During my last 6 months in the UK, I've become a fairly avid reader of the various UK fishing forums.

During the time I've been reading them, I've heard time and time again stories of the hard fighting (and delicious) silver fish known as the Sea Bass.

Because of that, when a friend Maurice and his brother Stephan who I met through my business Adventure Angler invited me to come and fish for Sea Bass on their boat in Rotterdam, it didn't take me too long to say yes! I've heard that these fish love to hit lures, including surface lures, and I couldn't wait to get out and have a go at them.

On Friday night I flew to Rotterdam where we made some last minute preparations before setting our alarms super early (or was it so early it was still late?!) and went down to the marina. After 30 minutes or so of steaming we were at the spot, and the first casts were made. Because Rotterdam is a built up area, sometimes you are fishing around a lot of man made structure. This was the case with our first spot - fishing under a large concrete platform. It took me a little while to get my eye in to cast under these low platforms but we got there in the end - albeit we did lose one Jackson Pintail along the way, when it exploded after my questionable cast sent it sailing into the concrete :-(

We then went out near some channel markers and switched to soft baits, after which Maurice landed a couple of nice bass in quick succession.

Throughout the day we tried a number of locations and caught fish on a range of different lures including various diving minnows and soft baits. We did put in some casts with the surface sticks also, but on this day they were not behaving on the top water.

After we had finished with the Sea Bass for the day, we started heading back for the dock when Maurice made the call to try for some Snoek Bass (aka Walleye) in the fresh water parts of the river. We saw some nice marks on the sounder, and it didn't take long for Stephan to land a nice one on soft plastic.

On the second day we did much of the same, but an even earlier start. Thankfully though, it was all worth it. Stephen had landed one or two bass first up, but then I got a really nice hit on a soft plastic. The fish put up a solid fight, and I ended up landing the largest bass for the trip - which weighed in at a little over 7 pounds. A good result for my first tour!

After that we thought we'd try a quick jig. Stephan managed to jig two crabs in a row. I have never seen this before, but the jigs were in their mouths - not foul hooked. So was pretty impressive! Then he jigged a Pollock and Maurice and I jigged a junior sized cod each (another first for me), before we decided to return to the bass.

We then fished on and it went quiet for a while, but then towards the end of our day had a great session with most drifts resulting in a hit or two on diving minnows and plenty of nice bass landed included a double header.

All in all it was a really fun trip. Got to meet some new fishing addicts, catch 2 new species, and try out some new gear. Even better, there's been an invite to come and catch the bigger bass that run in September / October - so stay tuned :-)

A range of gear used, including:
Temple Reef Stealth STK 72M
Jigging Master Evolution Titanium 150gr
Yamaga Blanks Blue Sniper 77/3
Stella 5000, Twinpower 5000, Stradic 3000, Ocea Jigger 1500NR

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