Despite the time of year and a poor forecast of strong westerly winds with rain, I did take some comfort from the fact that my chosen location was West facing, with a fraction of North, and that the winds were due to turn Southerly by the time I'd arrived which would afford me some level of shelter from not only the weather but also the swell and also that a Southerly can switch on the fishing as if like Bass fishing magic at times here on the South Coast of Ireland.
The location I had in mind was a boulder field that has produced for me before through the winter but even so I wasn't too hopeful when I saw the conditions that greeted me on arrival, not suprisingly it was very messy.
The water state wasn't too bad, dirty yes from the heavy rain of the previous few days but that doesn't put me off, the mixed pieces of broken weed floating and suspended within the water column were not good news for lure fishing but as I had plenty of weedless presentations with me this wasn't a problem. I settled for some large white shad patterns for maximum visibility and vibration in the wild conditions. I matched this up with my 9' Daiwa Branzino (90M) with a Certate 4000 for extra punch and control along with a 22g weedless jig head the plan being to stay in contact with the bait, fish as slow and as deep as possible whilst gently skimming and bouncing the bait over the boulders and through the attached weed heads on the retrieve, with perhaps the occasional lift of the rod as the winds lulled.
After moving and casting my way along the shore, heading into the howling wind and lashing rain for a while, I managed to get my back to the wind and proceed to work a pattern of initially short casts directly out from the shore, wilist sinking the tip of the rod straight after casting to avoid a massive bow in the line and get under the surf, followed by progressively longer casts along the shore and downwind which caused less problems with the line.
The wind was almost blowing me off my feet in the gusts and knowing I couldn’t do much else technique wise I decided to give it a couple of hours max and see what happened.
After 20 mins the line went tight which I didn’t get too excited about as I expected to occasionally get snagged fishing in the manner that I was but as the “Snag” slowly moved away from me my face lit up with a big grin and a sense of near disblelief swept over me as I realised I was into a very good fish despite the conditions...
This has proven to me yet again that Bass, often large ones, can be present and on the feed in what looks to us like hopeless conditions and as we all know can equally be nowhere to be found or switched off when conditions seem perfect...
Thanks for reading - David.
