NOTE: This post was placed into an AI Generated Website called Video to Blog, and subsequently created from the video and the words I have spoken within it. This is something I am trialling as I aim to provide people new to lure fishing for bass the opportunity to either READ, LISTEN, or WATCH the content I create.
By the start of August, I’d landed and released 13 bass over 60cm during the first seven months of the 2026 season. The biggest was a fantastic 70cm fish in March, but the numbers only tell part of the story.
Every season is different. Bass are opportunistic, absolutely, but they are also creatures of habit. The recurring lesson from January through to July has been simple: put something that looks and acts like the food they expect to find into the exact environment and conditions where they expect to find it.
That is bass lure fishing in a incapsulated. It is about using watercraft to understand where a fish is likely to be, what mood it is in, what it is feeding on, and how much energy it is prepared to expend.
Key Takeaways
- Bass can hold in remarkably small weedy pockets, particularly during winter and summer extremes.
- Match lure speed, depth and action to the bass’s energy level and expected natural food.
- Drone observations can reveal productive habitat, movement routes and responses to lure presentations.
- A popper drifting with the tide can tempt bass when weed prevents conventional surface-lure retrieves.
Table of Contents
- The 2026 Season So Far
- January: Slow, Localised Bass Holding in the Weed
- February and March: Bass Begin to Spread Out
- Late May: A Sudden Change in Bass Behaviour
- June: Surface Lures and Open-Coast Opportunities
- July: Match the Lure to How Bass Are Feeding
- Using a Popper When Weed Makes Other Lures Impossible
- The Lures That Produced 60cm Bass
- What the First Half of the Season Has Reinforced
- Looking Ahead to Late Summer and Autumn
The 2026 Season So Far
The year began following a colder spell over Christmas, followed by a pretty poor January, yet a dry and fairly benign February and March – much like 2025. It then developed into a cold spring, with bright, sunny conditions and persistent easterly winds in April, before late May brought an extraordinary burst of heat. By summer, warm water, low oxygen in some estuary systems and masses of salad weed had created another set of challenges altogether.
Yet there were clear patterns across all of it:
- In winter, bass were highly localised and held in tiny areas.
- In spring, more fish were visible and spread more widely.
- As baitfish arrived, bass became more prepared to chase.
- During the summer heat, larger fish often tucked deep into weed or fed in a more energy-efficient way.
The important thing is not to force the same method through every month. Observe what is happening, then adjust the lure, retrieve and venue accordingly.
January: Slow, Localised Bass Holding in the Weed
My first proper fish of the year was a beautiful 63cm bass in early January. It was the only bite of the day, and it came from an intertidal area that my 2nd Guide Joe and I had been trying to work out since autumn.
We had seen fish there previously and wanted to fish it properly through winter. On this particular day, after a period of cold weather and frost, the bass seemed lethargic. The key was a small gap in bladderwrack, no bigger than the size of a car. The bass was tucked into a little hollow within the weed and would have had to move in and out with the tide, but at that point it was clearly settled in that precise pocket.
I cast a Megabass Sleeper Craw roughly 17 to 18 metres, close to maximum range. I let it plop in, moved it once, moved it twice, paused it, then gave it a longer pull to shift it perhaps half a metre across the seabed. The Sleeper Craw sits upright, and on the pause came that lovely tap.
Once hooked, I really had to bully the fish out of the weed. That is the reality of this approach. When you are dropping a creature bait into the places bass actually hold, you have to be prepared to get them moving quickly.
Winter Lesson: Fish Tiny, High-Percentage Areas
January and February were all about fishing with real precision. I would visit one likely area and find nothing, move to another and find nothing, then locate bass in an area perhaps no bigger than half a tennis court.
These were not fish patrolling vast expanses of estuary. They were holding, rooting around or moving through very specific little pockets where I had seen or caught them before. That is exactly why a creature bait such as the Sleeper Craw became so important to me in the first place. It lets you work slowly and naturally within a defined zone where you believe a bass may genuinely be sitting.
February and March: Bass Begin to Spread Out
February was fairly settled weather-wise, without much wind or rain, and I landed a lovely 60cm bass alongside a couple in the mid to high 50s. The fish were still very localised, but March marked a definite change.
