Despite my lack of reports recently, the shore fishing sessions have still been going ahead and what a month July has turned out to be!

It's been all about the Bass - in fact, I can’t ever remember another month when the Bass fishing has been so good.

The recent string of adventures kicked off with an overnight session on the south Devon coast near the mouth of the Yealm. Gary & I met up with Ben and a couple of his mates at the mark and what started off as ‘one of those days’ soon developed into a session and a half. I won’t steal Gary’s thunder here, however, as I understand he will be covering this on his brand new blog in the near future.

The next session saw 5 of us journey up to Putsborough beach, North Devon, hoping to pick up a few Bass in the surf. The overnight session exceeded all expectations with the Bass tally alone reaching 20+ fish – all in all not bad for a night’s work! Although all the bass caught were very small schoolies, the constant flow of fish was more than enough to keep us occupied throughout the 10pm – 3am fishing session. Well worth the 2hr journey up from Plymouth. Congratulations must go to Ivan for the most fish (yet again!?!) and thanks to Jay for driving!

The plan for the following weekend was to meet up with Gary and fish somewhere close to Dartmouth (he and his other half were down for the weekend).

Unfortunately, though, his plan to bugger off fishing whilst down there wasn’t looked upon too favourably by Gary’s better half, so a last minute change of plan was necessary. With such a good show of Bass at Putsborough the previous week, 3 of us decided to return there for the night session. Again, another cracking session was had with the catch tally (all Bass apart from Jay’s rogue doggie!) reaching 20+ between just 3 of us this time.

I tell you, the bass were everywhere, and by that I mean everywhere - I even found one stranded on the beach! Fortunately, he was still alive but just trapped in a little puddle by the quickly receding tide. Needless to say he was scooped up Bear Grylls style and returned to a much larger puddle!

All the Putsborough Bass fell to lug, either on 2 hook flappers (favoured by jay and Ivan) or clipped down Pulleys (a personal favourite of mine.)

My final outing for July saw me meet up with the usual suspects for another overnight session closer to home on the south Devon coast. We fished through darkness (all of the flood and most of the ebb) near Seasons Point again.

Ivan continued to prove the Bass were still there by catching 5 of the buggers by daybreak whilst Jay, Jamie and I sat and watched in amazement. None of us had had a single bite during that time - I don't know why that was the case, although the next picture might explain it!

Not to self: Never go on the p*ss the evening before an all-nighter.

We were all on the same bait (lug) and Jay fished an identical flapper to Ivan. I persevered with the Pulleys but thought more and more about switching with each Bass that Ivan caught! Come daybreak though, and the last few hours of the ebb, things got a bit more interesting for all of us. Just as the first rays of sunlight hit the rocks behind us, I got slammed by something (hard enough to send my rod and tripod crashing to the ground) although I couldn’t manage a hook up. Shortly after, it all came good though with a reasonable schoolie and no blank.

Jay followed suit moments after with a non-blanking Bass for him too. He soon followed this up with yet another and then a decent Ballan in the sunlight to make 3 fish. Total fish caught: 8 Bass, a Pouting and a Ballan. Not our best session by any means, but we had a great night out, some comfortable fishing and, hell, 8 Bass...

Again, all fish went to Lugworm, despite us trying a cornucopia of baits throughout the night. At one point I even had 3 whole peelers whipped onto a running ledger but couldn’t even tempt a dog with it! Still, that’s fishing for you I guess.

All in all, July’s results have left me feeling pretty upbeat and have given me positive vibes for August, but as ever we will just have to see how it goes. In theory, the fishing should improve further and the Bass should be getting bigger, so here’s hoping for another bumper month. Whether the 'summer weather' will be good enough for us to get out and fish for them is a different matter altogether – but I guess some aspects of sea angling have to be left to chance!

Until next time, tight lines to you all!