As the spring season starts to get into full swing I generally find myself wanting to spend more time fishing the Colne estuary and as it was a reasonably good tide on Saturday night, with a good weather forecast I decided to try Bateman's Tower for a few Bass. Its a good venue for something sizable and silver on the bigger tides particularly this early in the season, when the better fish haven't worked their way up the river.Favourite bait on the river has always been Ragworm but I'd
noticed the previous day when I was peeler crabbing that there were a lot of spent Ragworm on the mud, indicating that they had spawned recently and so I had reason to be optimistic that Ragworm would be the favourite for a fish; despite my confidence in Ragworm however I decided to try a bit of variety and added some Peeler crab and frozen Sandeel to the bait bucket.
noticed the previous day when I was peeler crabbing that there were a lot of spent Ragworm on the mud, indicating that they had spawned recently and so I had reason to be optimistic that Ragworm would be the favourite for a fish; despite my confidence in Ragworm however I decided to try a bit of variety and added some Peeler crab and frozen Sandeel to the bait bucket. I was into fish as soon as I arrived at about 11pm, although not the fish I was looking for ... just small Bass, Pouting and Whiting. I missed a lot of tiddler bites on the 
flood due to the size of the baits (and the hooks) but landed enough to keep my interest up until about an hour before the top of the tide when I leant into a cracking bite on Peeler which resulted in me getting a Bass of about 1 - 2 lbs to the edge of the concrete before it shook off the top hook of the pennel and disappeared. Things went quiet over the top as usual with a couple more tiddlers and then about an hour and a half down I hit into another good bite, this time to Ragworm. Things went much smoother for me this time and my first sizable Bass lay on the concrete - not massive by any means but about 2lbs and certainly nothing to turn your nose up to on the Colne given that the Bass generally run fairly small here. Encouraged by the better Bass I fished on till the water had all but disappeared in the hope of another Bass but as is often the case here that was was it for the better fish.
flood due to the size of the baits (and the hooks) but landed enough to keep my interest up until about an hour before the top of the tide when I leant into a cracking bite on Peeler which resulted in me getting a Bass of about 1 - 2 lbs to the edge of the concrete before it shook off the top hook of the pennel and disappeared. Things went quiet over the top as usual with a couple more tiddlers and then about an hour and a half down I hit into another good bite, this time to Ragworm. Things went much smoother for me this time and my first sizable Bass lay on the concrete - not massive by any means but about 2lbs and certainly nothing to turn your nose up to on the Colne given that the Bass generally run fairly small here. Encouraged by the better Bass I fished on till the water had all but disappeared in the hope of another Bass but as is often the case here that was was it for the better fish.I ended the night at about 3am with about half a dozen each of Pouting and Whiting and a couple of small Bass as well as the better one. I probably could have caught a mass of tiddlers as it was a bite a chuck but I just don't do small hooks and baits when I'm Bass fishing, I really don't see the point quite frankly if you are looking for better fish though my strategy does come a little expensive on bait with me polishing off 1lb of Ragworm, 25 Peelers and 2 packs of Sandeel without trying that hard.
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