023 Clients Catches Review) was a real possibility…
Over the spring tides at the start of the fourth week of January ‘it happened’, and I was relieved to fell that inimitable ‘WHACK’ reverberate through the gorgeous Major Craft Seabass Custom 88M to the tune of the 3lb bass above – I was back in business! Two nights later, as the frost formed around me, a slighter larger bass that I measured at 53cm (the bass below) took the mini, white, 120mm Gravity Stick Pulse Tail during one of the ‘pauses’ that I administer to this absolutely lethal retrieve style.
I probably should have stuck to the same venue that had produced for me over the final three sessions that I completed during the final few days of January, but with an urge to see what else was about and so to not ‘burn’ the successful venue, I decided to chop and change. Pleasingly, my tenacity was rewarded, via the use of the same lure, rigged in the same way (on a 3g, 6/0 weedless hook and with the Savage Gear 1.8g Spike weight shoved into the tail section) and retrieved in exactly the same way (boring, I know!) with the lovely 50cm fish below:
February
Modus Operandi
Due to the 8-12 hours of ‘hard time’ that I was bestowing on the book each day, I’d broken the back of the book by early-February, and I knew I was on track to complete it. But with my fishing time still at at self-inflicted premium I sneaked out only by the night, over what I considered where the optimum conditions of light winds, and a calm and clear sea. Moreover, for the reasons detailed above, I wasn’t about to start deviating from the modus operandi when I did head out, which eventually culminated in the first of what transpired to be eleven bass in total for February, at the fifth time of asking.
A couple of nights later, buoyed by having the February ‘monkey off my back’ and with a gentle easterly causing me to shift my attention to an area that I just know an absolute beast is going to come from, I sneaked out again. It felt ‘fishy’, and with the air still and owl’s hooting through the valley, right at the end of the controlled ‘level sink’ of the SG Pulse Tail… BANG – the 55cm bass below (my second largest in February) was soon slithering through the wrack on the tightest line I could muster without tearing the hook hold.
It obviously doesn’t take much in the way of wind, rain and run off to murk up the water or rough up the sea at this time of the year. But considering it had been primarily dry, and the weather forecast was for mild and relatively benign going into the third week of February, I felt confident that things would ‘switch on’ again – especially as these conditions would be aligned to the bigger tides.
Below is screenshot of precisely what I had ordered from Neptune! As you can see, the daytime and night time temperatures remained in the same range at between 10-12oC for three continuous days (the 16th-18th) in addition to hovering between 7-13oC for a good week. In my opinion, at this time of the year, when the sea temperature is approaching its nadir, this is enough to fire up the metabolic rate of any bass present inshore, and enough to send them hunting in packs!
Judging by my diary entries over the past five seasons in particular, the spring tides offer a greater chance of connecting on my high water venues in the winter. Whether this is down to water movement, variations in sea temp, or bait fish (the sand smelt) being shoved into areas that make them more vulnerable is a certainly plausible. So when these ‘better tides’ coincided with the milder, outside air conditions depicted above, it didn’t come as a surprise (based on a very similarly successful period in February 2022) that I landed nine bass in three sessions – with the two best ones at 52cm and 54cm respectively (see below) occurring on the same blissful evening within a haul of five.
The lure type, the way I rig it, and the most importantly, the retrieve style is covered within the blog post I wrote about all of the catches above titled: ‘My Catches – One: Many Moments‘. Further, a very detailed synopsis, and a diagram to explain this method, alongside two tables that quantify my results during the February of 2022 (historically the most difficult month to catch a bass on a lure) and between this date and up until mid-Feb 2023 can be found between Pages 212-226 of A Guide’s Perspective Volume 2.
Interestingly, something that I didn’t mention in the book (because I was still fathoming out what the bass may think my lure actually is!) is that when I witness sand smelt (yes them again!) or what could possibly be tiny pout, poor cod, pollack, scad, and whiting under my beam in the dark, they dart about and then ‘stop on a dime’, before zooming off again – all on a straight/direct trajectory too… Therefore, I cannot help but wonder if this is what I am replicating, albeit without a light involved… Hmmm…
March
Priorities
Editing…. It is, without a doubt, the worst part of writing a book. I have some lovely Lawyer friends (thank you Michael!) who assist me, but it takes a great deal of time and serious diligence to attempt to iron out any errors (I do apologise if a few still slip through the net!). It was for this reason that I only fished three times in total during March – the priority being what I had worked on solidly for three and a half months of course.
