This is lifted straight from the BASS blog (here). See you there - please don’t sit around complaining about how unfair this all is. Do something. Join together and voice your anger tomorrow morning in Cornwall. All details are below.

"New bass regulations fail to properly protect the bass stocks, prevent anglers from keeping any bass they catch for 6 months a year, yet allow commercial gill netters to continue to catch bass AND with an increased monthly limit.

If you want to express your anger and demand a fair deal for bass and anglers, then the demonstration on the 9th April in Camborne is the place to be. The protest is aimed at the DEFRA minister responsible for our fisheries; the person who claimed the deal he helped secure (which ignored the scientific advice on necessary bass landing reductions) was a great deal for commercial fishermen – he wasn’t wrong!

We meet at Rosewarne car park Camborne  (TR14 8BE) at 10 am and march to local constituency office of George Eustice MP, the Fisheries Minister. The media will be there. Wearing you fishing attire and bringing rods is encouraged to add impact – but is far from essential. Banners will also help (but messages contained on them should be polite!) Suggestions for placards include: “A FAIR deal for Bass and Anglers”; “Priority for hook and line fishing”; “Bass are a PUBLIC resource” etc.

It doesn’t matter at all whether you belong to the Cornish Federation of Sea Anglers (the protest organisers), nor does it make a difference if you are from Cornwall or from further afield (I for one plan to travel with others from Bristol). All that matters is you have a wish to express your displeasure at the current measures. So for the sake of our future bass angling and our bass please try and add to the ranks and join us.

The reason why usually apathetic anglers have finally become so enraged is brilliantly explained by long-time angling campaigner and BASS member Leon Roskilly who has kindly allowed me to reproduce his thoughts in the brief article below. Leon is the most reasonable, mild mannered, non-radical of men. When the likes of Leon have finally had enough however, you just know things have really gone too far:

How did DEFRA get it so wrong on Recreational Sea Angling?

Even after years of talking to anglers, a number of reports all confirming that far more people go sea fishing than anyone ever expected and even more surprising, having seen the evidence showing the value of sea angling to the economy, the improved health and wellbeing of those who go sea angling, and the number of jobs dependent on the recreational sea angling sector, DEFRA appear not to believe that sea angling has much to do with what they really do.

A succession of DEFRA ministers responsible for fisheries have grasped the political importance of the angling lobby and some have made efforts to have angling recognised within DEFRA fisheries, but only to the extent of keeping the lid on and maintaining the status quo whilst DEFRA Fisheries goes about its core business of dealing with commercial fisheries.

Promises of reviews, drawn out whilst evidence is gathered and finally reports left on shelves to gather dust. Assurances given and forgotten. Priorities changed as administrations changed and assigned officials moved on to be replaced by someone with no real knowledge of the sector. The sky didn’t fall in on anyone’s career. It seemed that anglers could sometimes be a noisy lot, full of bark but no bite. In the wheeling and dealings of the December Council of Ministers, the minister must have felt comfortable agreeing to a zero bag limit for recreational bass fishers. After all catch and release was widely practised anyway. George “Anglers are always moaning” Eustace winning agreement to allow C&R angling to continue, no doubt expected praise for winning such a concession for anglers.

Perhaps if the moratorium on catching bass had been applied to everyone, they may have gotten away with it. But they went on to not only excuse ‘low impact’ fixed gill-netters from 4 months of the moratorium, when their catches are highest in the period, but also increased their catch limits by a third. In effect they were telling anglers to put back any critically endangered bass that they might catch so that they can be netted and sold.

There always was an anger within angling that stocks were being fished down for commercial gain, moving first one species then another into the need for restrictive management measures whilst scarcity spoiled the angling experience, threatening not only anglers’ enjoyment, but those many livelihoods dependent upon the anglers’ spend.

But I’ve never experienced such anger as I see now.

