My first bass of the year, no records were broken, but that one single fish was another lightbulb moment

I understand why most anglers are into size and length and numbers, but with bass fishing and the fish’s relative size and fighting abilities I just can’t be in the same boat. Of course I love trying to catch bigger bass which might pull a bit harder, but numbers of fish mean nothing to me and I couldn’t care less how many bass I might catch in a year, yet I obviously love this whole bass fishing thing in a very serious and obsessive way - and that’s the crux for me right there. The “whole bass fishing thing”. If I am lucky enough to land a 10lb+ bass from the shore in 2022 then so be it, but what I am far more interested in is learning and adapting and experimenting and trying to become a better angler than I was last year. I personally choose to decide whether I achieve that or not by not even thinking about size or length or numbers……………..

So whilst my first bass of 2022 which I caught on Monday morning was around the 2lb mark and won’t be gaining me any sort of Facebook Hero Status - life as I know it might be over! - where and how I caught that one single fish gave me my perfect start to the fishing year. We were fishing somewhere which for whatever reason I hardly fish when I should because it’s some stunning ground (good shout Mark!), the water clarity was fairly dirty, I have walked away colour like that to try and find cleaner water many times before but we stuck at it because the actual sea conditions were so good, and I caught that one lonely bass by changing my tactics to something which I read on this very blog and which has stuck in my head ever since: “The other thing to do in this situation is to go deep with a high contrast paddle or whirl tail soft plastic and retrieve it along the bottom. The soft plastic needs to have a distinct “sonic fingerprint” so that it can be located by predators”.

I didn’t write that by the way! Nope, it was from an article which Alan Bulmer from the excellent Active New Zealand website kindly let me reproduce here on this blog. It’s a really interesting article about targeting fish in coloured water and me wanting to get better at fishing more coloured water is high on my list of how to become a better angler. The problem around here is that when my local coastline colours up from strong and persistent onshore winds, it usually also fills up with weed and it’s that which kinda kills us the most - but thanks to Mark’s shout we went looking on Monday morning and although the water colour wasn’t that great at all , we could fish it just fine because there was virtually no weed around.

So I started off fishing as I would tend to fish over some very shallow and snaggy/reefy ground - on goes a Gravity Stick Paddletail rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight hook, and because the clarity wasn’t great my head tells me to go with the white or lemon back colours. I also put a rattle in there to try and give the lure even more of a “come and find me in this murky water” appeal. If you fish various soft plastics in this way then you will know all about how you can cover such rough ground so effectively without hanging up £20 hard lures which used to happen to me when I first started really getting into all this, and to be perfectly honest the loss of a fair number of expensive hard lures nearly put me off. It’s all a learning process and in due course I came to understand how certain lures just don’t suit certain marks, but it still makes me stop and think just how much I fish with soft plastics these days.

Anyway, so nothing’s happening and while I’m fishing I am also thinking about different ways I should be trying to fish more coloured water - and what Alan said about working paddletails along the bottom is one of those tactics which makes a lot of sense to me. We have all caught plenty of bass by working paddletails along the bottom and I don’t mean to suggest it’s something new, but for me and fishing murkier water than I am usually comfortable fish, it’s a tactic I have yet to really get into because I am usually too swift to walk away from more coloured water.

I have had a serious thing for our Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless lures ever since Mads and I started sampling our collective ideas. I can’t recall a bass session since these lures became available to me where at least a couple of them haven’t been in one of the two washable lure boxes I carry with me - and please, it may very well be completely different lures for you, indeed for me for a long time it would have been the killer Fiiish Black Minnow in its many different configurations.

Fishing excites me so much because I get to think about things and then put them into practice. I have had Alan’s thoughts on targeting fish in murkier water swirling around my head for a while now, and on Monday morning I did nothing more complicated than reel my Gravity Stick Paddletail on, clip on the smaller 11.5cm/22g Sandeel V2 Weedless in white and whack it out. Let it hit the bottom, fish it along the bottom with a bit of a twitch and bump sort of action, accept that over ground this rough and shallow that even a “weedless” lure is going to get hung up sometimes, and bang, fish on. I think it was my second cast fishing like this in coloured water and I am pretty sure I yelped with excitement. For sure the rather modest size bass didn’t exactly put much of a bend in my sample rod which I am trying out, but that first bass of 2022 did put just about the biggest smile on my face you can imagine. Obsess about 10lb+ bass all you like because I’ll take the learning and thinking and putting into practise stuff above all of it……….

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