So the first session that I conducted in March was on the 10th, whereby I landed the tiddler in the image below on what was a damp and bloody freeeeeezing cold evening. The wind chill was unreal, therefore (and I’m not joking here), as soon as I released the bass below I packed up and went home – which is very unlike me!
The second session I completed was with none other than my friend Henry Gilbey for a crack at a March bass – something he hadn’t achieved at this juncture. To me, all the stars were aligning: it was mild (and had been for a few days, very much like the February screenshot a few paragraphs above), the sea was in a decent state and beginning to warm slightly, and the wind had swung around into just the ‘right’ direction to have a stab at them on one of my ‘golden’ early season marks… “We’re going to catch tomorrow” I said, in the text, although when my wife drove off to work with my car keys 10 minutes before I was due to meet up with him it looked like we would miss what I knew was the ‘best period’ in the tide.
Thankfully, not only did someone at my wife’s work pick up the phone, but she also agreed to drive back with my keys, “Thank you darling!” “Hmmmm, not impressed”, came the reply. “You better catch one now!”, she added… Well, after witnessing sand eels in the shallows, and then a 4lb bass swim over my boot, I did catch one, and a very nice one at just over 4lb I’d estimate seeing as she’d had a bit of feed by the look of things! By the same token, she certainly didn’t think twice about chomping the 5″ Megabass Spindleworm in the Ayu pattern (here), rigged onto a 4/0 5g belly-weighted hook as she walloped it only a couple of metres from my stance in the waist-deep water.
April
A right old f*** up!
“Marc, I’m not sure if the page numbers are wrong, or if there’s a section of 40 odd pages missing from the book?”, pinged the message from a friend and client who had received one of the books that I had managed to post out prior to the Easter Friday Bank Holiday. You couldn’t have written it! Literally, at precisely the same time that I was stood in the printers on the following Tuesday, about to slot the next 700 books into the envelops that I had spent hours and hours writing out, this message had arrived. I went numb, and I felt physically sick….
Checking through the batch in the printer’s workshop, it became apparent that there had been an honest mistake on their part, but it was one that I would have to ‘un-pick’ as it were, as I went about apologising to each and every person who had very kindly pre-ordered their copy with the news that there would be a delay of up to 14 days. To a man (and woman), every single reply was a positive one, and for that I will remain eternally grateful. Thank you everyone for your understanding, and I hope the wait was worth it.
The Lure Fishing Podcast
On a more positive note, at the turn of the year I was asked by Irish bass lure angler and founder of The Lure Fishing Podcast (Cormac Walsh) if I would like to take part and be interviewed. I said yes of course, and I must say that I really enjoyed chatting all things bass. I had no idea what he was going to ask me, and even though it is excruciating listening to one’s self it, he asked me some fantastic questions, although they did lead me into saying “this is the last time I’ll mention the book” about ten times! Hahaha.
You can catch my ‘appearance’ on Episode 7 via the link here, or by just clicking on the image below. As well as yours truly, he has interviewed many of my fellow anglers, guides, fishing tackle makers/designers, You Tube film-makers and the like. I would highly recommend you check Cormac’s brilliant podcast out, and I would like to thank him for asking me to take part.
Back to the fishing, and with writing and guiding commitments to attend to in early-April, it wasn’t until the 9th and 10th that I managed to wet a line. It was cold and wet (hence the woolly hat and wonderfully waterproof Guy Cotten smock) but I my perception was that things were on the uptake – even I was a little concerned by the lack of crabs, that I hadn’t seen scuttling around my feet whilst fishing, or when walking to and from the marks in darkness since early-December. More evidence that the severe cold before and after Christmas in 2022 had decimated their numbers perhaps?