A healthy stock that was of no commercial interest until the chefs discovered ‘sea bass’ and the netsmen went all out to fulfil demand, expanding the market until they exceeded the ability of the slow-growing and late maturing species to keep pace. A healthy stock that was a mainstay of recreational sea angling and the many jobs that sea angling supports commercially fished beyond its natural limits. And then anglers were told that they must return any they catch, not for any real conservation benefit, but so that netters can fish an increased catch limit.

For the first time in my experience ordinary anglers are preparing to demonstrate, to tell DEFRA “We’ve had enough”. “Those fish are a public resource and we are entitled to a fair share’, “The jobs and businesses we support are every bit as important as unsustainable jobs in the fishing industry”. “Treat us as we deserve to be treated, treat the recreational fish stocks on which we depend as they deserve to be treated and see what a positive impact that will have”.

Well I’ve never heard of disgruntled bass anglers marching in protest before, so the roughly 150 people who descended upon Camborne on Saturday morning really was quite something, and I was proud to be there. Full credit to the people who helped organise this protest march, and as is so often the case with this kind of thing, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes which most anglers don’t get to hear about. Thank you, thank you. Why were we marching in protest? See my blog post from Friday here that was lifted from the BASS blog, and then also make sure to check out the most recent BASS blog post here for another report on Saturday’s protest march.

George Eustice Esteemed MP knew we were coming, indeed I believe he was meant to be running a clinic at his Camborne based headquarters on Saturday morning where the march ended up - but of course he or indeed any kind of representative didn’t show. Now I choose to give the man the benefit of the doubt and say that either he quite simply forgot?, or indeed he was taking some valuable time on a Saturday morning to wash his luscious locks at the family farm nearby. I simply won’t have it that our Fisheries Minister wasn’t up to the challenge of meeting a bunch of peaceful and respectful yet angry and disgruntled anglers who have, let’s be honest, been royally shafted as regards the obscene legislation surrounding inshore gill-netting for bass. Nope, not a chance. George Eustice MP I am sure would have loved the chance to come and speak with us regular folk, and yet again completely misunderstand why we were actually protesting, but he was otherwise occupied. Damn those locks must take some conditioning.

Anglers are angry. We live in a time when voices can be heard in so many different ways, but still the impact of real people coming together to march and voice their displeasure is quite something. Us anglers have been able to voice our opinions via various online mediums, but this coming together on a spring Saturday morning in Camborne, is that the start of something new? Have UK saltwater anglers finally decided that enough is enough and that we can do something to effect change? Watch this space.

My thanks to the Cornish anglers for being so welcoming to those of us who travelled down to Camborne, and it was great to catch up with various people and also put faces to names of a few guys I have been corresponding with on Facebook, email etc. My profound thanks as ever to the kind people who asked after the hole in my leg. After the march I took the opportunity to take Storm for a decent walk and head out to a section of coastline I have been wanting to have a look at. I nearly fell of the cliffs the ground looked so frigging awesome. Some of the most ridiculous bass fishing ground I have ever seen and I can’t wait to give it a bit of a go. Nothing floats my boat more in fishing than meeting anglers and fishing “new to me” ground. Perhaps I should invite our beloved George Eustice MP to join me for a day’s bass fishing? We could have such a good chat and luckily his brother is a bit of an expert bass angler I hear……..

It absolutely fascinates me how fishing gets hold of some people and becomes a lifelong passion, and then from there how certain kinds of fishing can become such an all consuming obsession. I have got any number of theories as to why lure fishing grabs certain anglers like it does, and I for one just could never have foreseen how my own addiction to it just gets worse and worse. What amazes me though is how many other anglers there are out there who are in the same boat as me - and quite possibly many of you reading this - and it just does it for me in such a big way when I receive feedback, emails, comments etc. from anglers who lay it out for me how badly lure fishing has got them. A recent email asking for some advice on fishing tackle started with the words below, and I absolutely love it.

