Report: Late-Season Bass Fishing in Wexford, Ireland
Guest blogger Sean Jordan, of Bass Fishing Wexford in Ireland, reports on some tasty action from the tail-end of a challenging season
The full moon tidal cycle towards the end of last week saw some good sport as decent conditions combined for a few days. With the sea temperature hovering around 13°c bass were still going to be very active – over 5 sessions, we encountered on every one, the best session was 14 fish for 2 anglers.
The better sessions coincided with mild conditions prior, and during, fishing, in comparison to slower fishing during fresh NW winds cooling the shallower marks.
A long walk to a sandy beach mark saw a lot of sprat washed up along the HW mark, the paw tracks of a fox followed them along the beach, as it enjoyed its snack of “gritty sushi” shortly after HW. On other marks sandeels of all sizes are still abundant, and I still see them daily.
Back to the fishing, we found bass all through the water columns (top, middle and bottom). Surface lures, ie Sammys, Spooks, and the Sebile Splasher (which I’ve grown very fond of), all got smashed with gusto…
Sub-surface too, the low angle of the winter sun highlighted our lures in almost 3D detail as they did their job. Soft and hard lures all caught, as did one of my favorite late-season hard lures, the Illex Water Monitor.
Bucktails,(more on them another time), which I’ve been experimenting with this season, found decent numbers of bass that were lying deep in strong flows on the same days, on different marks.
It’s always good to finish on a high. To finish the season in winter sunshine with a fish like this was special…
Those will be my last salt sessions of 2014 – the last hurrah if you like, in a challenging year, in challenging conditions, to say the least…