As mentioned in the Client Catches Review, as a professional guide, I see it as a necessity to ‘visit’ as many different stretches of coastline as I possible can within the first three months of my personal and guiding season. And this was the mantra I stuck to, even when it would have been ‘easy’ to keep heading back to places where I knew I would have a great chance of catching, albeit probably sub-2lb bass that were fairly prevalent, although no where near the numbers that I expected…
For me, early in the season it is about attempting to figure out what mood they’re in, what they’re feeding on, and of course, to see if they’re returning to their regular haunts – which by and large they weren’t… Instead, as nature was seemingly in reverse, or on hold at least, I pushed the boat out a bit by putting in a few extra hours in certain places (remote venues) and in unconventional circumstances (early hours of the morning even though I was guiding the next day). But I did get my reward in the end, courtesy of the rather ‘blue’ (or is it me!) 60cm bass in the image above.
May
Playing with new toys
Do I wish I had fished more often May? Yes I do, is the short answer… But according to my dear wife, there was one last bout of DIY that required completing (I won’t bore you with the details, but lets just say it involved a lot of digging, clearing, prepping and painting) so that I could ‘relax’ and enjoy my fishing without a list of jobs hanging over me for the rest of the season… Well, that should have been how it worked out!
Following a day of garden labour and interior painting, as I stepped out of the back door and practically skipped across the garden to my car, for the first time in 7-8 months the air actually felt warm and dry! Checking the thermometer on the dashboard as I drove to my chosen mark, it wasn’t any warmer than it had been over the past week, but to me at least, the chill and the damp were inexplicably absent, so I decided to leave my trusty woolly hat on the passenger seat.
Surely, but surely, the bass would respond to this relative change in the atmosphere…? And they did indeed, as I landed five in a short session – one that I had to curtail as I was about to embark on a solid run of guiding. But at least the overall timing of the fish coming alive fell perfectly, as my clients enjoyed some similar successes immediately thereafter. Of significance, was that this was one of the few times that I have experimented (from the outset during this session) with the 120mm Gravity Stick Pintails rigged in the way that I’ve previously described, as I’d wanted something a little more subtle than the usual Pulse Tail seeing as it was exceptionally tranquil, and with very little tidal influence that night.
Later that month, following a chat with the gentleman (Mike) who runs and owns not only Chesil Bait ‘n’ Tackle (you may have noticed their logo on the rear cover of all of my books) but also the Specialist Japanese Tackle Importer/Distributor Tacklewave Ltd, I collected two rather nice prototypes of a concept I had suggested might be a winner – a transparent IMA Chappy 80 and 100 that would later be christened the MC1!
The bass in the photograph immediately above the slideshow of the catches I achieved ‘in testing’ was in fact landed during the very first session I attached it in late-May. If you would like to know more about why I proposed such a lure, in addition to when, where and under which conditions to utilise it (sunny, bright and in calm, clear, shallow water essentially) then you can read more here.
June
Life just got complicated!
So what do you do when you’ve spent 18 months transforming a cosmetically ‘tired’ barn conversion into your perfect home, interspersed with back-breaking stints of single-handedly landscaping and ‘lawning’ a substantial garden? You go and buy a puppy that’s what! Ladies and Gentleman, please may I introduce ‘Bertie’ the Border Terrier (aka Bertie Bass):
Yep, this ‘ratbag’ kept me away from my fishing rod during most of June, as not only did I need to ‘puppy proof’ our garden by de-weeding all of the nasties (Foxgloves and the like), but I also had to hammer in God knows how many metres of temporary fencing so that Bertie couldn’t get into certain areas where he might be able to dig under the actual fencing! But it was all worth it, as not only is he a handsome chap, but he is also a brilliant mut to take fishing and guiding, to the extent that unless I am due to be clambering miles over rocks or jumping barbwire fences (never!) I will take him with me!
I only managed to fish three times in June would you believe! But one session in particular brought back some great memories from the 2017/18 seasons when none other than a needlefish was unleashed on the Devon bass! Yep, the TC Lures (Tom Cooper) Magnetic Weight Shifting Ghost 160 (here) was all they wanted during one muggy June evening, tucked out of the unseasonably strong south-westerly wind.
The cracking bass below is a bit of a naughty one as it was caught on a client’s set up – sorry Alan! The story goes like this… Alan had just landed a splendid 55cm that features in the Client Catches – Summer Synopsis Part 2 post (here) and, bless him, he decided to sit down just to take in the moment. “Have a quick go Marc” he said, so I made three casts with the Patchinko 125 attached and attempted to hand the rod back to him. “No, no, I’m enjoying watching you fish” came the reply, and well, you know what happened next… Booooom!