“Hi Henry, I have been an avid follower for a while now. I only found lure fishing in the last three years but have ended up totally addicted and can be found most weekends on the Llyn peninsula in North Wales. I don’t know what it is about lure fishing that attracts me but it’s probably checking out new areas the fantastic scenery and of course the thrill of the chase. Bait fishing from a beach with the rod sat in a stand just doesn’t inspire me at all and as an ex sports diver I have had enough of boats and being weathered off to last me a lifetime (now 63 years old). But walk along some deserted coastal path for a couple of miles and clambering down some very suspect cliffs to find that perfect spot well it doesn’t come much better for me.”

How cool is that? I want to say a big thanks to the angler concerned for letting me publish his words on this blog post, because he’s laid it all out right there if you ask me. Some lure anglers have been lure fishing since before they were born, but for many of us we have come to a serious lure fishing addiction well into our fishing obsessed lives. I never for one second imagined that I would obsess so much about a sort of fishing that didn’t revolve around bait, but with the amount of lure related addiction stuff I read and hear about, it does seem that this particular branch of the sport fishing world appeals to an increasing number of anglers in a very serious way. Damn good stuff if you ask me, and long may it continue.

The photos here are from the other evening when conditions looked pretty damn perfect, but it wasn’t until we put lures out there that we realised how choked up with weed it was. Bloody annoying, but the light went off for a little while and I managed to shoot a bunch of pix that I was rather happy with. Lure fishing, photographing lure fishing, thinking about going lure fishing, where does the addiction end? Never I hope.

There’s loads more choice out there these days if you want to splash out north of say £150 on a “proper” lure fishing rod, and without a doubt it’s the Major Craft brand that really helped to open my eyes up to “proper” lure rods for what I would term sensible money when compared to what you could so easily spend, but there are of course any number of rod companies out there who are after our wallets. I can’t help but be drawn primarily to Japanese lure rods these days for my own saltwater lure fishing, and I would guess that a number of internet-savvy anglers are at least aware of the name Yamaga Blanks. I have fished with a few of their rods over the years (check here), and I believe that this brand new Yamaga Blanks Early Plus 95ML 9’5’’ 7-28g lure rod was released pretty recently. I know of only one place where you can buy this rod in the UK, and that’s right here, indeed keep an eye on this website for Yamaga rods in the UK.

As far as the actual rod blank goes and the way it fishes a bunch of different lures, I can’t really find anything about it that I don’t like, albeit there are a couple of minor issues I’ll discuss later. Talk about an easy lure rod to fish with. Smooth as you like to cast, easily efficient, and I am left wondering how many lure fishing rods there must be over in Japan that would work for our own bass fishing. This Yamaga Blanks Early Plus 95ML 9’5’’ 7-28g has almost what one might expect now from a Japanese lure rod based on these sort of specs - accepting of course that different companies are going to put their own spin on individual rod designs.

I can’t help but compare this Yamaga Blanks rod to the similarly priced (in the UK) Major Craft N-One 9’6’’ 10-30g rod (review here) - both rods in my view will easily cover the majority of UK and Ireland shore based lure fishing for bass situations, and they will deal with most hard and soft lures I am likely to use. The Yamaga Blanks rod is perhaps a little “easier” in the tip than the Major Craft, and whilst of course they are different rods and meant to be so, I’m kinda happy fishing with either - but if I was to own one of them I’m going for the N-One because of that slightly faster tip and slightly steelier feel overall. These are not out and out powerhouse lure rods in say the French vein, but then my thing for French style bass rods waned some moons ago as I began to fish more with mainly Japanese bass rods. Sure, I like a fast to fast/medium sort of rod and I don’t like softish, through actions - but then I don’t like absolute frigging pokers either.

