This blog post is intended to help the beginner understand where to start exploring the shore with lures.

The bass is the only saltwater game fish commonly caught from the shore around the UK coast. A world class, beautiful and hard fighting game fish that we can fish for at no cost.

The main message of this blog post is, don't look for the bass, look for areas where their food is.

What bass eat: Bass are opportunistic and will eat a range of live and dead species from crabs, prawns, worms, fish, squid and cuttlefish.

Bass can be caught from the beach, pier, marina, rocks, estuary and tidal rivers. When bass are in range of the shore fisherman, bass are only thinking about eating, so if you can work out where the food is then you’ll find bass. To know where the food is you'll need to understand a little about tides and their impact on sea life.

Beach: Fish the beach on an incoming tide as bass will be pursuing fish, crabs and prawns on the rising tide. Visit the beach at low tide to search out structure that may hold bait, you'll find that what at first glance may look featureless, will in fact have dips and channels that will be a magnet in an otherwise flat landscape. Read about fishing rip currents from the beach.

Pier & Marina: The advantage of fishing from or next to a pier/mania is that you're probably at the best bait holding location in the area. So now you need to explore and find where most of the bait is holding. Don't stay in one place, move around and fish different areas that look like they hold bait or where fast tidal flow gives bass an advantage over fry.

Rocks: When fishing from the rocks you're mostly dependent on bait moving in on an incoming tide. Look for gullies that bass will travel up and points jutting out into the sea.

Estuary: A very diverse location with many different habitats. Once again the most important thing is to find the bait that bass will be hunting for. Estuaries with small mouths have the added advantage that you have the chance to intercept bass moving into the estuary on the incoming tide and leaving on the outgoing tide.

Tidal Rivers: A good place to start lure fishing for bass as you can be sure that almost every bass entering the river on a rising tide and leaving on an ebbing tide will swim by where you’re fishing.

Bass fishing from the shore can be dangerous so please pay attention to the tide so you don't get cut off. If you're wading with chest waders then a belt is a must and a life jacket is smart.