July
Guiding and Cruising!
July was a fantastic month on the guiding front as you would have ascertained from my previous post (here). But the reality of it was that all of the sessions with my clients were planned well in advance to be crammed in prior to my family and I heading off on something that we had planned to do prior to the pandemic – a cruise around the Mediterranean (and no, I didn’t take my fishing rod!) As per June, I only managed to slip in a few sessions for myself with this ‘shingle silver’ hitting the IMA Sasuke 95 on an evening that saw the first sprat of the season bouncing up the beach.
August
Diverse, and with less distractions!
Again, as you may have read, I basically got off the cruise ship and plane, had one day off and was then straight back into the guiding to find the bass ‘playing ball’ for the first time this season. By that, I mean they were becoming a little more ‘predicable’ which is contrary to what I sometimes experience in August… As quite often, it is a month when the bass can disappear close inshore for a week or a two, as they harass the sprat, scad, garfish and mackerel offshore.
But because the sea was in constantly turmoil, which in turn meant the bait fish didn’t necessarily need to form shoals to protect themselves, I believe this translated to the bass having to hunt for prey that aren’t quite so easy to find (crabs, prawns, gobies, etc.) and across an unusually wide spectrum of venues too for the time of year.
Moreover, now that the bass had entered the estuaries in numbers, and had infiltrated the creeks in their annual search for fry (of all types) I partook in what was to be a real fishing marathon during a sweaty August evening/night – one in which I found the ‘wrangler’ below as the light dimmed to a Patchinko 100.
But it was following a move later into darkness, onto a venue where I’ve had success during the day, but that is a touch ‘spooky’ at night that all thoughts of some zombie (I probably looked like one the morning after this late-nighter!) coming out of the woods were banished! What a session (as you can see from the slideshow below) as I walloped out three absolute corkers all within a twenty-five minute window! And I lost another good one too, which is unusual on the 6/0 3g belly-weighted hook skewering a white Gravity Stick Paddle Tail (which is still my ‘go-to’ in the estuaries when a lateral current is swishing past me).
Out on the remote and rugged open coast, two of the good bass below took a white Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddle Tail with utter savagery within a beautifully sheltered pebble cove. But after hearing a few ‘sploshes’ further out, I decided to clip on a Whiplash Factory Spittin Wire just to see if I could get one to smash it off the top.
First cast, as is often the case, and rod hooped over! Yet another thing I say each year is: ‘if you haven’t already, you’ve just got to experience working a surface lure, pausing it, and waiting for that splash, before taking in the awesome prowess of a bass taking something off the top – all whilst being effectively blindfolded – I love it!
With the summer holiday weather doing what it does best here in The South West (rain, and with ‘named storms’ a yearly occurrence now according the Met Office) the swell and shingle beaches were calling me. And they didn’t disappoint either as the IMA Hound Glide 125F in the Aji pattern got munched by the black-backed bruiser below, over a section of shingle between the rocks, that was being churned up by the undertow – corrr, what a lovely solid hit that was!
Finally, to end the month, a late-notice decision to stomp to an estuary mouth mark as the wind fell light one late-August evening capped off a month when I did mange to get out fishing a lot more. And now that Bertie was beginning to suss out what it meant when ‘Daddy’ slipped on his fishing socks, I started taking him with me – much to his enjoyment and my wife’s sanity I think…!
September
Opportunities taken…
I mentioned in the Client Catches 2023 Review how I always take the first 10 days of September off of the guiding. The reasons are that it is my daughter’s birthday over this period, plus as my wife heads back to school as a teacher she requires me to be at home each evening ‘making dinner and completing housework duties!’ during that critical week of ‘breaking the kids in!’ However, if I’m a good boy, I am allowed out for a few chucks, and this is precisely what I did on a still summery-feeling evening during the first week of the month.
Arriving onto my mark in early twilight, I gently lobbed the IMA Chappy into and around the rocky promontory at one end of the beach, before attaching an OSP Dolive Stick for a quick sortie at the opposite section of this quaint little cove. But as the darker period of dusk ensued, I remembered the black/blue speckled Gravity Stick Pulse Tail that I’d grabbed out of the box-set, and began to work the deeper sections of the now invisible reef before me. A few casts in, a quicker retrieve to get the lure away from the snags, then followed by a long (four seconds) pause and… BANG! I was in!
