Saturday was booked into my diary as the South Devon Fish In, organised by Eddie and Phil members from The Bass Anglers Sport Fishing Society. They organise a little get together each year down in a lovely bit of South Devon that happens to be around some of my favourite fishing grounds…

I made plans during the week to check out and see how a few marks where fishing near by, with offshore winds due all week I guessed the fishing wasn’t going to be easy for them.

Thursday saw four of us hit a mark, I had an idea of some new ground I wanted to check out and I split off from the other three. It was flat calm and crystal clear. Topwaters where to be the order of the evening with the idea of fishing into the darkness as the tide pushed. It took me a while to get my stuff together but when I did and finally made my way over to the reef I had been wanting to fish there was plenty of action. Garfish where swirling at the Skimmer and and good Pollock came flying out the water, we connected but the fish instantly went into the reef leaving me with a tug of war with the weed below. I had a few smaller splashy hits that could well have been schoolies but as the light started to fade I decided to make my way back to the others to see how they where getting on.

Tim had took a couple smaller fish OTT too and Dean had lost a better fish that he saw nail his Pathinko at range. Things looked good for the darkness but it just never came together and the place seemingly seemed devoid after the light went down but we only gave it an hour…

Me and Dean returned the next evening, Dean saw some better fish follow his Patch to his feet and I managed a few Schoolies mostly taken at range just out the back of the submerged rocks all on the Skimmer again. I am falling a little bit for the IMA Skimmer i’m not going to lie it casts well and seems to work in most conditions, slow and smooth or a bit quicker and more splashy when there’s a bit of chop.

Things looked good for Saturday when we had planned to meet up with the B.A.S.S gang. Unfortunately I couldn’t get there early and so me and Dean headed back to the mark mid morning with the intention of trying to find them later when they may have returned from there expedition.

The morning carried on from where we left off the night before but this time there was clearly bass around. every know and again small patches of bass would break the surface slashing away at small bait balls. Dean got his timing right and smashed his Z-claw to the horizon and amongst the action as it got within casting distance. It wasn’t long before he had a schoolie on the rocks, for some reason I had one of those moment where your casting just goes to pot and couldn’t get the lure out there far enough and in the action. They kept coming and going all over the shop but I couldn’t buy a bite.

I wanted to head back to the reef that I had fished a couple nights ago so we moved, first cast and garfish where swirling at the lure again… there was a metre wide, deep gully running parallel to the shore and I had visions of seeing a bass come flying up from the depths to nail the lure. Sure enough at that exact moment a shoal of schoolies came from no where darting towards the lure, a great sight to see in the crystal water as there fins shine blue in the sun…

With this I took a step back from the waters edge and cast along the gulley and out the end into a sandy opening. Working the lure back close to the rocks and into the gully it got nailed but by a pretty small fish. I didn’t rush the fight on purpose as I was hoping the shoal may follow the fish in and they did, just great see in the clear water and there was a few better size fish in amongst them which gave me some hope.

I carried on and got plenty of action dropping a couple fish and a few missed takes before I hooked a better one. Luckily this one didn’t slip the hooks and I was happy to land a plump 50cm probably around 3lb.

Dean had already started wrassing and took a healthy fish, the action started to slow on the bass and we where getting pushed off the reef so we decided to look for some new wrasse ground.

We had a cracking day in the sun and crystal clear water watching wrasse nail our lures, we covered a pretty big stretch of coastline climbing our way along only to get sabotaged by a coasteering group that got dropped off in ribs. That seemed to kill the wrassing but a change of tactic got a bit more interest as I fished a Black minnow 12o close to the bottom sink and draw. Most of the fish I took that day including the best one fell to the Seaspin Bikoa in Junebug. I really like a dark blue colour for wrasse and it pad off. Most of the fish where small but we still had fun in the sun.

We met up with the B.A.S.S lot later in the campsite and they very kindly offered us to join them for curry around there fire. It was a perfect way to end lovely day in the sun! Thanks to Eddie and Phil for organising it and supplying us with curry and beer, was a pleasure to meet all there. I couldn’t join them on the Sunday but hopefully they managed to find some bass!