Once more, we welcome bass fishing guru Mike Ladle to the VMO blog. Mike shares his thought’s on his recent outings to the coast and how a different range of approaches can lead to varying results…
With the onset of the new season, I’ve tried a spot of bass fishing recently with mixed results. I have done no good with bait so when the tide and conditions seemed right, I opted to have an early morning spinning session. The big mistake was that I neglected to take the fly gear. As I trudged along in the dark to my chosen spot I passed three other anglers who said they’d been spinning for twenty minutes but hadn’t had a sniff. Not very encouraging but I pressed on anyway.
After passing the other spinners I came to some small weed middens but I expected that there would be even more weed further along the beach (there usually is) so I continued to walk. I’d already clipped on a Maria Chase plug as I anticipated the water being calm, clear and weedless, which it was. It turned out that there was no more rotting weed but it was just about high water so I started to fish. I began to cast and for half-an-hour or so I flogged away without result then I decided that I ought to walk back to have a look at the weed midden. By now it was pretty light and I could see that there was weed in the water’s edge. Out went the plug and it came back ‘weed free’ until it was close in. This was repeated several times – cast, retrieve, clean the lure, and so on. As I fished I was looking for surface feeding activity and suddenly I realised that ten metres further along it wasn’t weed that I could see in the margin but feeding fish. I reeled in and hurried to the spot.
It was immediately obvious that the plug would be useless. Most of the maggot feeders that I could see seemed to be mullet and I had no fly gear with me. What to do? I rooted in the bag and found a size 2, silver Mepps. In the past I’ve sometimes had mullet on these spinners wound in just under the surface. I clipped on the new lure and cast just beyond a dense concentration of surface skimming fish. I was in! The fish went berserk and I played it for five minutes before it came unstuck. ‘Foulhooked mullet!’ I thought. The fish were still there so I flicked the little lure out again tug, tug, wallop! I was in again and this fish seemed well hooked. I played it in and it turned out to be a bass of about five pounds. Fantastic!
A fine looking bass
Hooked nicely on the Mepps lure
I’d like to say that it was a fish-a-cast after that but it wasn’t. I lost two or three more after brief encounters and I landed two more bass, one similar to the first and another smaller one. I did, however, see one or two very large fish with their heads out of the water. At 07:15 as the tide began to ebb the fish disappeared and I packed in. Why oh why didn’t I take the fly rod? I met the other anglers on my way back but they’d blanked so at least I’d picked the right spot.
My latest attempt to catch a bass was less successful. The spring tides had promised some good fishing. Having missed out on a potential fly-fishing bonanza on the previous springs, this time I took both the fly rod and the spinning rod. It was pretty calm and eminently fishable, what could go wrong? As it turned out what remained of the weed was concentrated along a couple of metres of beach and the maggots had mostly turned to pupae. I threw quite a few armfuls of stinking, rotting seaweed into the sea but it was futile and I blanked (nothing new there). Ever hopeful and knowing that things can change dramatically in the course of half-a-day I went again on the evening tide with my pals Bill, Nigel and Dave. Just to be different I decided to try float fished maggots or bread while the others stuck to either fly fishing with maggot flies and Delta’s or spinning with soft plastic eels. It was much rougher and windier than it had been in the morning but there were a few more fish about, both bass and mullet. However, my light float gear was a bit of a disaster – skating across the surface in the stiff breeze. My pals all struggled a bit as well. Nigel and I blanked, Bill had a couple of missed pulls on his Slug-Gill lure and only Dave had any real success. Firstly, using his fly gear, he landed a bass on a maggot fly – he says it took him completely by surprise, just as he was lifting off for a back cast. Then, a bit later he had a slightly smaller fish, this time spinning a long, wriggly tailed ‘Baysand worm’. The fish did not hang about so we packed in not long after high water.
Dave lands a bass
And another!
It was a bit disappointing but I suppose it turned out better than I’d expected after my morning fiasco and it’s always interesting to see how conditions can change not just between series of tides, but even from one tide to the next. With luck we’ll have a bit of a blow before the next series of springs and the seaweed flies will produce another crop of mullet/bass food.