For two further hours I tried every trick in the book (OK, my books!) but I couldn’t buy another bite until I detected the tide ‘pulling’ ever-so-slightly to create a touch of tension through the rod and line. This is why I love using a rod and reel with a combined weight of 287g: because you can sense these things and then react to them, which I did via slowing the retrieve right down on the now white, and smaller SG Pulse Tail.
A few minutes later, and just as the first yawn had me thinking of a late-night glass of red in the garden, a PLUCK, and then a proper hit within half-a-second, and I was into another 50cm+ fish which I was happy about considering I hadn’t expected to be out that night. Great fun, and I did indeed have a sip of vino as Bertie snuggled up with me waiting for his hedgehog friend to appear!
In between some hardcore guiding action, a rather inconspicuous beach that gets pummelled on an easterly was the scene of my next respectable bass in mid-September. It felt autumnal, and as the rain began to get heavier that evening I was just thinking about making my final few casts with the IMA Hound Glide 125F in Bora when it was grabbed in the building undertow – which is generally the case on an ebbing tide here (and elsewhere I guess?)
Joint Season’s Best
In the course of my bass lure fishing journey of 32 years now, I have come to realise that in attempting to track down a 70cm bass, you are searching for a different kind of animal… Yes, you can get lucky, and I have been a few times when hooking them, and most certainly when landing them. But I’ve also been snapped off by a fair few too..
I was asked the question by Cormac on The Lure Fishing Podcast: Do I think you can target only big bass when lure fishing? I did give an answer, and it was a resounding ‘Yes’ but you’ll need to have a listen to hear why I think this is the case… Furthermore, I can confirm that one of the ‘types of location’ that I mentioned as being the type of ground that has a greater than average chance of yielding a 70cm+ did indeed produce my first ’70’ of the 2023 season (above and below).
The bigger bass were seemingly thin on the ground in 2023, or they might have been present and either our tactics were wrong or they just weren’t up for it. Of note, is that from my point of view, the times when I or we could get anywhere near locations such as where I rooted out this beast require the tides and the weather to align perfectly, and the simple fact of the matter is that this happened less times than I can count on one hand this year. But never mind, there’s always next year, and at least I made the most of the opportunity at the end of September, so I was and am very happy with this stunning bass, that Bertie didn’t take any notice of whatsoever! He’ll learn… 😀
October
Conjecture and Consistency
A bit of conjecture now then, and I cannot over emphasis just how often I had to continually ‘second guess’ these magnificent fish this year. Like many I suspect who know their marks intimately, I can set my watch by some venues, especially those over shallow water reefs in the warmer months. But 2023 had me scratching my head time and again, looking for alternative venues and ideas in the moment, and scrutinising every possible facet after the event(s).
The cold airmasses in December 2022 and March/April 2023, linked quite possibly to the lack of crabs, mullet, bass, salmon and sea trout fry (in addition to the smelt that were very conspicuous by their absence at times) definitely played a part in 2023 being an interesting, but hopefully, just an unusual season. Small 1-2lb bass, and large 7-8 pounders were hard to come by – no surprise with the latter you may say, but if you follow my endeavours then you’ll know that my clients and I ‘pull out’ a good few specimens in the 68cm+ range each season, and have done for the past six years since I commenced my guiding operation.
But in October and indeed November to a degree, places that produce bass a high proportion of the time when the optimum conditions are in place did so, albeit not to the same ‘standard’ in relation to size and numbers. Worrying, or just a trend or pattern? That remains to be seen…
After crunching some figures, there is something else that occurred during 2023 that I consider to be rather curious… As it stands on the 30th December, the sea temperature in Start Bay (the body of water that I can see if I wander up the track to the lane near our house) is 11.7oC which is absolutely ‘bonkers’ for the time of year, and over 2.5oC above what it was twelve months ago!
Indeed, I really do think the bass would suddenly re-appear in numbers if we just experienced a couple of frosty nights and the sea temp dropped quite abruptly by 1oC. I think nature is a bit confused by it all really, and it would be interesting to know how the gardeners amongst you are seeing things as well as my fellow bass lure anglers…
Next up, and stay with me here! If you look at the tables above displaying the monthly sea temperatures in my region, you can clearly see a steady increase in the warmth from March through to August in the 2022 figures (above left) and thus, a gradual curve upwards, a peak, and then a gentle fall as is ‘the norm’ based on the 16 years of stats that I’ve deciphered.
