My Recent Catches – Adapt and Adopt

My Recent Catches – Adapt and Adopt…

A swift blog post, but one that I wanted to write as I’ve been doing rather well just recently! What’s more, rather than my annual ‘winter night fishing escapades’ enabling the bulk of the catches, I have actually achieved all of the significant personal bass captures in broad daylight during January.

But please don’t think for a minute that it’s been easy for me this winter overall, as I’ve endured a lot more blanks than I would ordinarily throughout December and January, especially in darkness. That’s the unpredictable nature of fishing of course, and this is why I have ‘adapted’ my approach, whilst ‘adopting’ a specific technique into my forays, to the extent that I may even continue to venture out with my sunglasses on as much as wearing my headtorch as we move into, historically, the most difficult month to lure a bass – February…

And this is what prompted me to hit the keyboard – not only to depict the capture of my largest ever ‘daylight January bass‘ at 55cm (I’ve landed two measuring 66cm in January previously here and here in the dark) but to describe, as ever, the all-important tactics and lure type utilised, in addition to what I propose are the probable reasons behind its capture…

One lure, many marks

As you may have noted from my previous post (here) I am ‘buzzing’ about the possibilities that the use of a ‘creature bait’ within the estuarine systems of south Devon potentially facilitates within clear and murky water, and in darkness too once I break the seal so to speak – and believe me I have tried of late and will continue to do so…

But back to the actual capture of the marvellous 55cm/4lb bass in the image above. The tactic that I have been employing of late is to essentially seek out the most tranquil upper-estuarine environments I know in regards to sheltering from the wind. Moreover, these are all intricate regions within greater areas where I have ‘sighted’ bass in the past, all around two hours either side of low water – on any size of tide incidentally.

The topography of the seabed has been all-encompassing from a brackish perspective, in that the zones I’ve scouted and scrutinised have ranged from the inner-edges of muddy channels, gravelly foreshores speckled with clumps of weed and walls of thick wrack, through to some sandier and cleaner territories when I’ve moved closer to the actual sea.

The overriding factor however, has been that with only one lure type primarily in use, it has been all about casting and moving, attempting to ‘find the fish’ that are stationary – effectively laying up, positioned, resting, digesting or all of these perhaps, over standing in one spot and waiting for them to come through on the tide, as I often will with a paddle tail lure in these environments. My logic for this approach, as that now we are into the coldest stages of the year, both in terms of air and sea temperature, the amount of energy that these fish are willing to exert is also at suboptimal levels.

No fluke!

Onto the lure in question then… I am very, very pleased to report that my early-January success, when I extracted two bass within murky water conditions on that occasion, wasn’t a fluke. Instead, it has extended to ‘sighting’ the movement of what I hoped was a bass (rather than a mullet), before casting, you guessed it, the lure of the moment, a Megabass Sleeper Craw into some clear and shallow (12″) water this time around.

Now, when I say I ‘saw’ this fish, rather than physically laying my eyeballs on it, it was the commotion on the surface that drew my attention to the possibility that it was my quarry, over one of the bolder ‘mud-suckers’ that invariably inhabit the same ground. It wasn’t a V-shape on the surface, or a set of circular rings rippling the water, but rather a swifter, more buffeting and predatory encroachment relating to some poor crab or immature fish.

What’s more, one of the ‘give aways’ that it is a bass, is that very often, the disturbance will reappear in almost, if not, the same position if you’re patient enough not to spook it or them – a virtue that requires discipline of course! So, after holding back initially to see if this did indeed occur, within seconds of the bass shifting the water for a second time ‘The Craw’ was delicately lobbed (as much as you can gently cast a 17g lure) parallel to the shore, to the near-side of the fish, and to within only two metres of the water line.

Pluck

Currently, if there is very little wind to speak of (remember I like to seek shelter and fish in the lee of the land so to speak) then I will retrieve these lures with the rod tip up at 45^o so that as little of the line is submerged as possible. Moreover, I personally find that I am more likely to sense or ‘feel’ (what was certainly was in the case of the first Sleeper Craw-caught bass 4 weeks ago), the ‘pluck’ down the line, through the rod tip and into your hand – yet another reason why I Iove to utilise a rod and reel combo that weighs an astonishing 287g, yet has the power to ‘bully’ anything that I will ever hook.

Although achieving an elegant ‘splash down’ with something weighing 17g is an artform in itself, to be fair, these ‘Craws’ do enter the drink with a gentler ‘plop’ then you may imagine – and it could indeed add to their attraction in many situations I can think of. I wouldn’t say that their impact is as dainty as an Olympic level diver, but a small stone being thrown into the sea about covers it I’d say.

Anyhow, on this occasion, all it took for the stunning winter bass below to visibly ‘turn’ on my offering was indeed that inceptive smattering of the water and a quick tightening of the line, followed by two full rotations of the reel’s handle, at a rate of a quarter at a time. From there, as my heart was literally in my mouth, I felt the sharpest of ‘taps’ reverberate through the prototype rod and I was in business!

But if the ‘take’ was somewhat exquisite in nature, the battle that this beautiful bass (blue-tinged fins and all) exhibited was anything but, as it went absolutely ballistic when it realised there was 1/0 hook hiding inside the ‘crustacean’ it had just devoured! Bear in mind that I donate zero line nowadays (courtesy of my drag being turned to ‘finger slicing proportions’ when attempting to pull it off by hand) this fish did it’s utmost to ‘out do’ me by crashing around in the muddy margins, before swimming towards me and then leaping clean out of the water!

For everyone?

I recognise that sneaking around stinking muddy foreshores, slipping and slithering over the wrack, and clambering over tree stumps etc. may not be overly appealing to everyone. Further, although I personally find methodically ‘working’ these creature baits along the margins exceptionally relaxing and exciting, I can also appreciate that it isn’t the same as whacking out and cracking a hard minnow through an aerated rocky gully, or indeed, retrieving a mesmerising surface lure across an oily surface anticipating that ferocious assault… But as Pro-guide, whose job it is to find these fish and place them into my clients’ eager hands before happily releasing them, it is just wonderfully satisfying to be exploring yet more options in which to do so.

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