As I said, give me either rod and I’d be perfectly happy, but as much as I like how this Yamaga Blanks Early Plus 95ML fishes, the handle design does bug me. Sure, rod handles are no different to rods themselves - we all want different things, but try as I might I just can’t bring myself to like the handle on this Yamaga Blanks very much, or more specifically, the bit on the handle where the back of your front hand sits whilst casting and retrieving. Is it a big deal? Nope, and because this is such a personal thing it could well just be me, but it just doesn’t sit right on the back of my hand, and therefore I don’t find this rod particularly comfortable to fish with. OK, so spending more time with the rod makes it begin to feel more normal, but then I go back to a different lure rod with a grip design I really like and the Yamaga Blanks grip annoys me all over again! As I said though, it could just be me, although my mate Mark feels exactly the same as me about the grip.

Would I buy this rod? Well it’s plenty of rod for the money, as is the Major Craft N-One 9’6’’ 10-30g. I do prefer the handle design and indeed the smaller rings on the N-One, but both rods are a pleasure to fish with and I reckon they will work well for any number of UK and Irish lure anglers. The thorn in the side of these rods continues to be the cheaper Major Craft Skyroad Surf 9’6’’ 5-28g (review here) - this rod continues to amaze me just how good it is and what a frigging steal it is for the price. The Surf is that little bit steelier again than the Early 95ML, but of course it’s a matter of preference. Yamaga Blanks seems to have one hell of a reputation for their rods, and as much as I have enjoyed fishing with this new Early 95ML, there’s a couple of their brand new Ballistick TZ/Nano lure rods which sound very interesting indeed (check here).

The other day I received a refund on those sadly and rather annoyingly rubbish Simms G3 Guide boots that failed on me with saltwater use (twice), and I was looking around for a pair of boots to use for my lure fishing. I did in fact order a pair of the hiking boots that were recommended to me (check here), but even at two sizes over my usual foot size they were just a little bit too narrow and I sent them back. So what should I get?

My love affair with Simms waders and wading boots is over so I am not going down their route anymore, and when I asked the “any ideas on some new wading boots?” question on my Facebook page the other day I kindly received a bunch of suggestions. And this got me thinking. How do you go about buying your fishing tackle? Do we all look for reviews and feedback to help us make the decision on what to buy, or do you like taking a punt on something and seeing if it might work for you? I must admit that I do enjoy trying new stuff that I have heard essentially nothing or very little about, but then I am a also a consumer who goes looking for reviews and feedback to help inform my buying choices. I can’t ignore it when a couple of anglers who I know are out there using and abusing their gear recommend something because so and so item is working so well for them.

My telling you that I went and bought a pair of Patagonia Ultralight wading boots with their “sticky” soles is merely an example of me looking for help and information and then acting upon it - and I am pretty sure that a lot of you here are just like me in that respect. A couple of anglers who I know are fishing a lot over some proper bass ground tell me that the Patagonia Ultralight wading boots have been doing really well for them and therefore I’d be foolish not to at least take note. OK, at the end of the day I have to make my own mind up and pull the trigger on buying something, but with my multiple issues concerning wading type boots it would be daft of me not to go looking for some first hand experience from anglers who I know are actually out there and doing it. If the boots fail too quickly on me then so be it, but at least I tried! They are light and comfortable and the grip with a bunch of those Orvis wading studs in is outstanding, but as ever, time will tell………..

I am asking the questions mainly because more and more of the increasing traffic through this blog and website of mine is based around my fishing tackle reviews, and as a result it kinda bangs home to me that more and more anglers are looking for some kind of help with the choosing of which fishing tackle they should buy. It can be confusing of course. At the end of the day a review can be no more than a personal opinion, and whilst I would hope that the majority of people reading my reviews trust what I say, just because I say something doesn’t suddenly make me some kind of authority on the subject. But at least it’s a start if somebody goes looking for gear and I happen to have used it and then written about my experiences with it. Those lads who kindly recommended the Patagonia wading boots to me aren’t wading boot experts just as I am a not say a lure rod expert, but at least they have used them just as I have used the fishing tackle reviewed on this blog.