Yet, in the 2023 figures (above right) you can clearly see a distinct ‘dip’ or fluctuation in the July column, with the peak temperatures arriving in September rather than August which only occurs occasionally. Did this confuse the underwater ecosystem around the western approaches, and can it explain why we had an equally atypical double-run of sprat and pilchard..?
Back to October, and with a slice of time to experiment one evening, before it became dark and the business of trying to extract another whopper commenced, I spent an hour or so dragging a few of the ‘creature baits’ that I had collected (hoarded) over the previous winter after nailing that 6th January bass on one of them. The area I was in was ideal for this, as there were so many boats and buoys present I guarantee I would have lost a Chappy or a Patchinko in no time.
And it was as I stalked the shallowest of section water, that was perhaps 2ft deep here, just as the Sun was about to set that I spotted a bass snaking under a Dory of some description (I’m not a boat person I’m afraid). A flick with the 4″ Z-Man Turbo Clawz (above right), a plop, a gentle tap of the rod and half-a-turn of the reel’s handle, followed by a sharp tap culminated in a rapid scrap with a bass in the 2lb range (also above) that I quickly dragged in under the trees for a photo.
As you can see from the photographs of bass (above and below) landed on separate sessions, and on very contrasting lure types (the white Wave Worm Bamboo Stick and IMA Hound Sonic 100F) during the third week of October, the average size was very good at just over 4lb (56/57cm). What’s more, these were fish that I landed after taking a bit of a punt on in relation to venue choice, in the sense that I was forced to fish just outside of the boundaries of where I really wanted to be by the force of the swirling wind – food for thought as always!
November
Wind, Sun, Frost, and Moon
I promised that I wasn’t going to directly complain about the wind and the weather in this post, and to be fair, what else would I expect in November (2020 was glorious mind, although I wasn’t permitted to guide due to the COVID restrictions). In a nutshell, if you’re an angler who doesn’t ordinarily lure fish for bass in November, then take my word for it when I say that you ‘really have to head out with the mindset’ that although, in all likelihood, it is going to be pretty crappy out there at times, no matter what is thrown at you, the rewards are there to had at this fantastic time of the year.
Gales, rain, frost, filthy, chocolate water, you name it and I endured it both with my hardier clients when guiding (who did very well as you may have read), and whilst sniffing out every opportunity I could to find the bass myself in early-to-mid-November when it was tough out there. My waders, boots, down jacket and water proof smock came into their own as you’ll read in my next post, with the slideshow below capturing a flavour of my modest achievements.
It needed to ‘go cold’ (and it still does!). So when the synoptic charts were marrying up to produce a forecast ‘sunny by day and crisp by night’ situation any mention of late-night Christmas shopping was shut down immediately. “Nope, I’m going fishing this week, as I’ve been waiting for these conditions since January” was my curt response! But thankfully, as I ‘play the game’ in lots of other ways, my lovely wife knows that sometimes it is important for me to capitalise on certain ‘bassy’ situations and I only ever get halfway through the sentence “Everything is looking ‘spot on’ tonight so” “Yes, go fishing – but take Bertie with you!!!”
Right at the beginning of the settled spell, I was fishing a mark that I absolutely love – as you just never know what might appear along what is a benign-looking section of beach at first glance. However, when the tides reach a certain phase and state here, even in some ‘dodgy’ conditions the bass can still be caught. The Moon though… It was directly above me as I commenced fishing, and I had been using a black Gravity Stick Paddle Tail and a lovely Black Illex Shad Tail lure that (I think has been discontinued unfortunately) to counter this, but not a lot was happening.
With a bank of patchy cloud approaching on the breeze, it looked thick enough to me that it might just shroud the Moon, momentarily at least as it. I persisted with the black lure until, sure enough, the light levels began to alternate between very bright and ‘darker‘. A few more minutes and retrieves passed, before I clipped on the white SG Paddle Tail and began to cast and recover it along precisely the same trajectory that I had been targeting for the past hour…
A further few minutes passed with the ‘natural dimmer switch’ being twizzled continually – ‘surely any predator worth its salt would be looking to take advantage of this were my thoughts’ as I patiently persisted. I made a cast, and tightened the braid straight away before commencing with a recovery just quick enough that I could feel the paddle tail ‘working’ but also so that I could sense the lure ‘tapping’ the sandy seabed and up and over a collection of rocks about 2/3rds of the way back to me, and where a high percentage of the hits materialise.