March was sunnier, and the fishing was excellent. I landed a couple of 60cm bass, several more good fish and the season’s biggest, a superb 70cm bass. Most of those better fish took the Megabass Sleeper Craw, with one 57cm fish caught on an OSP DoLive Stick, another lure I have a great deal of confidence in.
The major difference in March and April was that I was seeing far more bass. At times, the number of fish visible was quite remarkable. I used the drone occasionally to look into likely areas, spot solitary bass and see fish interacting with mullet.
The drone was not just about casting at individual fish. Its real value was showing me the sort of locations bass were using, their movement patterns and how they responded to a lure. Seeing that reaction teaches you an enormous amount. There is no doubt in my mind that observing a bass react to a lure makes you a better angler.
Spring Conditions Were Still Slow to Develop
Despite seeing more bass, there was very little baitfish activity in the estuaries, or on the open coast earlier in April. Then came the familiar South Devon easterly and north-easterly winds. A forecast of 10 to 15mph from the east can feel considerably stronger down here.
The wind, brightness and cold air kept sea surface temperatures low. Spring seemed to take a long time to get going, much as it has over the previous few years. Still, the extra sightings made it possible to refine the approach: better lure placement, more thoughtful retrieves and a clearer understanding of which environments the fish preferred.
Late May: A Sudden Change in Bass Behaviour
It was a strange year. I had the heating on in the middle of May, then in the final week of the month Kingsbridge reached 31°C. I have never known 31°C in Kingsbridge in May or any other month for that matter!
Following that sudden warmth, bass behaviour began to normalise. The fish went from wanting something worked slowly and hard on the deck to being far happier to chase. The explosion of baitfish undoubtedly had plenty to do with it.
I had a couple of cracking fish around this period, again on the Megabass Sleeper Craw. One was tucked right into the weed. I was fishing blind, but it was a calculated hunch based on where I had seen fish from above and where experience told me they were likely to be.
The other came after I noticed mullet swimming along a very particular trajectory, one after another. It just looked right. I thought there would be a bass in amongst them at some point, and sure enough, there was.
This is not guesswork in the random sense. It is putting together small observations: the route the mullet are taking, the cover available, the tide, the light and the way fish have behaved there before.
June: Surface Lures and Open-Coast Opportunities
By June, the lure fishing felt more like summer bass fishing should. I had been trying paddle tails and surface lures through April and May, but the bass simply were not taking them with any consistency. Then the switch flicked.
I was particularly keen to get a decent bass on a surface lure because it felt very late in the season not to have had one. One evening, that happened with an IMA Chappy 80 MC-1, the transparent version. A beautiful bass of nearly 60cm came up behind it, bow-waving before it took. Properly exciting fishing.
I also wanted to put more time into the open coast this year. One excellent night session produced another lovely bass from a sandy gully, with waves washing over rock and into the channel. There was a little moonlight, and a hefty Bait Breath TT Shad paddle tail did the business.
Daylight fishing on the open coast remained difficult, even into early-August. There was plenty of water movement and oxygen there, but it still was not consistently producing in the daytime. At night, it was more of a 50/50 proposition, with bass sometimes moving onto the reefs.
July: Match the Lure to How Bass Are Feeding
July made one thing very clear. You cannot simply throw metals, surface lures and paddle tails across clean ground because that is where bass would normally be moving quickly in the flow. The decent fish were often not behaving that way.
In South Devon, there also seemed to be a real lack of fish in the one to two-pound bracket. We were catching bass the size of your hand or the size of your arm, with far fewer fish in between. I am not overly concerned because there are plenty of small fish and plenty of big ones, but it was an interesting feature of the season.
The Albie Snax on the Open Coast
At the start of July, I landed a superb 62cm bass on an Albie Snax over a lovely section of reef on the open coast. That was followed by a couple more fish in the 50cm range on the same lure. In daylight, the fishing could be dead. At night, the bass might move across the reefs, although never with a guarantee.
The Same Weed Pocket, Six Months Apart
One of the most interesting captures of the year came shortly afterwards. I caught a 62cm bass on the Megabass Sleeper Craw from precisely the same tiny weedy pocket where I had caught the 63cm fish in January. Again, it was an area around the size of a car, and again the fish was tucked hard into the weed.
