Spinning for Bass over sand

　　Bass can be fished for using spinners, lures or plugs over a whole manner of substrates including rock, shingle, broken ground and sand. The basics are the same throughout, so you must learn to consider a few simple things before you cast your tackle into the water. In fact these are real basic requirements that should start to become second nature to the Bass angler…
Water turbidity (water clarity)
Water movement
Surface movement
Cloud/Clear skies
Light
These factors will dictate how you approach your Bass fishing. The primary thought process you need to adopt is the clearer and more calm the conditions the more care you will have to take to present your lure to the Bass. A sound grounding in game fishing will assist you in this lesson, but simply put, well presented lures will catch fish. Badly present lures will scare your quarry away.

To Catch Bass You Need to Look For
Bass like a feature to use to hide in order for them to ambush their prey
Look for areas where bait might collect – really important
Rip currents attract Bass and scour bait from the sea bed
Rotten seaweed is home to many creatures, look for seaweed that is being freshly washed over by the tide, extracting the prey into the water.
Bass will enter very shallow water to hunt
Spin in all depths
If it is safe enter the water and wade, Spin at all angles around you.
Fish in the surf
Look for gullies at low tide and pin point them and fish these areas when the tide has flooded
Look for signs of Bass, fins breaking the surface, surface swirls, bait reacting in a strange manor
Use your senses to the full
Don’t spend hours approaching Bass to find they are Mullet
Enjoy your time and keep a diary.
Bass Like Features
We all like features, we all love a reason to gather in a location. For us it will be a chance to grab a burger or a pint. For Bass it will be a safe place to hide, an area that will bring food to them or hold food in a current. Think like a Bass, why are they there.
Where Will Bass Bait Collect
Look hard at the beach and the coast. If you throw in a bottle and watch it, or see where the wind blows flotsam you will start to see where the Bass food will collect, like us they love mating and feeding. They are not there to mate (they like deep water for that) so they are there to feed.
Rip Currents
Surf beaches have a current called a RIP (If you get stuck in one swim parallel to the shore till you get out of it or RIP!) This is where all that water surfers use to propel their boards rises up the beach then drops back and flows back out to sea. You get channels dug into the sand where rips occur. Look for water darker in colour with a mean disturbed look to it. All jokes apart – they hold fish but are dangerous, take care.
Seaweed a Bass Takeway
Have you ever looked amongst that rotten hulk of seaweed? You will have smelt it, maybe far from the beach. All the flies and other animals have smelt it too. Have a rummage… It’s full of decaying matter, loved by flies, fly maggots and crabs. When that big swell washes that rotten hulk into the water guess who is there sucking that food into their bellies – Bass.
The Shallows
OMG, why do you over look this most important area of water. I know, you get your new rod and reel which all the books say can cast 200+yds and you try and cast it as far as you can, I have done it. The trouble is you are missing chances to catch Bass. I have spent hours underwater in the first ten feet of water and seen Flounder, Mackerel, Mullet, Small Pollock and Bass all hunting! Bass will hunt in the shallows if the food is there. Please fish the shallows hard.
Wading for Bass
It must be safe to get in the water – you know your limitations. Fishing from the water by walking into it will drastically improve your catch rate. You have 360 degrees to cast plus you can follow those gullies fishing into the deeper water. I reckon you can increase your coverage buy over 200% by getting into the water and wading.
Surf Fishing for Bass
The surf scours the substrate pulling out food stuffs for the Bass to come and devour. As a wave reaches the shore and the depth decreases the wave will start to break. The mass of water and the surge caused will literally pull the seabed up and through it up into the water column. This unearths Bass food, hence fishing the surf for Bass is well worth while.
Look, See and Think like a Bass
You have got this far, so this paragraph will make sense. You need to look for signs of Bass, see like Bass, think like Bass and hunt like Bass.
Bass will show signs of themselves on the surface of the water. They leave swirls, shown tails and fins. Polaroid sunglasses will even let you see Bass and the homes they love. Reading the beach and the water will take you to the Bass and you will catch more Bass

