Bass

Last week I was standing in the river in just a few inches of water, waiting for the mullet to appear as the tide pushed in.

A shoal of fry scattered as a fish struck and continued to do so with ferocity, two or three times.

I'd previously put the fry jumping down to mullet dashing about as they do, but no, these were no mullet. A few minutes later a decent sized bass materialised in front of me, out of nowhere in the shallow, clear water. Most definitely a bass.

I've plenty of bass here before but mostly small ones. 

The tide was perfect yesterday,  so I bought the lure rod along with some small plugs ( or as they call them these days, "hard plastics" ), roughly the same size as the bait fish.

The wind had started to drop and it was turning out to be a fine evening. The flow increased just a touch and the fry on the shallows began to be attacked.

The surface popper landed right on top of baitfish as they were scattering and was immediately savagely hit. In the ultra shallow water the fish fought long and hard on the light gear, much better than most of the mullet I've been catching on the fly.

Turned out to be a lovely fish.

As the tide pushed in the fish moved, as did I. The surface lure was replaced with a tiny shallow runner, which resulted in three more cracking bass, all of which battled hard in the now fast flowing water. 

It's so satisfying observing something happening, devising a plan and then coming back and it working.

You'll not be surprised to learn that I'm going to give it another go this evening. 

Oh, I almost forgot, they weren't all big'uns.

A lovely evening and literally two minutes drive from the house. Magic.