What a summer 2025 has been, in weather terms at least. Like most of the country, where I live in the North East enjoyed/suffered from a sustained period of virtually no rain between May and August, running the local reservoirs low even by our usual standards – although not quite drastic enough to invoke the hospice bans seen in some of the counties further south.
Bass Fishing
For the most part I’ve stuck to a similar pattern to the last few years post covid and continued with my obsessive pursuit of Bass on lures. However the objective this year was to primarily fish some new marks, and hopefully unlock some success by fishing conditions alternative to that which would be favourable on the marks I’ve fished to death. Most of my well frequented spots I know from experience fish over high water, the larger the tide being typically the best correlation to success. Having to coincide this with dusk/dawn, flat calm seas which are also key success factors, I found was limiting my opportunity to get out and catch fish so I was determined this year to crack somewhere that would fish over low tide or on the ebb tide, to give me more options and ultimately time on the water.
It was a sound plan – and sort of worked, although not in the way I might have liked.
To summarise in a sentence, I’ve caught one Bass. All bloody season! Catch wise it has been the worst season in 4 at the time of writing – this time last year I was well over double figures with substantially less fishing time.
You might think this fairly typical considering I’ve only been to my well used marks twice, otherwise exclusively concentrating my fishing on new marks. Although I do think it’s a factor, I think the fishing in general has on a whole been really poor. Speaking to other anglers, some of which are definitely more experienced than me when it comes to lure fishing for Bass, it’s clear that it’s been a hard season – with comparatively less fish being landed than recent years. Slightly puzzling as in contrast the baitfish stocks have been absolutely booming – with sprats and sandeels in absolute glutenous proportions, although perhaps this is because the Bass aren’t around in their usual numbers to thin them down.
Despite the above, one of the lads I fish with HAS actually had an alright season, with a few schoolies falling victim to sandeel pencils – and happily for me although I was rarely there at the time of capture, they have been caught on the same mark and on ebbing tides. So through his catches, I have (sort of!) achieved my objective of diversifying my repertoire of marks and conditions. It’s a consolation anyway for what has been a very underwhelming season for me personally. There’s still time to remedy it though – hopefully a nice Autumn PB helps to make up for it.
Sea Trout – A new interest
I said the primary focus all summer has been Bass, and it’s an accurate summary. As most Bass anglers will attest to though, another fish you often see, especially in muddy estuary’s or the shallow reefs on the open coast, is Sea Trout. I’ve caught a few of these in the past, almost always whilst bait fishing for other species, or occasionally targeting them deliberately with small spinners on remote Scottish lochs. But despite seeing them leaping from the water pretty much every time I go fishing when it’s flat calm, sometimes as little as 10 foot away from where I’m wading, I’ve not really actively tried to catch them.
With the lack of rain this summer though, they have been hanging around the coast in HUGE numbers – I don’t remember seeing as many sea trout as I have this year. One of the lads I fish with (Marc) landed one as by catch when we were out one evening for Bass, which lead me to attempt to get one a few weeks later.
As the dawn beckoned, I’d been casting a white savage gear seeker at the same 3 fish for what seemed like ages. They were honestly taking the p***, as I’ been watching them jump out of the water every 30 seconds about 20 yards away for ages, with the now actively ebbing tide doing little to persuade them to move on from the skeer they were over. In fact the water had gotten so low I could see their fins sticking out of the top of the water as they positioned themselves along the edge of the bladderwrack in less than a foot deep, readying themselves for another lunge at the patch of sandeels that hadn’t managed to vacate to cover before the betraying sunrise.
Somehow (with the help of the single hook I imagine) I was still managing to keep the seeker over the top of the rock with a reasonably fast retrieve without it hanging up – there honestly can’t have been more than a foot of water over the top of this skeer. After what seemed like the 100th time covering these fish, finally WHALLOP – A PB seatrout hit the lure like a train and immediately went into full fish tantrum mode in its bid for freedom. This was a really nice fish and all the time I’m thinking to myself “there’s no way you’re landing this – any minute now it’s gonna throw the hook”, something which seatrout are notorious for being able to do with their ability to turn fully in on themselves and spin and flip like maniacs, using the weight of the lure to literally leverage the hook free.
Thanks perhaps to the double split ring at the hook end of the lure (a deliberate design tactic to mitigate against these particular hook slips), the fish stayed on long enough for me to get it to my feet. I’ve some experience with trout fishing in freshwater and at a guess would estimate the fish somewhere around 7lb, which would have made my old PB not even worth looking at.
Unfortunately though, you guessed it, the inevitable happened and with a final leap from the water literally a yard In front of me it finally managed to get itself free and off it went like a shot. I was obviously gutted, but not altogether surprised – these fish are so good at freeing themselves from the hook. But it has lit a flame and made me want to actively target them more next season. Until now I’ve not bothered buying the purpose made line thru or inline lures that are designed to mitigate against hook pulls, so I guess I’ll have to remedy that!
Shore Skate fishing is pretty pointless during summer
As per my blog post earlier in the summer “A not so productive trip to the west coast of Scotland”, this years only Scotland trip didn’t amount to much more than a couple of Wrasse, Spurdogs, Dogfish and a solitary Thornback. Most of the shore Skate fishing we do on the west coast of Scotland is from the marks on the shallower side, generally in less than 100ft of water, where darkness can be a crucial factor to success. You will get the odd fish showing in shallower water during the day, but I’m not exaggerating when I say chances are improved by at least 10 times by fishing at night.
Unsurprising then that the trip in June yielded no Skate – with only 1 run in 4 days which never hooked up and in all honesty could have just as easily been an overly enthusiastic Thornback choking on the bait. So I think future efforts will be confirmed to the cooler, darker side of the calendar going forward.
A return to Anglesey
My 5 year old has developed an interest in fishing, much to my delight, and his most recent trip combined car camping with 2 days species hunting in North Wales. Nothing too exciting as we were limited by weather and tides particularly on day 2, but between Holyhead and Amlwch we managed a few species points with Ballans, Corkwings, Goldsinneys, Tompot Blenny, Poor Cod, Pouting, Pollock and Rock Gobies – and dogfish on the distance rods. Lochlan also hooked a small strap conger on a 7G LRF rod which took a size 12 baited with a tiny bit of ragworm! Unfortunately it snapped the hook length at the surface but not before a few of us shouted out in disbelief at the fact he’d managed to hook it on that setup.
And that’s basically the main highlights. A slow summer season all in all, with not as much time on the water as I’d have liked (the typical pattern of the last few years)
There’s still time for one or two more sessions before attention turns to the autumn and winter fishing. Both the fly gear and cod gear need a good dusting!
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