Bass fishing Exmouth

Exmouth in Devon was the first place I ever went fishing to try and catch a Bass.

I was about 15 years old and my brother had just moved down from the Cotswolds to set up business in Honiton. We were both very keen anglers, having lived on the Isle of Man we had a good grounding in fishing.

Fly fishing was our main stay up to this point and we were both fairly good at this facet of the sport. We hoped to use our skills from hunting trout to good effect when it came to Bass fishing.

The first mark we fished in Exmouth was the old Docks, now a housing estate! We threw out to bottom fishing rigs in to the tidal flow about 3 hrs before high water with complicated rigs on the end baited with rag and squid cocktails. While these baited rigs fished we also started to spin from the same location.

My brother caught a huge Gar fish on a Rapala J11 and we saw the odd Salmon from our location. The ledger rigs caught nothing !

We returned to the same venue many times and blanked on the ground rigs but the plugs would produce the odd Pollock (1lb to 1.5lb) but no Bass.

We also fished the beach off the Esplanade in Exmouth. Ledger rigs caught the odd flounder but the plugs would out do the ground tackle ever time, with school Bass, Pollock and even the odd small Wrasse. Queen’s drive was also tried (the beach off it) with little more success.

The beach from Sandy Bay caravan park produced fish. The best conditions were late summer, falling tide, on shore breeze and over cast. The best method was plug / lure. We would fish a lot here and have some good results with fish in the region of 2 – 3 lbs, not huge but nice.

More recently I was in Exeter on a course and decided to go fishing one evening. I walked the foot of the cliff from Queens Drive to below the monument on the headland. There is a path down from the monument, along a timber walk way to the beach. I fished for about 4 hours, the water was dirty and there was a 3 foot swell running. The tide was rising (last hour) when I got there. I was plugging with some surface poppers and saw two Bass in the front of the waves. I could not manage to induce a take. I kept seeing fish while I was there but couldn’t manage to get a take. I even phoned by brother (he is better than me!) and asked for his opinion. Small lures, big lures, fast retrieves slow retrieves I tried it all but it was not going to happen that day.

Just as a foot note the shore line in the area of Lympstone produces good flounder in the season and is worth the effort. There are also some top class charter boats in Exmouth as well, have a look on the www.englishfishingguide.co.uk.

Here is a link to google maps so you can get a feel for Exmouth.