‘Oh yes, here we go’ I thought, as a thicker veil cloaked the Moon a few seconds before my lure would reach this alluring feature. So there I am, stood knee-deep in water, within a bay that is arguably half a mile from the nearest person when most sane people are sat with their feet up or on the nightshift thinking ‘this is going to be hit, this is going to be hit, when…… THUMP! It got hit alright!
As you can see from the gallery above, I had a jolly old time snooping around some of south Devon’s finest inlets, with the sunny skies, fairly decent clarity (although this wasn’t essential the way I was fishing) armed with a few choice soft plastics shoved in my pocket. As well as the Gravity Sticks of course, another favourite (the 4″ Keitech Easy Shiner) did the trick, but it was the sight (at a range of 2m) of a good bass literally bullying the mullet out of its way to hit the 5.8″ Keitech Sexy Impact like a bullet (the blue tinged lure at the (top centre above) that brought me the biggest smile.
Karma
Amongst the obvious fun I was having whilst topping up the Vitamin D, it was during the latter stages of one of the sessions, within a corner that was shaded and just as the current/tide started to move, that I experienced one of those hits: a soft THUD, where everything then just stops momentarily, and a very big bass realises that it’s made a mistake… Well, this one then turned and just started pulling line off the drag as if I’d just placed the spool on the spindle and had forgotten to add the drag control!
Now, I have to caveat this remarkable event by informing you that I had loosened the drag a couple of clicks, purely because I was fishing at such close quarters with the 3-4″ softy paddle tails and the creature baits – a mistake that I won’t be making ever again. But I can tell you here and now that the power was insane until it ‘did me’ by snapping me off, as a few other dinosaurs have, 4-6″ up the leader from the lure clip – the line presumably rubbing on the fish’s gill plate… But what do you do? Sulk – which I did for a few hours, or think, right, there’s bass about, the conditions are great, so get out there and bloody well catch one – or two as it happens…
As I slithered and splodged my way along the grassy bank and down onto the beach, I looked up to see something that, unusually for me, I had overlooked in my haste to get to the mark before the water was too deep for me to carry my precious cargo: my rod/reel and Bertie of course! The Full Moon. My goodness, it was unbelievably beautiful as it rose up over the cliffs and tree line, but all I was thinking was ‘blimey, I hope I’ve got a few black lures with me!’
In a quirk of fate, I had been shuffling around my garage the day prior searching for something that was already indoors (as you do!). But what I had found was very rare, and far more useful – a brand-new packet of Black Wave Worms, and I even remembered to whack one into my soft plastic wallet. Arriving on my mark, once mutley was squared away with his moonlit dinner on the rocks, I started fishing with a white Wave Worm, rigged in precisely the same way as the Gravity Stick Pin and Pulse Tail so to enable an ‘arrowing’ cast, in addition to that all important ‘level sink’ on the drop and on the pause.
While the monumental moon was low in the sky I was happy to use the white lure. But with nothing doing and the tide about to turn after a couple of hours of fruitless fishing I turned and asked my canine assistant to pass me the black version… Flicking on the headtorch momentarily into the water behind me, I ran the lure through the water… It looked absolutely amazing to me – like a small fish scooting through the shallows, but with a silhouette that would ultimately be its downfall, and lead to my triumph.
A few minutes after swapping over to the black Bamboo Stick, as I held the rod tip up at almost 90o from the mirror-like water I was stood in (so to enable the tightest possible attachment to the lure and to ensure it sank horizontally), midway through the fall the rod THUMPED down hard! This felt good – and with the drag dialled up so tight that I couldn’t pull any line off without slicing through my hand (I will write a blog post this winter in relation to my thoughts on this subject) this bugger was going nowhere except into my gleeful hands.
Photographed, unhooked, grip n’ grinned, released and ready to rumble once more, a feeling of providence after losing what I know was an absolute ‘clonker’ earlier that afternoon came over me. Karma as they say, but then I also firmly believe that you make your own luck sometimes… So after checking the leader for any ‘nicks’ and ensuring that my rediscovered lure was sitting nicely on the hook I made the next cast.
