Personally I love summer rock fishing, not because I catch more fish but simply because it sums up for me what bass fishing is all about. Traveling light across the rocks usually in a remote spot with nothing but your thoughts and the gannets dive bombing the water. This is always a special experience for me, that sense of excitement in the early morning before the light comes in as you gear up at the back of the van and thoughts on weather, wind, lures and tactics are exchanged. The trek across the fields, optimism is high, a start point is decided and down you drop over stunning cliffs to the waters edge to watch the sun rise as you make your first cast. I wish I could bottle the feeling, I would be a wealthy man and the world a better place.
Tactics for this type of fishing obviously vary to suit conditions, but one simple rule of thumb is keep moving and keep casting to likely looking spots. Remember that bass love cover in which to hide as they lay in ambush of their prey. Off shore reef, underwater boulders, white water around islands etc are all excellent bass holding features. Cast at these and around them, fish hard work your plugs and experiment until you find one the bass want. Remember try to match the hatch so think about what the bass are here for and find a plug that resembles that food source. For example west waterford is loaded with mackrel so you will find in my box lures that match these in size and colour like the tide minnow surf 135. In the late summer really big sand eel show up know as Launce so I make sure to have tide minnow 175 in a sand eel pattern. Don't panic I will post pics of all these lures over the coming weeks and details of how to tackle them.
Optimum conditions are not always easy to come by particularly early in the season, but as the summer progresses things tend to improve. The big issues are water clarity, wind direction, temperature and food supply. Bass are not always at a mark just because you caught them there once, their movements are influenced by all the above factors to mention but a few. So my favourite condition are a moderate southerly/southwesterly breeze, that puts good lift on the water combined with high pressure. These conditions just seem to switch both the bait and therefore the bass on. They also lend themselves to exciting fishing, with decent waves hitting the rocks around you as you cast to feeding bass. My favourite time of day is an ebbing tide early in the morning with the turn coming before the sun gets up, so in the summer that means a really early start. Next we will have a more in depth look at rock fishing, with tips on types of lures, kit and tactics on choosing your mark.
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