How do you go about buying stuff? Is it more of a bloke thing to do as much research possible before pulling the buy it trigger? Do you all look at reviews as a matter of course, trying to figure out if said review is genuine and based on proper experience with the product? Fishing tackle can be a bit of a minefield just like many other stuff, but if you go looking and of course asking then there’s usually some sort of info out there that can be broken down to help the decision process. Magazines, websites, blogs, good tackle shops, social media etc. are all ways to find things out about products, but at the end of the day, for all the information you can find, still it comes down to how you use something and whether you yourself like it. If those Patagonia wading boots work out for me then I will be forever grateful to the lads who recommended them (and I am grateful anyway for their honest advice), but if the boots fail then it was my decision to buy them and so be it. We are all different, we all have different opinions, and with a hobby/obsession like fishing where we are so invested in the gear we use to go and do what we love to do, it constantly bangs home to me just how differently we all end up using that gear. I am off to France tonight to do some stuff with Fiiish for a few days, so please bear with me if I can’t keep the blog updated this week as I would like.

I was doing so well! The confidence was seeping through me like it does when you’ve made the right call on a fishing session and decent fish are queuing up to be caught. I had bought a new drill that actually worked, but to be perfectly honest I tend to use a drill mostly for loading reels up with line or changing lines around - but this time it was some real DIY stuff, and it was initially a success. For ages I had been wanting to put up some rod racks in our hallway, and thanks to a particularly helpful suggestion on my Facebook page (thank you!), I had ordered a couple of wooden coat racks that were to be turned upside down to support some lure rods. In due course when the hall is redecorated the racks would then be painted or whatever, but for now my first DIY job with the new drill went just about perfectly. Check below. I am the man! Rods go out of the hall and onto the racks on my car. Perfect, as below.

But then I got the bit between my teeth. Deep down within my manliness I know that I am not actually very talented at DIY stuff, but successfully hanging a couple of racks up had boosted my confidence no end. OK, so it wasn’t particularly difficult to do, but damn it makes me feel like I have accomplished something mighty. The stuff that makes men real men was coursing through my veins and I was looking around the house for places that needed either another rod rack, or else some coat racks for the endless amount of waterproofs we have between us here (Storm is walked multiple times a day whatever the weather).

I started looking around my office and fancied that one of the walls could do with a small rod rack to keep a couple of rods out of the way, and then I found another couple of places out the back that needed coat racks in place of the dodgy looking hooks we inherited with the house. The new racks duly arrived via Ebay (check here if it’s of any interest, great quality and fantastic service) and Saturday lunchtime was set as THE time for further DIY and of course drill usage. I was flying. Nothing could go wrong, and especially after I wielded that new drill like an expert and successfully hung the new coat racks up out the back. OK, so an old curtain rail thing that I was taking down fell on a picture and broke the glass, but what’s a smashed pane of glass between a husband and wife?! Her faith in my DIY skills were wavering a little, but you can’t stop a man and his new manly drill in his stride. Now for my office…….

Thank god our RCD board worked, put it that way! All was going great, or at least I thought it was. The walls in my office where I was going to hang the small rod rack are plasterboard, and whilst the masonry drill bit went through like a hot knife through butter (damn good eh?), I do remember a couple of bits of minor resistance. I’ve got a new drill though, and on through the resistance I drilled. Resistance? What resistance? Put the drill on hammer setting and push on through like a real man does. In go the raw plugs, up go the pair of rod racks, and I’m feeling seriously manly now. Hell, they’re as good as level as well.

I then thought I’d plug the hoover into a wall socket and quickly tidy up the bits of stuff on the floor that are the result of some manly drilling, but the hoover’s not turning on, indeed the socket ain’t working full stop. I head for the RCD board and find the trip switch flipped, so I flip it back. The downstairs sockets bit flips back up just fine, but another switch thing trips back out and will not trip back in - is that the right terminology? As you may well be guessing, electrics and quite possibly DIY ain’t exactly my things! Anyway, the hoover’s working and I can call a local sparky to come and take a quick look at the RCD board as soon as he can. One of my girl’s bedside lights isn’t working but she can live with it until it’s fixed.

