WHY I JOINED ‘BASS’
You too can join the fight to protect this popular fish
Istood on a rock, slippery with a brown weed that only seems to be found on this particular mark, my hands were bleeding from various cuts and puncture wounds, but I didn’t mind the pain. The bass I had just returned to the clear sea was bass number 70. Yes, 70 bass in little more than two hours’ fishing, and not just bass, sometimes a mackerel, garfish or pollack would beat the bass to the lure every time that it hit the water 30 or so yards away in the slowly rising tide.
Small bass, for sure, from about 1lb 8oz up to 3lb, great fun on a light spinning rod and 8lb mainline; the sea was simply full of fish.
On another day and another tide I was chest deep in the warm sea, it was crystal clear, a bright sun beat down; not the best conditions to go bass fishing. I had been watching the fish for 20 minutes as the tide turned and slowly crept up my already soaked T-shirt; they were behind me in the breaking surf.
I had waded out at low water with my fly-rod in an attempt to reach a small reef further out. On turning around to look back, I could see them, quite big fish – some of them might have been 5lb. They were swimming parallel to the shore, and when a wave started to rise and roll over, they turned and surfed into the shallow, white-frothing water, turning at the last moment to continue their journey along the beach. I never knew bass could surf, and they seemed to be enjoying it too much to show any interest in my fly.
JAW-DROPPING
Waking early in the bunk bed of my parents’ caravan, I listened to the sound of children playing in the school yard. Odd, it was a Saturday and the nearest school is in the village three miles away. Pulling back the curtains, I tried to focus, my brain was not quite able to compute what my eyes were showing me. The normally blue sea across the bay and around the distant headland was as black as oil, and it seemed to be snowing sea birds in blizzard proportions.
I hastily got dressed and ran for the door. I grabbed my binoculars and sprinted for the seaside clifftop. The sight that greeted me was jaw-dropping in its scale. A vast shoal of fish was slowly making its way up the coastline on the incoming tide. Through the binoculars I could see big spikey fins and spade-like tails slashing the sea surface, all the while the rising screech of thousands of seabirds getting louder.
The feeding frenzy was vast, certainly covering several acres. How many bass I have no idea, but I had never seen so many, and doubt I ever will again. The thing that sticks in my mind is that there was not a single boat or angler in sight.
All these events took place in the 1980s and early 1990s when bass were not a trendy food fish. The cod was king in those days, but when their stocks collapsed, the television chefs and cooks needed a replacement, and bass fitted the bill nicely. The market for bass was open, the slaughter began and continued. Catch rates for anglers went into freefall, mine included; now it was 70 fish a season, not in one trip. Shoals of fish became single fish, and it just got worse and worse.
Then I saw an article in Sea Angler for a society for like-minded anglers who wanted to try and stop the bass slaughter. I joined BASS that day and am still a member.
If you are new to bass fishing, it’s hard to explain just how good the sport was back in those days. Is it possible that it will ever be that good again in the UK? I don’t know, but if plenty of us shout loud enough, who knows, it might be possible to catch 70 bass from the shore in one session again.