TWO DAYS OUT WEST
When your approach is not working, do something different – sage advice indeed from ‘Leakyboots’
Early-season advice from ‘Leakyboots’.
In West Cornwall we say “If you don’t like the weather, wait twenty minutes.” I’m sure you hear the same thing in other parts of the country, but down here it’s true. We live on a long finger that pokes out into the Atlantic, there’s no telling what’s going to come in from the ocean, especially in spring. One day we can be basking in the sunshine of a high pressure system, the next can bring horizontal rain as holidaymakers shudder in galeforce winds, nursing their pasties like hot water bottles and wondering why they didn’t go to Marbella, Miami, or Manchester, somewhere less miserably sodden.
Sometimes I see a message on an angling forum: “I’ve got a week down your way over the Easter break, should I bring my lure rod or my beach outfit?” To which I’m tempted to reply, “Both, along with fly-tackle, a beach shelter, an LRF outfit, a charcoal brazier, a skimpy swimsuit, thermal undies, flip-flops, neoprene waders, sun-screen, and a few acres of fleece and Goretex outerwear. In fact, you might want to fill your car with all the kit you own, and put your children on the train.”
But here’s the good news: whether you’re sweltering in an early heatwave or shivering in a blizzard, what matters to the bass is the water temperature. As soon as it’s above eight or nine degrees, I’m in with a chance of decent fishing, whatever gear I use.
GUESSING GAME
When I was a youngster, the veterans told me to look at the sea pinks (Armeria maritima). Once they were flowering, the ocean would be warming up and the bass would be on the feed. I prefer to study the sea spinach or sea beet plants (Beta vulgaris maritima) and kick off my season when the new leaves are three or four inches long. This also means there’s no such thing as a blank. If I can’t find any fishable water, I’ll change my target species and come home with a bag of green vegetables and we won’t go hungry.
It’s that quality of adaptability that strikes me as key to catching early-season bass. Some anglers say they’re fussy eaters, but I try not to attribute human qualities to creatures with pea-sized brains. Restaurant critics can be fussy, along with people who believe the drivel touted by so-called nutritionists in tabloid newspapers.
But bass don’t wander the deeps in search of a perfectly balanced wild mushroom risotto or a superfood goji berry and kale smoothie. They eat whatever they can find in sufficient quantity to keep them growing. It’s just that in springtime it isn’t always obvious what that is, or where they might be finding it.
Later in the year, when the whitebait and mackerel arrive, for instance, the angler’s life is simpler – a lure or fly to suggest a whitebait among the rocks and reefs, or a head-and-guts in the surf. In March and April, though, it’s more of a guessing game because the bass could be browsing on weed maggots, mullet, worms, shellfish, or just about anything; and they could be doing it just about anywhere.
A lot of anglers decide the when, where, and how of their outings well in advance. For instance: “We’ll start at dusk tomorrow on the long strand, I’ll bring lugworms, you bring rum and sandwiches”. Being organised is no bad thing; I’ve been known to arrive on the shore only to find my waders were still hanging up in the garage, or the squid was languishing in the deep freeze. At times like these I remember my regimental sergeant major who had us bellow in unison, “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance”.
Yet some people stick to their up-front strategy decisions with grim and inflexible determination, abandoning them only when their arms are tired from catching bass, or when it’s become obvious they’d have as many bites if they were nursing a jar of ale in the nearest waterside hostelry. Not so good, better to adapt to what’s going on.
HUNGRY TEENAGERS
One late March we had a week of light, cool breezes, not enough to build a surf on the beaches, but the rocky headlands were fizzy with modest waves. “Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted” was another of the sergeant major’s mantras, so I took an evening stroll around a few favourite coves. In one, the high-water line was thick with rotting weed from the winter storms, and I reckoned I could sense a food chain.
Weed brings in maggots that attract finger mullet, bass eat mullet, and once in a while I turn myself into an apex predator and scoff a plump bass with chips and a green vegetable.
Next morning, an hour before dawn and high tide, I was flicking a black and silver shallow diver along the shoreline. Mulletshaped, mullet-coloured, but nothing doing beyond a small pollack. Okay, I thought, maybe a different link in the food chain, I’d try livebaiting. But that was no good, either, and in a quarter-of-an-hour the pollack had given up the ghost.
