Another Seaford Bass Session

By , 27 July, 2010 12:45

Seaford bass - click for larger imageIt was back to Seaford beach again last night for more bass hunting. I arrived at Edinburgh Road at about 8pm to fish the flood tide up to high water at 1am. The weather was low heavy cloud with a light Westerly breeze. Not long after arrival, a heavy drizzle/light rain came in, which managed to get all my gear nicely soaked but only lasted an hour or so before clearing out top leave a very pleasant evening. The sea was flat with very little in the way of wave movement – but the good thing was there were very few signs of the weed which would make things easier.

I hadn’t been able to get any lugworm, so had to rely on some peeler crab I’d obtained and launce strips for the scratching rod, which I set up with a DVice on a running ledger. I cast this out with the launce and set about getting the bass rod all ready for when the sun had gone down. The rig was, as usual, a long link running ledger ending with a 4/0 pennel setup baited with the lovely large launce, I had managed to get from The Peacehaven Angler.

When I returned to the scratching rod, I saw that there was loads of slack line, so retrieved it only to find a mackerel had taken the bait on the bottom – more bait! Apart from that, there was no other interest shown in the offerings I was chucking out.

As darkness fell, I swapped the launce for crab on the scratching rod but this only resulted in more whiting in the same bracket as the previous night – all pins. Once the crab had been used, I went back to some mackerel strip instead but again this only produced whiting.

The slight breeze that there had been earlier, died totally leaving it very still, warm and humid – enough to get away with wearing just a tee shirt, although I did put my jeans back on after protests from a passing dog walker 😉

The first proper action didn’t happen until about 11.15 when I saw a small pull down on the bass rod which resulted in a schoolie bass of about a pound. This was just after I’d spent a good while talking to another guy who had been fishing further along.

The next fish was at 1135 and was a better fish at 2½lbs which had really punched above its weight, giving a really good run and dogged fight which had me believing it was something a bit bigger. It was a nicely conditioned fish, lean and fit.

It wasn’t until an hour later that I had the next and last fish of the night, another schoolie of around 1½lbs. After this, it went completely dead with no further indications of any sort. I had anticipated at least one take during the hour period after high water but there was no interest shown at all. I gave it until 2.30 before calling it a day and heading for home. All three bass were taken at a range of no more than ten yards out. I think this is something people should bear in mind when targeting bass and should give confidence to those who are not great casters (myself included) and who perhaps try too hard to get those ‘extra’ yards. It’s not always about distance.

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