A turn up for the books as the bass play ball in January!

                                          A MARK IN THE STRAITS 23/1/2012

As you can see, we had a very nice surprise today on our trip out. The venue chosen was a mark in the straits which I have fished a few times in summer with good success and although now being winter, I thought it was definitely worth a shot. Myself, Ed and Jon headed off to fish the tide up from mid-water. Using standard 2-hook flapper rigs baited with lug and rag I waded out as far as possible before launching a bait onto the clean ground at range. Walking back to my tripod I just had a feeling that it was going to be a good session and within 15 minutes a little tap on my rod caught my attention. As the bite developed I thought it could be a tiny pin whiting but then from nowhere the tip slammed down and before I had time to strike it was gone. Hooks re-baited I repeated the procedure again and stood waiting, only this time with my hands poised over the rod handle. Tap....... tap........ tap......... then BANG, wasn't missing it a second time though and striking almost immediately the fish was on. Now at this point there was only one fish I had thought it would be, a codling, so when the silver flanks and spiny dorsal fin of a bass (species 10) appeared on the surface my face lit up. Definitely a turn up for the books and as it was just legal at 37cm it was going home for tea! It wasn't long before Ed had a nice bite and eagerly anticipating seeing a bass show in the surf, he was thoroughly disappointed when out popped a whiting. His face told a story :) Soon after I was in again, this time a double-header of a whiting and another bass although this one was undersized and was released. Then Jon managed to get in on the action landing his first fish of the night, a whiting before then catching a small bass which was released. Nevertheless he was deighted as you can see from his cheshire grin (picture top right). Getting close to high tide we made a decision to have a few more casts before leaving and luckily for me this resulted in another two bass, one of them being just in size. Unfortunately for Ed though his last cast would see him miss an absolute clanger of a bite, just not his day. We ended the night with a total of 5 bass and 4 whiting which is more than we could have asked for in just a short session. Will definitely be returning soon for another bash!

Hope you enjoyed the read.  Tight Lines, Ross!