Don’t get me wrong here because I love a decent UK summer as much as the next (often sun-starved and wanting to get away from Jan, Feb and March in the UK) person, but I am really interested to see what happens with the bass fishing around me when we get back to what we might term as more normal weather. There seems to be a hell of a lot of bait around at the moment which in certain areas is attracting a lot of very small bass which I have to take as a good sign for the future if any of them can ever get to breeding age, so what’s going to happen when we start to get back to the more unsettled weather patterns that we are more used to? We can talk and think and plan, but we don’t know and it fascinates me…………
Out on the open coast around here it’s generally been so calm and clear and settled for so long now that I personally think even the night fishing has been negatively impacted, but I am not remotely complaining because a really good summer is more than welcome. Anybody remember an August like this? I have some very vague memories of the very warm and dry summer of 1976 when I was three years old, but in truth those memories might well have come from photos I have seen of us running around on brown grass. I don’t know whether we should be worried about the extremes of temperatures and lack of rainfall this summer, but I do know that I can’t recall not needing to mow the grass for so long.
And of course because we are anglers we can’t help but think about how these weather conditions might be negatively or indeed positively affecting whatever fishing we like to do. When you’re a fair distance up an estuary and fishing surface lures out beyond a lot of bladderwrack and you get a swirl and a hit but it’s mackerel, it feels a bit weird. I don’t have a lifetime of experience around where I live here in south east Cornwall, but things do feel rather strange this summer on the bass fishing side of things, and for all the conjecture and rumours and what have you, I for one can’t wait for autumn and into winter to see what might or might not happen. One side of me wants the summer weather to hang around as long as possible for my wife and girls to keep on enjoying, but the other (fishing/grumpy) side of me is hoping for a return to whatever we think of as more “normal” weather - and whatever that may or may not do for the fishing side of things.
How about you? Do the areas you fish fire up when it’s settled and crystal clear for so long? Estuary fishing has become an ever-growing part of my bass fishing and I love the learning involved, but I do love it when you pull up at an open coast mark and you basically end up running to the fishing spot because conditions look so delicious and bouncy and green. I’ve got a whole load of stuff I want and indeed need to try out in the surf so I can’t help but wish for specific conditions to return and give me those shapes of waves which tend to work well around here - but I also want as many perfect beach/outdoors days as possible for my wife and girls before they go back to school and teaching. Who ever said that anglers can be a picky bunch of people? Please wish me luck because I am going to drop into the Art of Fishing tackle shop tomorrow and as you know I have a distinctly weak level of control with shiny fishing tackle!