General Fishing Information

　　Fishing is the activity of hunting for fish. It is an ancient and worldwide practice that dates back about 10,000 years with various techniques and traditions and it has been transformed by modern technological developments.Fishing continues to be a favorite pastime in the United States, in 2001, 16% of the U.S. population 16 years old and older (34 million anglers) spent an average of 16 days fishing. Freshwater fishing was the most popular type of fishing with over 28 million anglers devoting nearly 467 million angler-days to the sport.
Practice Good Stewardship of our Waterways
You can help to take care of our lakes, rivers, and other waterways so that others may enjoy these areas for years to come by practicing some of the following actions:
Don't Litter... take along a trash bag or other receptacle for collecting your trash so that you can deposit it in the proper trash receptacle. Use proper dumping stations instead of tossing refuse into the water.
Make sure that you use the correct type of bait and fishing gear permitted in that area. There may also be limits on the number, size, and kind of fish that you can keep. Check with your destination ahead of time to see what the local regulations allow. If you use a boat or watercraft when fishing, check to see what kinds of watercraft are allowed at the body of water where you are going to fish.
Pay attention to local procedures and cautions for cleaning your watercraft after you leave the water so that you don't encourage the spread of npn-native species, such as the Zebra Mussel, to the next body of water you may visit with your boat.
Don't fish in areas where it is not permitted. These areas have been declared "off limits" to fishing to protect wildlife, vegetation, or for your safety.
Safety While Fishing
If using a boat to fish, wear your life jacket and make sure that your passengers wear theirs, too !
Use caution when baiting and removing hooks
Do not fish on unauthorized waterways
If operating a houseboat, be careful of carbon monoxide build-up around the boat
Obey the posted speedlimits and wake warnings if using a watercraft when fishing
Bring along extra safety items such as water, flashlights, maps, and a cellphone or radio

Fish Photographed Using Tools to Eat

　　Professional diver Scott Gardner has captured what are believed to be the first images of a wild fish using a tool. The picture above, captured in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, shows a foot-long blackspot tuskfish smashing a clam on a rock until it cracks open, so the fish can gobble up the bivalve inside.
Tool use was once thought to be exclusive to humans, and was considered a mark of our superior intelligent and bulging brains. In recent decades, though, more and more animals have shown an ability to work with tools and objects.

Elephants pick up branches with their trunk to swat flies and scratch themselves, a laboratory crow improvised a hooked tool from a wire to extract an insect and primates use sharpened sticks as spears, rocks to smash nuts and sticks to poke into ant nests.
Tool use in fish, however, is much more rare, and there’s never been any photo or video evidence to prove it — until now. “The pictures provide fantastic proof of these intelligent fish at work using tools to access prey that they would otherwise miss out on,” said Culum Brown of Macquarie University in Sydney in a press release.
“It is apparent that this particular individual does this on a regular basis judging by the broken shells scattered around the anvil,” he said in the release.
What specifically constitutes tool use is a controversial topic. Is a seagull using a tool when it drops a shellfish on a rock? How about when archerfish spray a jet of water to knock prey off of twigs? There’s also the tricky problem of the ocean having all that watery stuff, and fish having no limbs.
For Brown, though, the blackspot tuskfish counts. “We really need to spend more time filming underwater to find out just how common tool use is in marine fish,” he said in the release. “It really is the final frontier down there.”

Fish and Boat is the Bible of the North

　　NQ Fish and Boat has been the Bible for anglers and small boat enthusiasts in the North of Australia for more than 25 years.
It has actively promoted a sensible approach to the country's most popular recreational activity supporting bag and size limits and closed seasons where it is known to promote resurgence of fish stock.

The newspaper also acts as a tool for tourism by promoting the theme that the anglers in the North catch "fish as big as people".
The paper is a lively, informative but light-hearted look at fishing and fishing experiences - most of it contributed from its wide readership.
Regular readers would be familiar with the Fish and Boat crew.
Published on the first weekend of every month, Fish and Boat is a great - and educational - read.
Subscribe, save money and be sure of getting your copy on time every month.
Subscribe online and save even more