Time for Plan C. I had a bash with a small grub-shaped fly, something to suggest a maggot, on a dropper ahead of a soft plastic. Maybe the bass were bypassing the mullet and going straight for the little morsels. Still no joy, so I propped my bottom against a boulder and rolled a ciggy as an aid to contemplation. What next?
In front of my improvised seat was a shallow gulley in the pebbles. I switched on my torch and peered into it. Dozens and dozens of inch-long silvery shapes were flitting around. Generally, I expect jelly-fry from late April. But my calendar comes courtesy of my £12.99 digital watch, while tiddler behaviour’s governed by temperature, tide, wind direction, the Gulf Stream, and – for all I know – the horoscope page in the Daily Mail.
Anyway, the fry were about, and bass suck
“Some people stick to their up-front strategy decisions with grim and inflexible determination”
them down like hungry teenagers plundering a refrigerator. They’re so fatty that they must provide a lot of calories per mouthful, like those energy bars they give to long distance runners. Off with the maggoty fly, on with a size 4 tinselly effort, and I released four schoolies before a chubby three-pounder went into my bag. On the walk back to the car I gathered some sea spinach as well – a double header session.
BEST FRIEND
That afternoon it clouded over and the wind picked up out of the west. By bedtime, it was a damp Force 5, so I grabbed a packet of squid from the deep freeze and left it to thaw overnight. Squid, I find, is a versatile bait. That’s a pompous way of saying I use it when I can’t think of anything better to try.
At four o’clock next morning I attached a wired lead – the sea was heaving too much for a bomb weight – and chucked nine inches of prime calamari into the frothy surf. It felt like a morning for a good fish – warm, wet, and wild. But an hour and two baits later, all I had for my pains was a dripping beard and a greedy rockling.
“When it’s not working, do something different.” That nugget’s not from the sergeant major, it’s my own. I upped sticks and wandered along the beach a few hundred yards to a spot where the wave looked particularly bassy – lots of foam and froth.
As I set down my backpack, I noticed a crunchy sound under my boots, the sand was carpeted with mussel shells. What’s more they were new arrivals, most still contained bits of orange flesh. I wondered about having a go with squid anyway, but I remembered an old gillie I knew when I was a lad: “Fish like you mean it, or don’t fish at all.”
That meant a rain-battered half-mile slog through soft sand back to the car. As best I can tell, the Highway Code doesn’t prohibit driving in trouser waders or a jacket that smells of old bait, so I just cleaned the spray from my glasses and whizzed home. I grabbed a couple of fistfuls of frozen mussels and drove back to the shore, where I released three bass in under an hour, the best nearly 6lb. Adaptability is the angler’s best friend.
OPTIONS OPEN
A little before dawn a holidaymaker showed up. His name was Alan and he’d been at it all night for a tiny whiting and an emaciated flounder. He was on lugworms, so I turned out my pocket for the last of my mussels: three big ones and a mushed-up nipper. Alan was a dab hand with elastic thread; he bodged them together into a tasty-looking bundle, and cast into the bubbling mayhem while I sat down to watch.
I barely had time to roll a smoke before I saw his body tense as he tightened into what turned out to be a 4lb bass. Once it was beached, he relaxed into a grin that almost split his face in two. “So, are shellfish the best bait in these parts?” he asked. I’m a retired management consultant, I gave him the answer for which my profession is so justly infamous: “It depends.” But that’s exactly what it does, it depends what edible bits and pieces are in the water right here and right now, and in the spring that could be almost anything. You need to keep your options open.
Lure-fishers and fly-casters travel with plenty of options, boxes rammed with poppers, sliders, streamers, grubs, fake prawns, deep and shallow divers, soft plastics, shads, spoons, and metal jigs. If you use artificials, it’s a case of making sure you ring the changes until you get it right. But when you’re on bait, it’s very hard to cover all the possibilities.
Generally, I carry what I’m planning to use, with something frozen as back-up, but that limits me to just two choices. What I need is a fridge and a freezer in my car so I can drive around with a full à la carte menu of worms, sandeels, mackerel, squid, crabs, razor clams, and mussels. The issue would be powering it without running down the battery. Maybe a solar panel on the roof? Maybe a little windmill? But back to where I started, in these parts you never can tell what the weather’s going to bring.
“Bass don’t wander the deeps in search of a perfectly balanced wild mushroom risotto or a superfood goji berry and kale smoothie”