Martyn White | Thursday, 13 November 2025
I’m taking a break from the fly of the week this week, because I’ve been out at the Suzuki in Tokyo bay. The gizzard shad are running and the big bass are taking advantage of the food supply, allegedly..
As is pretty much the norm, Hawaiian Dave and I met at teatime, got ready and then hooked up with captain by Masuda-san. Although I like going lighter and picking a 6 weight for seabass here, at this time of year the 10wts and 9-10” flies are in the boat in the hope of a bigger fish around the schools of shad. The first night we went out we only managed a couple of average sized fish each, it was very slow, but weirdly there were a huge number of babies around, you’d frequently see them swimming along side the big flies when we were fishing around lights- hundreds of them! Masuda reckons everything is off schedule this year but the big bait, although late is here.
So after a slow first night, we were hoping for more action the following week. It was a bit windier, the tide was better and the shad run is now in full swing. We didn’t get much more action, but we did get a couple of good ones pushing 70cm. We bounced a couple of bigger fish on 9” jerk changers too, the problem seemed to be they were hitting on the pause which was making it hard to get the single hook in them, or maybe they were even missing the hook altogether, even the biggest bass don’t have a mouth like a big pike or musky. A switch to a normal gamechanger with 2 hooks made the difference. As the night continued the wind got a bit much so we mover inshore and fished more standard patterns (I predictably went for a rubber candy) around the lights which is usually a bit of a numbers game with cricket scores of 18–24-inch fish being the norm. Not so for us, just a few of them and loads of the babies that we struggled to avoid. It’s odd but at least the volume of small fish bodes well for future seasons. Especially as even the couple of “normal” fish we picked up were in very good condition.
It's hard to tell if the fishery is going through another large change or we’re just having a weird year, but it’s not like it was 10 years ago. Numbers of bass are going down, the big shad eaters weren’t really a viable target until maybe 6 years ago but now they’re the main thing before they all go to spawn in December. At the same time the bream/snapper population in the inshore waters around the bay is increasing and opening up a new avenue. Interesting times if nothing else.