A bass milestone - 20th August 2011

After the successful session on Thursday I decided to try the same mark on Saturday. The weather had been rather windy on Friday but seemed to be much calmer on Saturday afternoon so I made my way down to the shore for the end of low tide. Unfortunately the sea was still rough, large swells were breaking on the rocks. This particular location does not fish well in rough conditions. But nevertheless since I was there I thought I may as well fish for a while and see how it goes.

I started off with some soft plastics, Xlayers and Slug-gos, but the surf was just carrying them in and even with a weedless set up I was still getting snagged. So I switched to a Feed Shallow. I put on a new one I got recently from Absolute Fishing, a silvey grey lure with a bright red belly. On about the fifth cast, directed diagonal to the shore and across several shore-parallel gulleys, the lure was snatched by a fish. It was putting up a reasonable struggle and when it broke the surface I could see it was a bass, although not big. I eased it onto the rocks on the crest of a wave. It was a 45 cm bass; it fought well considering its size.

It was my 120th bass of the year - so I now equalled my previous best annual total achived in 2009.

If there was one there I reckoned there should be a few more. I continued fishing, tried some different Feed Shallows and a few other lures such as Tide Minnons and Magabass X-140 but there was no more interest. As the tide rose the surf got bigger and I was getting hit by a few large waves so I decided to move on. I headed to a Cork Harbour mark, worked my way along the shore but had a big problem with weed. There was no sign of any fish activity so I packed up early.

Still I was happy to have pulled out the one bass given the conditions.