NOTE: There’s no Audio Clip with this post as the message is very simple: make the first cast of a session, or into an area you’ve just moved into a good one! Trust your instincts, don’t be in a rush to stand directly at the water’s edge, and concentrate fully as you retrieve the lure into a zone you believe could yield a bass on the initial approach to a venue or mark.
Credit where it’s due
“Stay around 4m back from the water’s edge Lee, flick the lure 3m beyond it, and the work the lure into where we can see the fish swirling” was my instructions to my client. “OK Marc”, came the reply, as I stood next to him and observed the rather high and ‘looping’ cast that he made into the head-on breeze.
To his immense credit, he didn’t ‘wind it back in’ as if to start all over again, and instead, he lowered the rod and began to retrieve the Patchinko 100 into precisely where we’d observed a number of fish causing a disturbance, right where a collection of weed clumps met the current in literally only a few centimetres of water.
Explosion!
I’d eyeballed the activity the very second we’d arrived on the mark. “They’re most probably just mullet” I surmised, “but there’s only one way to find out for sure and that’s to ‘stick a lure in among them”, was the brief, as I checked the leader knots and fluorocarbon traces for my clients as they plucked out the requisite lures from their respective collections.
A blink of an eye – that’s all it took for the lure to be utterly annihilated only 20cm from the where the water met the muddy/gravelly bank with an all mighty explosion of froth – as if someone had hurled a breeze block in the drink!
My Books
(Including my NEW RELEASE: The Lure of The Bass – The Revised Edition)
For stock levels, purchasing options (BACS or PayPal) and for more information in regard to the contents of each of my respective publications you can follow the links to my sister website below:
The Lure of The Bass – The Revised Edition
Bass Lure Fishing – A Guide’s Perspective (Volume 1)
Bass Lure Fishing – A Guide’s Perspective (Volume 2)
2025 and 2026 Availability
(2nd Guide Joe and Marc Cowling)
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