Put that sea bass back

by John Bailey

I didn’t like at all what John, my local fishmonger, was telling me. I’d popped in for a bit of help. John, you see, is one of those guys that really lives and breathes fish and doesn’t just sell them. In fact, we call him John the Fish, he’s just that good. So my question? Just how do you catch a grey mullet from a creek on a fly? He laughed. I laughed. “Well if anybody can do it, Johnny, you can,” he said. Kind of him, I guess, but not true!

So far, so good. “If I were you, especially at this time of year, I’d give up on the mullet and get down to some serious sea bass fishing,” John said. He pointed to the crushed ice before him and an impressive array of largish school bass, all a fraction under forty centimetres long. “A guy caught these off the local beach,” John said. Ouch. And I didn’t like that!

I’m not being precious. I’m not being dictatorial. Just let’s have a look, though, at the UK sea bass scene. On the one hand, it’s probably never been as vibrant as it is today – certainly for the fly fisher. More people are fly fishing the surf than ever before. There’s better tackle, there are more flies, there is more knowledge and there are even excellent guides like Fish and Fly’s own Justin Anwyl. Moreover, there are more bass. This is almost certainly to do with the forty or so designated bass nursery zones that are given protection from netting. Virtually every major river system offers sanctuary to the species and the effects are obvious. As Justin himself has said, “A lot of protection has led to a lot of young bass. A big bass shoal can now be hundreds of metres long.”

Global warming has almost certainly helped and warmer weather and warmer water has meant that sea bass are now pushing further north than ever before in living memory. For example, I get up to North Uist most years and the sea bass fishing has gone from non-existent, to mediocre to, at times, fantastic. Nowadays, you can stand in one of the glorious sea pools up there, get a hammering take and not know if it’s a bass or a sea trout on the end. Great stuff. All great news?

Perhaps not. We’ve already heard John the Fish’s tale. Recently, a pal of mine down in the southwest told me of rod and line anglers, making huge killings and selling them off to the local restaurants. There’s a guy I know well in the northeast who is doing the same sort of thing. He’s quite a name up there – and I’d better keep that name quiet here – and he should know better but he’s hitting fish in the nursery zones and he’s hitting them hard. He’s obviously not doing the damage a trawler would but, believe me, those bass catches have helped pay for his new car. Perhaps one guy doing this sort of thing isn’t too bad but if everybody thought they could get a new Volvo out of bass fishing I’m just not sure where we would be then.

Many of those who guide professionally insist on all bass being returned and I, for one, can certainly see why. A bass, you must remember, takes five years to mature. A ten-pounder is a creature, therefore, of true, iconic importance. It’s a fish that will have spent years evading predators and it deserves a better end than a fishmonger’s slab. A lot of us now are taking our fly rods down to the shoreline and, if you do, you’ve just got to be aware of the size limits. Typically, around the UK coast, these are set at around 37 centimetres but this can vary from region to region so check it out.

It would be good to have feedback on this because I guess Fish and Fly readers are as switched on to the serious issues of fly fishing as any group of anglers worldwide. I’ll nail my own colours to the mast straightaway. I believe that if we are disciplined and take just the odd fish for the pot, it is hard to see true sport fishermen creating havoc with stocks. They’re pretty delicious with a chilled Sauvignon Blanc and a treat like this half a dozen times a year seems to me, at least, well justified.