SO WE have had a little rain again this week and in general the weather has been a little more dynamic with changeable conditions throughout the day.
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Generally early mornings have been very good and quite calm, creating glassy conditions for the first few hours after sunrise before a light to moderate wind coming most of the time from the northeast picks up and makes things a little more difficult.
A few days this past week we have had storms roll through with a little thunder and lightning, before conditions have gone calm again.
Getting up early and fishing with 40-70mm surface lures like the Bassday sugapen or Saku snoop pop can be great fun with bream and whiting getting in on the act.
I have found the top half of the tide to be the most reliable.
Bream will get into some surprisingly skinny water and provided you use a little stealth and cast a long way away from yourself they will readily chase after a surface lure.
In fact it can be common to have them follow and fight with each other trying to be the first to seize your offering.
In such shallow water they fight great on the light gear required to cast the tiny lures.
A 7ft rod, 1000 size reel, and some light thin braid around 6lb will do the job nicely, as long as the drag is smooth and the outfit is light enough to cast all day you will have a ball watching the surface strikes coming in thick and fast.
Up at the top of the catchment the water is flowing again and the bass are moving all the time. Keeping mobile and travelling to new areas is the way to go to find out where the bulk of the fish are at the moment.
With the air and water warming up insect activity has increased and now some of the bass are looking upwards for a feed.
Just the other day I had a bass eat a plastic literally as it hit the water right under an overhanging branch, this tells me that bass was looking at the tree branch waiting for the slightest movement.
The instant the lure touched the water the fish was all over it like it was waiting for the starter’s gun, boom!
And I was on!
Even though it was midday that fish would most likely have hit a surface presentation.
For the ultimate in realism, try landing in the tree then hopping the lure onto the water – surely that would be too much temptation for even the fussiest bass.
