I love that feeling you get when you’re doing something worthwhile - and it’s fishing here of course - yet virtually everybody else isn’t because you’re out and about at some strange time when non-fishing people are tucked up in bed and missing out. Bait or lure fishing doesn’t matter to me here, but I find it so satisfying to feel like I am almost stealing a bit of time and getting more out of a regular 24hr day. Imagine how much more we could get done if we didn’t have to waste time sleeping?
I don’t mind whether it’s staying up to whatever o’clock or getting up very early to go fishing, but I must admit to a particular sense of satisfaction at having fished a session and got back home before “normal” people would even consider getting up. And yes, whatever way we look at it, us anglers aren’t exactly “normal” in one sense of the word, but I would then argue that spending proper time in the great outdoors when most other people are in the land of nod is something that a lot more people should experience. To be out on the coast as the first hint of a new day makes itself known gets me every single time………..
The alarm went at 2.30am on Sunday morning, and whilst for a second or two Storm did wonder why I was downstairs so soon after I had gone up to bed, once she sees me strapping a rod to the rod racks on the car she’s bouncing around all overexcited and I am trying to stop her making too much excitable noise and waking the rest of the house up! I picked Mark up and we’re off to the coast which ain’t exactly very far from where we live, and as expected we see nobody else around. Calm seas, clear water, still dark, it’s got to be a white senko.
Give me a few marks over in Ireland where we have hammered bass at night and I’m feeling as confident as an angler could, but I need to do a lot more of the night stuff around where I live and build the confidence and experience up. I used to do a hell of a lot of night fishing in my bait days, and I am really enjoying the night lure stuff and how it’s so much about a heightened sense of feel once you take away your vision and tune in so much to retrieving a lure.
There’s a certain part of where Mark and I were fishing that I really like on the first of the ebb tide, and with HW on Sunday morning at 4am, I fancied that we’d have enough darkness left to get a bit of time on the drop. And yes, a couple of bass later on the white senkos simply wound straight in at a medium sort of speed and I’m absolutely frigging bouncing. The best fish might have nudged 5lbs, but to be honest I’m just so damn pleased to catch bass at night close to where I live on the white senkos. You know how your head plays tricks with you, and especially at weird hours when other regular people are fast asleep?
“Change lures, change the retrieve, change location, do something different” goes the voice in my head, but I trusted in the lure and the (simple) technique, applied what I know about the location from mostly daylight fishing, and nailed a couple of bass. I love how the hit from a bass on a lure is so amplified at night. Back for breakfast, barbecue for lunch, on the beach with the kids in the afternoon, a stunning summer’s day, yet I’ve “stolen” those few hours when everybody else isn’t up and about and it never feels any less special.