I reckon that’s the fastest I’ve seen a bass hit a lure, first one on a baitcasting setup as well

Bear with me here. Back in March 2008 I was photographing fishing for golden dorado out in Argentina, and one fish in particular has stuck with me ever since. I was out there as a photographer, but because there were two of us to a (guided) boat, I got the chance to fling a few lures around. La Zona isn’t a pretty place to take photographs, but it’s famous for massive golden dorado…………

Just occasionally your lure goes exactly where you mean to land it. Our guide told me to put my popper way out right behind a specific rock, and to this day I am convinced that the golden dorado I then hooked had to have either had the fastest reactions ever, or else it had kinda tracked my lure about to land. Literally the split-second my popper landed, this ugly bruiser of a golden dorado smashed it. They are usually such pretty fish, but this 43lb donkey was gnarled and ugly and it gave me one hell of a scrap.

How quickly can fish hit lures when they hit the water?

I was out bass fishing over the weekend and I was determined to fish with a baitcasting setup I am gently starting to play around with. One of the Pure Fishing lads came to see me the other day and we went out fishing with some baitcasting gear. He wanted me to have a look at it and see if there might be any sort of potential for some of the lure fishing I do. It’s very new to me to fish like this, indeed my first few casts with a baitcasting reel were hooked straight left into some trees, but I got to practise a bit and I was determined to take the gear out fishing for myself and see what it felt like. I am obviously more than happy with a spinning outfit, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. You know how I like messing around with gear.

Early morning and it was flat calm, very quiet, and there were mullet moving around all over the place. My first few (baitcasting) casts went out roughly where I intended, and on about my fifth cast into some very shallow water, the water literally exploded the split-second my 5g cheb-rigged 3.2’’ Nikko Craw creature bait hit the water (such an awesome lure). I don’t mean one second later, I mean THE split-second the lure hit the surface of the water. Obviously I struck the moment this happened and straight away there was a load of splashing on the surface because the bass couldn’t really do much in such shallow water.

And because this baitcasting gear is so new to me and this was the first fish I had hooked on it, I wasn’t 100% ready. I set the hook just fine, or rather I think the bass hit the lure so fast and so hard it had hooked itself, but everything felt a touch unstable because I had literally just turned the reel handle to trip the spool back into gear and my hands weren’t set quite right on the rod. I quickly adjusted things and within a few seconds I had a bass around the 6lbs mark on the bladderwrack in front of me. Ben had heard the commotion of the bass thrashing around on the surface and came over, so I asked him if he would mind holding my bass for a few photos before we slipped her back.

A rather lovely start to a rather lovely morning here in Cornwall, but how did this bass hit my lure so quickly? Did I by mistake land the Nikko Craw literally on its head and the bass was in hunting mode and pure instinct caused it to kill it? I can’t believe that a bass is tracking a lure through the air, but that was the feeling that big golden dorado gave me when it hit my popper so quickly. I know it sounds entirely implausible, but whatever the case it’s amazing to see such fast reactions from these amazing predators.

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