Birthday bass bonanza!

I became a year older on Friday, so in order to celebrate I dragged myself out of bed at 4.45am and headed out to fish! First mission was to extract myself from the house without waking my wife and kids! Although it was my birthday they didn't want to celebrate at 5am. My next mission was to try to catch 14 bass to take me to my 2012 century! A short drive later I was at the mark with my bass gear and my LRF gear. There were a couple of other anglers there but according to them it was "very quiet" and only one of them had caught a bass and that was the evening before. Unperturbed by their bleak reports I rigged up my new found lure par excellence, a Lunker City Ribster in Arkansas Shiner, on a 10.5g #2/0 AGM Football jighead. The tide was high and I began working the lure around the reef, over the shelves and little gulleys that are so apparent at low tide. The technique employed was pretty straight forward, cast out, allow the lure to sink to about 8ft then with a slow retrieve add some jigs upwards and allow to fall again. Occasionally I would add a slow straight retrieve with no twitches. After about 15 minutes the lure was totally smashed by a bass who pretty much hooked itself then preceded to tear about in the swell. It felt a good fish and put a lovely curve in my Major Craft Crostage rod! It was still landed pretty quickly and measured 44cm on The Lure Forum ruler. It was a nice looking fish too with quite a bronze back and it had obviously been feeding well as it was pretty chunky!

Off the mark.

The fish was released and a few casts later I had another bass nail the Ribster. It was a smaller fish at around 40cm but still gave a good account of itself before it was landed and released. I had a couple more before the action slowed down a bit but one thing was for sure, the bass love Ribsters above everything else. A couple of fishermen were fishing near me using redgills, ragworm, live shrimp and little plugs but they were not catching anything! Over the next few hours the Ribster accounted for a further 7 bass meaning that I was only 3 fish away from catching my 100th bass of 2012. Meanwhile a few other "anglers" had turned up but they were all blanking. Needless to say I was getting a few jealous looks!

Ribster claims another victim.

The tide had now dropped quite a lot which allowed me to get out onto the reef and also gave me access to deeper water close in . I changed tactics at this point and went with the LRF gear. A small pink Isome was mounted on a 1.8g #10 Decoy Rocket jighead and cast into the flow and gently twitched back towards me. After a few casts I had a knock and reeled in to find my Isome missing. I rigged another one cast again to the same spot and it was nailed on the drop! The lighter gear really lets you enjoy the small bass and after a bit of tearing around another one was landed, photographed and released. Brilliant!

Great fun on the LRF setup.

I carried on and hooked and landed another before I caught the magic no. 14! My 100th Bass this year was duly landed and photographed before being released. 

Bass #100 of 2012. The perfect birthday present!

I called it a day at that point and managed to get back to the house by 1pm. It was a great session and brilliant to reach 100 bass on my birthday. It didn't take long either which meant I was able to spend the afternoon playing with my kids whilst sampling some of my birthday whiskey! I wish it was my birthday every day! 

Tight lines, Schogsky.