Smoooooooth, that’s how my Shimano Vanquish 23 C3000MHG felt, as I recovered the line in as invariable motion as I could possibly muster so that the senko-type lure just glided through an illuminated array of weed clumps and gravelly depressions – the archetypal ambushing ground for the consummate coastal carnivore…
I was feeling ultra-confident now, and with a sensation that ‘something’ was trailing the lure I slowed the turns down to almost a stop at perhaps the halfway point, so to allow the lure to perform its ‘party trick plunge’ within what I could also sense was the gentlest trickle of current from my right. Holy S***! (can I write that!?) Without a doubt, this was the hardest hit I have experienced from a bass while using a soft plastic in darkness, and it really was a good job that I’d pre-empted a take!
Again, with absolutely no line ‘donated’, the only thing that what I immediately knew was a ‘serious unit’ could do was come up onto the surface (my ploy had worked!) and thrash like mad! And from this point, it really was a case of keeping her head up, and edging her back towards me, turn by turn. She was going berserk, and the water was getting a bit of a frothing up too as she effectively zigzagged left, then right, then left under some controlled strain. But the Seabass Custom is just the tool at ‘sapping’ the energy out of these clever fish, and once she was in front of me, with the rod tip held very low and bent double I did my utmost to maintain the same levels of tension as I heaved her up the foreshore.
December
‘Window Fishing’
Man… this weather! Urrrgghh. OK, moan over! Looking for windows of opportunity is basically what I’ve been doing this month, whereby I have caught and seen more small bass than at any stage of 2023 typically. Furthermore, alongside chucking the creature baits into various ‘bass pits’ as well as some interesting lures that I have been given, or that I am involved in developing for Westin Fishing I have been assessing a piece of equipment that I am extremely excited about…
Shall I tell you? OK, I have designed, from scratch, a version of the superb Major Craft Seabass Custom that incorporates my very precise and detailed specifications – and it is this rod that I have been playing with, just to make sure it performs as well as I think it does with all of the lure types you and I utilise, from soft plastics weighing 6g, up to metals weighing 40g! So watch this space as they say, as the rod should be in production very soon, and available from April or May 2024.
Accompanying this evaluation phase, my second winter project (that I have discussed with my clients over this season) involves visiting each of the 114 venues that I have painstakingly earmarked as ‘bass marks with exceptional potential’. So lots of walking, clambering, and perhaps fishing for Bertie and I over the next few months, with the odd pub lunch next to a roaring fire thrown in for good measure I think…
I’ll leave you with a slideshow of the best bass that I have landed in December (a poor one in comparison to recent years) that I landed on Boxing Day, on a 12cm Pirate Lures Teaser in the new Fluoro Yellow pattern (here). This was achieved during a short window in the weather, that enabled me to fish a mark in the type of conditions that I wanted to fish it for the first time – something I prefer to do nowadays, as my overall approach continues to evolve and progress.
Your Help Is Needed!
In case you missed it, either on social media or at the end of my previous post… Rather upsettingly for all of the users, and not just the recreational fishermen and women who fish The Salcombe/Kingsbridge Estuary, there is a proposal that has been brought forward by the Byelaw and Permitting Subcommittee (B&PSC) for the Devon and Severn Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority (D&SIFCA) to allow a Commercial Fixed Netting Fishery throughout the entire Salcombe/Kingsbridge Estuary.
Clearly, if this were to be permitted, it would have an ecologically disastrous effect on a multitude of levels (and not just the one(s) that I clearly have a vested interest in being that this beautiful area is on my doorstep) to all of the fish species, in addition to the equally important wildlife, sea life and bird species that frequent and inhabit its protected waters and foreshore.
Therefore, The Angling Trust have very recently released a blog post that details, very specifically ‘WHAT WE CAN DO‘ to avert this occurrence, before it ravages this beautiful waterway/ria, and becomes a dangerous precedent and blueprint… The post is titled: ‘The netting that threatens Salcombe – What can I do about it?’
Thank you for reading and for your support in 2023. Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year for 2024!!
Marc Cowling
Marc Cowling - Bass Lure Fishing 