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Lure fishing for bass.

Things have changed when it comes to lure fishing! There can be no doubt about that. When I first started fishing for bass in the 1960’s the choice of plugs that you could buy “off the shelf” was pretty limited. Over the years as the tackle manufacturers realised that there was a decent market (with bass anglers) for effective, shallow diving, fishy-looking plugs more and more appeared.   Of course lots of decent bass were (and still are) caught on the good old J11F Rapala that fishes only eighteen inches beneath the surface. A great many bass are to be found in this layer of water all around our coasts.

A few years ago a group of bass anglers in North Wales began to use surface lures such as the Chug Bug with great success. These surface poppers and afterwards others such as the Duel Magnet Slider/Yozuri Mag Popper proved to be not only effective but also extremely exciting to use.  They could be cast a long way thus covering more water. Secondly, because the lures never went beneath the surface they could be fished over the densest kelp forests, the knottiest wrack beds or the roughest barnacle-covered rocks with impunity. Thirdly, the surface lures clearly attracted bass from a distance and often induced spectacular strikes with fish launching themselves into the air or crashing through the surface. 

Due to this craze for surface fishing many may have missed out on a more recent development in plug design that has been a real eye opener even to old crocks like me.

Now I’m a bit of a sceptic (my pals would use stronger words to describe my attitude) when it comes to improvements in lure design. As far as I am concerned to be ‘better’ a lure has to allow me do something that I couldn’t do before. For example the sort of questions I ask are - Can I reach fish that I couldn’t otherwise cast to? Can I fish places that would otherwise be inaccessible?   Will I be able to fish with more confidence knowing that I am less likely to lose ten quid’s worth of lure? Lastly, and implicit in all of the above, will I catch more bass?

The fairly recent introduction of a group of wonderful sub-surface plugs has answered a resounding YES to all of these questions. The first ones I encountered were the Yo Zuri Crystal Minnows. Even more recently the Japanese firm Maria has begun to produce a range of plugs with (to me) silly sounding names but the ‘Angels Kiss’ and ‘Chase’ lures that are very good indeed. The slim, floating, sandeel-shaped plastic bodies have a moving weight system that enables long casts (much longer than the old J11), particularly if you use fine braided lines. The lures have small lips set at a steep angle so that they fish only just beneath the surface with a rolling yawing tremble that certainly attracts bass. Since they fish so near the surface they can be used over the shallowest bass ground imaginable and are extremely versatile. From my point of view I wouldn’t be without a couple of these plugs in my box. In fact ‘Marias’ have now achieved what I never thought possible and supplanted the J11Rapala as first out of the box and as my banker when all else fails.

Of course I haven’t given up on other types of lure. If I need to fish a bit deeper out come the Rapalas and Rebels, deeper still and it’s the J13 and the leaded shads and when the fish are at the far horizon I tie on a Toby  or an ABU Tormentor. Each has its time and place but most of my bass last year took ‘Marias’ and quite frankly I wouldn’t be without them.