In January, the cold was likely affecting the fish’s energy levels. In July, I believe the heat was doing something similar. The fish came out of the weed fairly strongly, but it was not particularly happy at first and went back quickly. That suggested low oxygen levels in the water, particularly in warm, shallow estuary areas.
Sea temperature was around 19°C on the open coast, and it had to be above 20°C in some estuaries. In shallow, sun-baked areas, water temperatures could easily have been in the 22°C to 23°C range.
A client even landed a very small gilt-head bream, which says plenty about how warm things had become. I have had a few little taps myself that certainly did not feel like bass, and I would not be surprised if one eventually turns out to be a gilt-head or a flatfish.
Using a Popper When Weed Makes Other Lures Impossible
The big summer issue has been weed, what I often call green salad. In many areas, there is so much of it on the seabed that the Sleeper Craw gets smothered immediately. Bigger tides pull more weed from the foreshore, which then collects in tide lines and runs through the stronger sections of flow.
At that point, a conventional sliding surface lure can also become difficult to use. It may constantly catch weed, particularly if you are trying to work it with a zigzagging retrieve.
One answer has been the popper. I have done very well over the years on the Tackle House Feed Popper and the Fishus Ubuntu. My thinking in hot conditions was that a popper could create a disturbance, then be allowed to rest and drift naturally with the tide.
The retrieve is straightforward in principle:
- Cast into a likely line or piece of water.
- Pop the lure to create the sound and disturbance.
- Pause it and let it move naturally.
- Keep it travelling in the same direction and at the same pace as the tide.
If bass are moving down with the tide and the lure is also moving with it, at the same speed, the fish does not need to charge after it. It can simply come alongside, see what looks like a small fish in trouble or scattering bait, and take it without expending much energy.
That was the thought process, and it worked. I landed another cracking 60cm bass on the smallest Tackle House Feed Popper – the 70mm version.
The Lures That Produced 60cm Bass
By the end of July, three notable fish had rounded off the first seven months extremely well:
- 62cm on an Albie Snax over open-coast reef.
- 62cm on a Megabass Sleeper Craw from a weed pocket in an estuary.
- 60cm on a small Tackle House Feed Popper in weedy, tide-affected water.
That variety sums up the season. There is no one magic lure that does everything. The common thread is matching the presentation to what the bass are doing at that moment.
What the First Half of the Season Has Reinforced
The Megabass Sleeper Craw has once again been a huge part of the catches. I have been talking about this lure for two years now because it continues to produce when other lures do not. It is especially valuable when bass are sitting tight, feeding slowly and expecting to find crabs on the seabed.
But the bigger lesson is wider than any one lure. The best results have come from paying close attention to fish behaviour, water temperature, oxygen, tidal movement, weed, baitfish and the exact type of ground being fished.
A bass does not always need a fast retrieve, a flashy metal or a lure burned across open water. Sometimes it needs a creature bait moved half a metre in a tiny weed pocket. Sometimes it needs a surface lure drifting naturally with the tide. Sometimes it wants a paddle tail worked through a rough gully after dark.
There is always a reason a method works. The more time you spend trying to understand that reason, the more consistent your bass lure fishing becomes.
Looking Ahead to Late Summer and Autumn
I am taking a short break now from the guiding, fishing, filming and editing, which is something I try to do every season. When I return in mid-August, I will be refreshed and ready for what I consider the busiest and most productive part of the year.
Late August through to Christmas is when I expect to put in more fishing time than I have during the first seven months combined. After such a hot, dry late spring and summer, I would not be surprised if autumn turns much wetter and colder. If it does, I suspect the Sleeper Craw may once again come right to the fore.
Last year, I landed 23 bass over 60cm. With 13 already on the board by early-August, there is every chance of improving on that, provided I keep learning, adapting and putting the right lure into the right place.
The clients have been doing well too. Joe recently had a client land a 60cm bass, and other clients have caught 60cm fish using the same slow, precise methods around likely holding areas. That is always brilliant to see.
For now, though, the first half of 2026 has been a fascinating reminder that bass fishing is never static. Read the conditions, respect the fish, fish accurately and keep an open mind. That is how the pieces come together.
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