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Late season 2005

"To all those caught by the fly"

The late season report has been very enjoyable but mixed with late August performing very well, the first half of September providing sporadic sport with some good quality fish and October starting, and hopefully finishing, with good Bass in the usual places surrendering themselves to HD lines of up to 12 inches per second . The Indian summer has allowed bookings to continue right up until the end of this month and enquiries pushing into early November still coming through .

The water temperatures are still fine and the clarity is also good for this time of year – very few school Bass about now as they seem to have shoaled up in large numbers within the harbour but good Bass to 8lbs and many in the 3-5lb bracket are being taken on nearly every trip-

The total this season to date is approx 2700 fish with 6-7% mature which is in line with last year – one observation however is that more of the better fish were shorter than in previous seasons and maybe would suggest they are putting on weight faster due to more temperate winters , just a thought.

Interestingly enough we took the first Sea Trout this month of a couple of pounds which was a first and welcome sight – fish into double figures are recorded from Fishbourne in recent years so they’re definitely around .

Some clients this year had a lot of Bass and just couldn’t put a foot wrong , the most amount of fish this season from what my diary records is 120 Bass to 3 clients in a 6 hour session, most of which were caught within a two hour window!,,, strangely enough this was early season and not height of summer as you would expect . Other clients missed out, still taking school Bass but missing the better quality fish – it just goes to show that this is a wild quarry and just when you think you’ve cracked it they move the goal posts – as an example of that I was fishing off Pilsey Island on one of the worst tides of the year (2.2meters LW vs 3.8 meters HW) so hardly any tidal drift at all when 3 new clients who insisted on coming out and knowing their chances were limited with such a small tidal range ended up with 25 Bass including 8 good fish, the smallest of these being 3.8 lbs,,,, all taken on benchmark clousers of different colours – so it’s not always the spring tides that produce the goods .

Next season will soon be upon us and we’ll be waiting for them when they arrive in early 2006 – in addition to this there’ll be some additions to the website over the coming months with specific salt water rods for Bass fishing for sale in the new on-line shop as well as LA reels. Due to the increase in demand over the last few seasons I have been asked to tutor new comers to the sport so will be advertising dates for casting instruction which will occur from the New Year onwards – these sessions will be geared towards getting flyers to load their rods quickly and efficiently so when confronted with the actual coast they’ll be in a position to haul a good line out as well as manage a prevailing wind and flooding tide . And lastly we are looking at expanding the business into the West country for those of you who may want to travel to marks further a field – I will post these developments to you as they happen

Finally a thank you to all of you who have visited the West Sussex coast via www.bass-fishing.co.uk again this year in pursuit of the Silver fox and I hope I’ll see you again in the coming months .

Tight Lines.

Keep your eyes peeled on www.ukbass.com for forthcoming legislation re changes on netting / spawning and sport fishing in general