Wednesday was a lovely summer's day so I finished work early at 4.00 pm and headed to the coast for a short session before dinner. High tide was at 5.00 pm and I arrived at the shore just after 4.30 pm. I commenced fishing a mark that I had previously checked out at low tide and reckoned it would be a good area for bass to lurk as the tide filled. On the second cast as I retrived a Feed Shallow I could see a large bass following, but it stayed about a meter behind the lure and turned away close to the shore. I continued casting across the same area, changed lures, tried some soft plastics but I had no more interest.
I then moved about 25 m to the east. I was casting across an area of shallow reefs with intervening deeper shore parallel gulleys. As some of the rocks were barely submerged I switiched to surface lures. After about ten minutes, just as I had the lure within a meter of the shore a bass made a sudden lunge for an Asturie right below my feet, it was on for a second or two but came off. I could see the bass in the crystal clear water, and could see another two fish right beside it. However, the brief fight spooked them and they were gone in an instant. Despite throwing out a variety of lures I had no more bites.
I moved further along the shore. There were lots of splashes in the calm water but they were mostly mullet. As it is a good bass mark I thought it likely that there could be bass amongst them but there was no interest apart from one big splash behind a patchinko about 30 m out.
As the tide began to drop I worked my way back. I got out onto a rocky platform that was starting to become exposed. There are several gulleys just off this that have produced plenty of bass for me in the past. I put on a Texas rigged Slug-go and lobbed it in to one of these, let the lure drift, giving it a few gentle twitches to keep it moving. At that stage of the tide it was probably about 3.5-4 m deep. Then suddenly the rod flattened out, there was a very good fish on the end pulling fiercely and stripping a little line. I had it on for about 10 seconds and was trying to get it to the surface, then the line went limp!!! The line had been rubbing against the submerged rocks on the edge of the drop-off and snapped!!!
I was annoyed to say the least!!! As I was travelling light that was my one and only Slug-go so I tried a giant Xlayer. I did feel a tug on the Xlayer at one stage but nothing was hooked. I perservered for about another hour but the tide was now dropping fast so I packed up. Not the best session I have ever had but at least there were fish there even if I didn't succeed in landing one.
Hard Luck on the fish Frank !
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if you hook it again at later date on the same tide state with the Slug Go still in its mouth.
I happened here last month ( reminds me must do up a report on it!) Barry got broken off by a Bass and left an X140 in the fish. 7 days later marked landed a Bass and guess what was in its mouth ...Barry's X140 !!! It was exactly the same location over a small reef,,,just shows how territorial they are.
Danny.