Hardly subtle, but these lure tactics work.
This method sounds basic, but sometimes you must discard subtle tactics to get a result in tumbling surf
If there is one style of fishing that makes my heart pump faster and often causes me to yelp with joy at the racing clouds, it is catching bass on lures in the surf. I think back to those old magazine articles and black and white photos about those bass anglers standing thigh deep in creamy white surf as they mostly bait fished the exposed storm beaches of the UK and Ireland.
Of course, my mind turns to how much lure fishing we can do in similar locations and conditions and how hard these bass fight when they are so fizzed up in oxygenated water. Does it get much better?
As with any saltwater fishing, we check the relevant weather and swell forecasts and we make plans. We visualise the conditions and start thinking about how to best approach the session. We think about the lures to use and how they will work in the conditions.
I am sure that when many of us think about hooking that first bass in those surf tables, a smile spreads across our faces because fishing is the best thing in the world.
I don’t follow boxing, but the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson had a famous saying that says a lot to me about targeting bass in surf. He said: “Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth”. I use that to mean that we make all the plans for our fishing, but then we get to our chosen location and things aren’t quite as we envisaged. What are you going to do about it?
I was planning how I might stand thighdeep in a nice bit of surf with a big blue sky overhead, for example, and I was going to launch all manner of specialist metal jigs out there, or bump the surf tables with paddletails and feel every vibration of those soft plastic tails as my lure moved around.
But it wasn’t to be! No, the forecast wasn’t quite what was promised, and any ideas of a touchy/feely kind of surf fishing session had flown out of the window due to at least a Force 4 wind gusting Force 5 right in and across me. The beach was alive with choppy white horses and a tumbling mass of steely green water, but I liked it.
Anglers need to be able to adapt to the conditions, and when a subtler way of surf fishing may not be possible, I have to get a bit more basic and adopt what I call a “whack and crank” approach.
It involves getting right in there and whacking out various metal lures and then cranking them straight back in.
CORRECT KIT
First things first though. I don’t really want a chest wader full of cold saltwater, so I am wear a waterproof wading jacket and then secure a wading belt around my waist as tightly as I can get away with.
The lure bag I use - an HPA Chest Pack - happens to sit on a belt around my waist anyway, so I make sure I tighten it up. Why, you might ask? When you get in among those waves, as they surge at you they are going to hit you and try to force their way under your waterproof jacket and, consequently, into your waders - which is horrible, let me assure you. A tight belt around you stops the waves getting underneath your waterproof jacket. Make sure to tighten your sleeves too, and pull the zip up to your chin.
If there is one item of fishing tackle I like it’s a buttery-smooth Japanese spinning reel. Whatever claims some tackle companies make, there are spinning reels that do not like surf fishing, with all that saltwater and sand that washes around and ends up getting inside the reels. If you head out and do some proper surf fishing, then however careful you are makes no difference - saltwater will get on and inside your reel.
This is when I turn to the outstanding and “as sealed as you’re going to get for the money” Penn Slammer III 3500 and 4500 spinning reels. I am also starting to fish with the new and seemingly ideal for surf fishing Penn Spinfisher VI 3500 and 4500 spinning reels as well.
You still need to look after them, but I have deliberately drowned a Slammer in
saltwater on many different occasions, and it is running as smoothly as it was when it came out of the box. As an example, I lent a client a lovely, smooth Japanese spinning reel for a surf fishing session over in Ireland, and even though I hosed down the reel, the next morning it was as rough as a bag of nails and needed to go off for a service and replacement parts.
I am leaning towards a 9ft 6in to 10ft long lure rod that can cope with lures to at least 40g and possibly more, and I want this lure rod to be fairly stiff and very fast so the tip doesn’t flap around in the breeze. For the money, I am finding it hard to look past the HTO Nebula 10ft 15-56g rod at the moment, but there are plenty of good lure rods these days. For much of my bass fishing I err towards something around 9ft to 9ft 6in long and rated up to, say, 30g or 35g, but when those surf conditions are pumping, then this lure rod is not enough for me. Yet again, it’s not the size of the fish we might encounter, rather the lures we need to cope
with the conditions.
BEST LURES
What about those lures? Bearing in mind the conditions, and that a big sidewind kills any attempt at subtlety, I want something that will cast well and not end up surfing the tops of waves as the wind catches my 20lb braid and flings it all over the place. There are various lures that catch bass in the surf, but I’m going back to metals, or perhaps even spinners. They’re often considered old-school, but they still work and help me overcome the conditions. Use the right ones and they cast a country mile into all kinds of wind and, more importantly, can keep you fishing through all that turbulence.
One of my favourite metal lures is the Savage Gear Seeker in the 28g size, and while, in theory, this lure has been discontinued, I believe that it might soon be on the market again. The Seeker casts well and is quite large for its weight, if that makes sense. I like that larger profile and how it fishes in the water when conditions are bouncing. A metal that I like is the Hart Delta Force in the 35g size. It’s almost unreal how well this thing casts. For many years I have heard lots of Irish bass anglers banging on about the Kilty Catcher lure, and I am now seeing them here in the UK. Go looking, and there are a number of metal lures like this out there. I have recently come across the Williamson metal lures and I really like them, particularly the Thunder Jig in the 40g size, which flies like a missile, while the Williamson Slick Jig looks like a good baitfish pattern.
I am not getting technical about these lures and this “whack and crank” style of fishing, because way above the fishing tackle is the fact that you need to find feeding bass in the surf. We will cover this soon, and it can be pretty amazing how hard bass can feed in surf conditions. When you have those bouncy conditions, it’s more about getting some kind of lure in among them and being able to control it.