Bass-revisited

[Leon Roskilly]

We also find that certain marks produce certain sizes of fish, so you need to find the big fish marks.

 

After leaving the nursery areas bass tend to be nomadic for a while, but then they eventually settle down, becoming local to a particular area (apart from spawning migrations, after which they return to 'home ground').

 

They also shoal for life, so you are likely to find bass of a similar size living around a particular mark.

 

As the years go by, the size of the shoal decreases as nets and predators take their toll, and large bass now have the reputation for being solitary (older bass anglers will tell you that if you caught a big bass, it was important to get the bait back out there amongst his shoal mates - nowadays a big bass is more likely to be a sole survivor).

 

But there are places where a shoal of larger fish has been fortunate in finding a place where they are relatively undisturbed.

 

Find those fish, catch them and tag them, and you'll find that they will grow bigger as the years go by.

 

Catch them and take them home, or tell someone about them, and you'll join that band of anglers that say "there used to be some big bass there years ago, but all we ever seem to get these days is the smaller fish".

Edited September 13, 2007 by Leon Roskilly

[cannonfodder]

Had another good day at eastbourne, it was a reasonably calm day so thought i might be in with a chance of a fish or 2.

 

Once the mackerel shoals started moving through i hooked up to a couple and used the smallest one as bait, though unfortunatley i didnt get one take on this, does anyone know what kind of size joey mackerel i should be using as live bait?

 

Nothing on lures either apart from mackerel so i switched over to live floated prawns and picked up 2 nice schoolie bass, one for tea!

 

Just goes to show you should always be prepared and ALWAYS have some live bait to hand, i could only find 8 decent prawns this morning in the kelp but boy am i glad i slogged along those rocks for those!

 

Tight lines

 

 

you can use any size dude, just remove the backbone to create a flapper, even a 3lb bass will quite happily take a whole mackerel. the best bait i used is live sand ell, with just a 1oz lead to take it down but it may be hard to keep them alive with the limited space on a kayak.

 

insert the knife just before the dorsal fin either side of the back bone, remove it and hoook it up with a set of 6o's pennel rig.

[christian kimber]

Thanks for your advice it helps to steer me in the right direction.

 

I could not get to beachy head today as tide up at 1300ish and can only fish the low tide marks there i believe.

 

Fished the rock arm for awhile with plugs and lures, one pick up i think from a mackerel and a few follows of what could have been bass though hard for me to tell as left polarised sunnies at home.

 

Moved from there to another rock mark a point and had a couple of follows of a definate bass with a red and white abu plug but no pick ups,wish i had brought sum live baits but there you go!!!

 

Thanks again for advice.

[Toerag]

the best bait i used is live sand ell, with just a 1oz lead to take it down but it may be hard to keep them alive with the limited space on a kayak.

 

Get one of those flow-troll bait containers or a traditional elliptical courge to tow behind the yak, that should work perfectly.

[Toerag]

As an update on my earlier post about the size of bait a bass will take - I had a 50cm (~3lb) bass on a 30cm live mackerel on friday in the boat.

[christian kimber]

As an update on my earlier post about the size of bait a bass will take - I had a 50cm (~3lb) bass on a 30cm live mackerel on friday in the boat.

 

Thats cool as i am going to try some macky head and guts off the rocks at eastbourne and see if that improves the size of bass.

 

Had 2 last nite on tiny brown prawns,one very small schoolie and one of maybe 2 pounds that nearly pulled the rod in! thank god i had the bait runner on!