2015 was a funny year, I started slow and focused my time on my work. I didn’t want to put as much time into night sessions as I did the  year before as it was just to grueling and planned to get maximum usage out of the boat in the day time instead to hopefully get me my fishing fix.

My season started mid April on the bass and this was also the time we got out for our first proper session in the boat resulting in a boat PB Pollock and a cheeky Cod for Tim. I didn’t hit the fishing as hard as normal and my mates started to get out with good results especially after dark. For me it just never really got going, I dropped numerous good fish over the sessions I did do and never really had anything to show for my efforts. I tried to just fish the perfect tides or what I thought where the perfect tides at least but it really did show to me that you can’t beat good old fashioned time on the water.

My first good fish of the year taken at night

May and June where poor for me and I really should have put the time in early on as the fishing slowly died down. The boat was good fun though and we where getting in the flow and learning more each session. We managed to find some inshore reefs and started having plenty of fun with surface lures and the bass.

Nice bass taken ott on a lucky craft sammy 100 in around 30ft of water

By July things where good, we nailed a new PB Pollock for the boat and managed to pull some nice bass from a small underwater feature. They must have been sitting on the front edge of it in the current. Then it was time for the Cornish lure festival. Me and Tim made a good plan and went in hitting it hard. We had mixed results but it came good in the end as we got lucky with a hectic session that resulted in me landing a 70cm fish to take second place. We had an awesome time and this just encouraged us to hopefully try and do another comp by the end of the year.

70cm bass taken in some shallow surf fishing a white waveworm with an added paddle tail on a straight retrieve at night. A proper hectic nights fishing but the bigger fish moved in after the little ones…

August is usually the quietest month for me as we often end up with super settled weather and we often see an influx of baitfish which normally makes the bass movements really hard to follow. This is certainly where the boat came in trumps. It allows you to cover more ground and often the fish are sitting on the edges of the reefs etc… With glossy flat seas we really did have some fun on the surface. Normally just drifting around 100 yards from the shore. Get a good wind direction and it’ll set you up for a lovely drift letting you cover some serious ground. This really did open up my eyes to fishing surface lures in deep water. Sometimes we would be in over 5 metres of water and happily nailing fish OTT. In reality there’s probably not one inch of our coastline I wouldn’t be confident fishing a surface lure over from the shore nowadays…

September was where I had a bad spell, broken car and broken boat resulted in no time or way of fishing… typical just as things where going to get good!

October came good though and even though I had no boat. Me and Mark got out on his for a few sessions resulting in a new pollock PB for me and a lovely 70cm bass for Mark OTT. I had a car again and hit the shore in anger to try and get some good results but it was tough going and certainly didn’t go to plan but we still nailed a load of fish and had fun.

79cm Pollock taken just a couple hundred yards from the shore on a 25gm Fiiish minnow. If you hit the right spot with your cast by the time you tightened up you had a fish on the end. Big shoal sat right behind a feature in the current waiting to ambush its prey.

November came and Me and Tim had planned to hit the Jersey bass festival. Excited wasn’t the word! I’ve always wanted to see Jersey and experience the fishing. We knew it would be completely different from home and we looked forward to the challenge. Carl and Mick gave us a few tips and we where off on another adventure. We didn’t manage any monsters though we did have a couple chances it just didn’t work out. We had a wicked time though and had pretty consistent action throughout to keep us on our toes and our spirits high. We met a great bunch of lads over there too and hopefully we’ll hit it up again this year. I managed to sneakily take 1st place in the visitors which I was over the moon with.

Best bass of the weekend for me taken on a white 4.5inch xlayer fished sink and draw on a 10gm Xorus weedless jig head.

I kept trying from the shore when conditions suited into December but never mananged any good fish. I was nailing a fair few fish to around 50cm ott right up to December but after that the weather took over and conditions became to difficult with the winter storms.

Biggest regret is not having the availability of the boat from Sept to Dec! The time when I thought we would have had the best success! But the weather wasn’t suitable either and it’s always a problem come winter. Something we always have to overcome.

So… It was certainly an interesting year, my local fishing results where poor though the numbers where probably still up there. I gave up recording my results way back in May/June when I was on 35 from memory and nothing much size wise to show for my efforts… I don’t think we ever blanked on the bass from the boat apart from the odd failed mission like the one we got caught in the storm within 5 minutes… that was one hell of an experience and one I probably don’t want to ever experience again. We where chased by the storm back to port in torrential rain with thunder and lightening coming down behind us!

The boat was a completely new learning experience and we really enjoyed it. We used Navionics to find under water features like rocks/features and that on occasion produced results as one would expect but I certainly feel we need a fish finder to really see what are fishing over and to get a better idea of whats really under the water. By far the most fun was just fishing on the surface on hot sunny days. Fishing bits of reef up to a few hundred yards off the shore and seeing lots of action. We never saw any bird activity which was disappointing…

I did do some filming at times last year and put together this little video of some of the highlights. Hopefully some of you will enjoy it. There’s also a few clips from previous years I just threw in there.

What 2016 will bring I have no idea, I have a nicer boat now and will be looking at getting a fish finder to help me see and understand whats under the water.

I plan to do a lot more shore fishing than last year and will probably spend most of my time fishing the evenings on the surface where possible. A double off the top is still the target and this will be most enjoyable for me in general. I doubt I’ll be able to focus much of my time at night due to work commitments.

But I am planning on getting over to Ireland for the bass comp this year and hopefully returning to Jersey once again. If I’m lucky as well maybe a fishing holiday abroad would be a nice break but we’ll have to see on that one…

Tightlines to everyone for the coming season, I should be out fishing now trying to get a March bass but unfortunately the cars broken again so I’m sat inside writing this instead. I’ll hopefully get out soon to see if I can kick start this season it’s normally April for me when it get’s going…