Hi Colin,
Not living near an estuary or other such Bass attracting feature, I am limited to fishing off the beach and interested in locating local Bass spots.
Here in Bexhill-on-Sea, when the tide is out, rock features i.e. several lines of rocks appear.
Usually on the beachward/north east side of these lines of rocks at low to incoming tide, there are shelving areas of deeper water possibly 2 to 3 feet deep. On the seaward/south west facing side the rocks tend to slope gradually downwards to the sand.
On previous occasions I have seen seagulls diving into these shallow shelved areas (thought they were ‘kamakaze’!)and assumed they were after brown shrimps (people do shrimp in these places too, although the sea bottom here is more likely soft sticky mud than sand; people do get stuck and care is needed when wading).
Is it possible that these are the places one might expect Seabass to be on a beach such as this?
On one occasion I fished the full incoming tide from very low about 6pm to midnight high tide, and starting in one of the deeper shelved areas fished right on up to the shingle beach.
I had no success although a conventional bait fisherman at the next groyne, did catch a few smallish schoolies, within about 20 yards from the high water mark on the tide turn.
On other occasions I have fished low to incoming tide about 2 hours and also 2 hours before and one hour after full tide, still no bites on any occasion.
Do you have any advice on fishing this type of beach?
I use size #1’s and #2’s (some with and some without monofil weed/rock guards) white feather & mylar tube eyed bait fish or sandeel flies, Mylar Minnows, white/olive Clouser type flies, White Streamers and a week ago tied up some sea fly versions of Rogan’s Gadget (FF&FT; July issue) to which I epoxied flat stick-on eyes (see photo attached).
I am using a transparent slow glass (intermediate) shooting head with level flyline running line on an 8 wt outfit and try to fish the full depth of the water column. I find that casting an #8 floating line in windy conditions is just not practical.
Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.
Thanks Colin
