It is every beach angler's dream to catch a double figure bass from the shore but to achieve this dream needs dedication and the ability to hold one prime fact in your head "Features"! These are the key to success. To catch your bass first you have to find it. This marine marauder is equally at home slashing into a shoal of whitebait or mackerel as it is grubbing round the rocks for a large juicy peeler crab or running up a river with the flood tide for anything it can find. Just as the freshwater angler looks for features so must you. Although there are, in bass angling circles known hot spots, for every one of these there are a dozen more waiting to be discovered.

Bass feed in three general ways, firstly by holding up in an area where the running tide will carry food to them, such as a headland, secondly, where there is a resident and easily available food supply, such as round the piles of a pier. Thirdly by hunting along the beaches or reefs following a well defined and regular route where they can be intercepted. The pier's barnacle encrusted piles supply a complete food chain with the bass at the top of the heap. Small pouts, scads, mackerel and pollack, along with prawns and hermit crabs provide a permanent larder for the voracious appetite of our quarry, as does the continuous supply of scrap bait and mackerel heads and guts during the summer. When you fish a pier don't whack your bait as far as it will go, drop a big juicy bait down by the piles and wait for the action. At night the bass will often rise to the surface and a floating dead pout over slack water can often provide a spectacular take.

One of the classic bass haunts are the rock and reefs that surround our coast, but these areas are best fished with a friend because of the dangers. Bass will cruise the reefs on the incoming tide searching out peeler crabs and small fish and short-range fishing is the order of the day, in the gullies between the fingers of the reef and they will generally follow the same patrol route quite regularly. However they don't hang about and the taking period is often only a matter of a few minutes before they move on to the next spot.

On my home ground in Sussex is a reef where the bass show on the outer rocks at low tide. Then when you get washed off there, a move back to the shingle is rewarded with fish about three hours later. Then 10 minutes into the ebb a spot half a mile westwards produces fish for about an hour before they move on again, but it takes hard work and an ear to the grapevine to put the information together.

Harbours and river mouths, or indeed any freshwater outfalls are like a magnet to a feeding bass as are deep water headlands, stone jetties, rough scrubby ground on an otherwise clear beach or where a clean beach gives way to rocks. Basically the bass looks for places that will give it shelter from the tide, a good supply of food and enough depth of water to feel secure. You do the same and you're on the way to your first big bass - Good luck -- DK