Come Sunday morning and my wife calls downstairs to say that she could only get half a bath full of tepid water and was there a problem with the boiler? Not that I am aware of oh light of my life, or something like that, but I’ll go check. So I do, and the boiler’s not working. No more hot water. Four people using the same half bath of tepid water ain’t exactly the best start to a Sunday morning, but so be it. Monday morning was a sink full of warmish water via boiling a kettle and sponge baths all round - not the ideal start to the week, and especially when there’s a light frost outside, but once again, so be it. Dad’s DIY skills are now being questioned by my wife and two girls. I had got hold of a local sparky and he’s coming round first thing Monday morning after I have dropped the girls at school. Phew.

Andy could not have been nicer or more understanding. By a process of elimination he found the fault as per above, indeed he commended me on my skills at managing to drill almost perfectly through the centre of the water tank electrical supply cable! So that was the bit of resistance I had felt, and as Andy said, it was rather handy that our RCD board was working properly and tripped out before all that lovely electricity went right through the drill and then me. He also kindly advised me that I should not be drilling through plasterboard and instead should be using those special fixing things - I had actually found one in my amazing toolbox the other day and thrown it away because I didn’t know what it was for, but I kept that quiet of course. Don’t want to sound any more of a tit than I already do. A not insignificant amount of money later and Andy left the house, everything working fine again. I will now have to get Terry the decorator around to patch up the holes in my office walls where Andy had to go digging around to try and find the problem, so at the end of the day my DIY disaster has cost me a bit. Am I put off though? Am I hell. I am a man, and a man does DIY. A man might then have to call the experts in to rectify the odd DIY mistake, but that is what a man must do. We get on with it even if we don’t quite know what we are doing, and then we claim stuff to our better halves like the cable was on the way out anyway and it was going to need replacing sooner or later. I think she believed me? I am feeling the urge to use my new drill again…….

I have read some stuff online recently which got me thinking that a number of UK anglers think there is currently a six month long ban on catching bass - but this is categorically not the case. There is no ban on going bass fishing. I am not going to get into the farcical goings on as regards recreational anglers being required by law to return all the bass they might catch until the end of June whereas commercial fishermen are not, together with the somewhat scary fact that our esteemed Fisheries Minister George Eustice MP claims that gill-netting is “sustainable” - nope, that is for another day.

No, this blog post is about the fact that sport anglers are categorically not banned from going bass fishing at all. Get out there! I have no idea how the government is implementing or indeed policing the no-take law for bass that us anglers are currently governed by, but by law you must return any bass you catch until the end of June 2016, and then for the rest of the year you may take one bass per day as long as it’s over the minimum landing size (MLS) of 42cms. Now I know that plenty of anglers release all the bass they catch anyway - me included - but I wonder if the fact that the law states all bass must be released until the end of June means that some anglers either aren’t going out fishing, or else they are targeting other species until July when they can then (legally) take their one bass a day to eat.

And I also wonder how many anglers have simply got the wrong end of the stick and believe that we are currently subject to a six month long bass ban/close season? For all the work that the various fishing related organisations do on our behalf, it’s not as if the government seems to be that good at getting the relevant information out there. Sure, they can quite happily spend our tax money on sending us all (biased?) leaflets about the whole Europe thing, but if you took a poll of say a thousand UK based saltwater anglers, I wonder how many of them would know what on earth is going as regards bass fishing right now?

Man up and get in there Mark!

Would a proportion of anglers not go out bass fishing anyway because they couldn’t by law take any of them home to eat? I have no issues at all with being required by law to return the bass I might catch (ignoring for now the commercial sector issues), but I don’t eat fish myself and I like to put bass back anyway - so these new laws make no difference to me anyway. But how many anglers want to take the odd bass to eat and have been put off going out bass fishing purely because of the law change which means they can’t do so until the end of June? Going fishing is of course rooted in the whole hunter/gatherer part of us, however much some of us might like to return certain species, but I assume that some anglers simply can’t face fishing for a species that by law they can’t take home to eat. Are there charter skippers out there for example who would routinely target bass who have had a dropoff in bookings? If so, holy cow that must be galling when the commercial sector is allowed to carry on like they are.

