I know that a blog post this morning about surf fishing when the coastline is about as flat and lifeless as I have ever seen it might not make much sense, but as is the case with many of these posts, I get to talking about fishing with a friend and it gets me thinking about fishing related stuff in subtly different ways……………..
I fished a few sessions last week with a friend I haven’t seen for a fair while due to the current state of the world, and whilst we were fishing mainly calm conditions and did actually see a few fish, because we both share a serious passion for all things Ireland we got to talking about lure fishing in the surf. Our experiences have been naturally shaped by where we tend to fish, and we got around to talking about seriously big surf and how bass seem to be able to so effortlessly feed in conditions which many anglers might look at and think not a frigging hope in hell can I catch bass in that.
There’s a but here though - do you know how the surf beaches you yourself might fish or intend to fish react to certain wind directions and swells and tides and so on? For all the talk of some serious bass we know of which have come in some mountainous Irish surf, I would suggest that every beach is a bit different in how it can or cannot take certain winds and swells and so on without colouring up and/or filling up with weed, or be plain impossible to fish properly because the water you need to get at is breaking so far out it’s almost impossible to lure fish it. I would also add that as much as it might race the heart to fish really big conditions (safely) from the beach, you and I both know that we often don’t need a great big surf to get things going.
MY GO-TO SURF FISHING SETUPMy local beach for example is stunning, but when things get hectic with certain wind directions it goes and blows out pretty quickly. It gets really coloured up and tends to fill up with weed. For some reason a subtly different wind direction tends to “hold” rougher conditions much better for a longer amount of time, plus it can fish really well like this, but now get that bit too much wind on it and it’s going to blow out eventually and then we have to wait for it to clear up. I never really concentrated much in geography at school but I sure would love to better understand how this all happens.
Then I think of some of the beaches on the north coast of Cornwall that I might target bass when the surf is rolling in, and without a doubt the places I know of can “hold” a lot more sea crashing in than on my local beach. Whether this is always a good thing on the bass fishing front I don’t personally think is that easy to say, but for various reasons based around the type of sand, the makeup of the beach, the depth and so on, many of those north coast beaches can really take a pounding but still be what I would class as fishable. If you can fish it or indeed if you would want to fish it.
It’s the same where I do my co-guiding work in Kerry over in SW Ireland. The local beach can sometimes be fished in what many anglers would think are almost ridiculously hectic conditions in which no bass could possibly feed - but they do, and I love hearing the stories of some of the big lure caught bass taken when most anglers wouldn’t even get out of bed let alone drag themselves down to the beach to try and fish for bass in seas like that. Some anglers wouldn’t want to fish for bass like this which of course I understand, some anglers aren’t kitted out to fish the types of lures which can cope with these conditions, and some anglers I would politely suggest might fancy fishing conditions like these but haven’t yet got the required skills to deal with them.
I personally think it’s pretty bloody amazing how fish like bass and cod can so effectively move and feed in seas which to us as mere human beings look close to insane. How many times have I said on here that I had no idea how varied and interesting it could be to chase the one species of fish because they can be caught in so many different ways and in so many different locations and conditions? Surf fishing when you are struggling to punch say a long-casting 45g metal into a wind which wants to take your breath away could not be more different to gently placing a soft plastic just beyond the edges of some bladderwrack in a quiet estuary, but it’s still chasing this one glorious species of fish. Damn it’s going to be fun trying out and evaluating some of the samples I have here when the surf starts raging again………….