Ooops, I'm floating!

And what’s the story say with spear-fishing? What happens if I go and badly deep-hook a bass and I know it’s going to snuff it - must I by law return what is essentially a dead fish? By the letter of the law I assume that I must, but what would be the sense in that? Logic would of course say take the dead bass home rather than fling it back in the sea, but as you can no doubt ascertain, I’m not sure how much logic there is to the whole bass debacle! Whatever the case, there is no “bass ban”, indeed there is no month long close season (May 15th to June 15th) over in Ireland this year either. OK, so this knowledge was only made official and public last week - talk about leaving it perhaps too late for visiting anglers to take advantage of some cracking bass tides - but there’s no reason not to get out there bass fishing save for the sodding conditions hardly playing ball! If not being allowed by law to take any bass home to eat until the end of June stops you heading out bass fishing then that is up to you, but personally I am absolutely buzzing about the rest of the year. Have a good weekend. As per my last blog post, I am feeling the need to do some more DIY!

I couldn’t resist nipping out for a quick go on the wrasse last week, mainly because the weather was absolutely stunning and I wanted to see if a “new”, incredibly bassy looking spot we have found a way down to via a couple of ropes might also be a rather nice and tucked well out of the way wrasse spot when the conditions are not exactly conducive to bass fishing. I like trying different places and I also like fishing spots where the chances of seeing other anglers is at best remote, and like many parts of the UK and indeed Ireland, luckily it is still the case that if you are prepared to walk and scramble and get off the well beaten tracks then it’s pretty easy to do.

Anyway, it was hardly the most epic fishing session ever known, but it truly was one of those times when just being out and about was more than enough, and a lot of my fishing tends to also be a good dog walk for Storm as well. What on earth she makes of me as I make my way down some pretty loose cliffs with the aid of a rope while she runs up and down without seeming to notice that we are actually on a slope I will never know, but I do know that I will never have another kind of dog. Nope, sheepdogs and their amazing zest for life are where it’s at for me with our four-legged friends. Anyway, apologies, I digress.

Lovely bit of ground, about an hour into a flooding tide, and whilst the place screams bass when there’s a bit of bounce on, that flat calm and warm afternoon it screamed wrasse - albeit any fish were resolutely staying the hell away from the soft plastics I was chucking at them. I’ve got a bit of a thing for that Graphiteleader Tiro 832M-MR 7-28g as a wrassing rod, but this lighter and more “precise” MegaBass Racing Condition World Edition RCS-802ML 8’ Max 28g, lightening frigging fast (freshwater bass rod I believe) rod is an absolute peach for wrasse fishing with plastics, and I can’t help but wonder how a couple of the lighter rods in this range (here) might do for closer quarters, smaller lures bass fishing - sight fishing for example?

Sorry, lure colours is what I was meant to be talking about - went through my regular selection of soft plastics that I might chuck out for wrasse and to be honest pretty much expect to catch. OK, so it was a “new” wrasse spot for me, but it’s perfect ground, the tide’s flooding and I was surprised not to be getting even a hint of a sniff. Greens, browns, blues, you name it, I tried it, indeed if I don’t get a wrasse bite on the Z-Man Punch CrawZ in the California Craw colour especially then my confidence levels do drop a bit. I’m starting to think that perhaps it’s just one of those days when the fish aren’t feeding, or else of course I have simply taken the wrong punt………..

In my bag of plastics I find a packet of Snowbee Stinger lures in a simple black colour - why the hell not? Wrasse sometimes show a liking for black coloured plastics, so I rig one up on my 10g Texas rig and chuck it out there. I bet you can guess what happens next - yep, a wrasse of about 3lbs on the first cast with the black lure. I only ended up with a couple of fish, but it really struck me how I could have walked away fishless if I had not tried a black coloured soft plastic lure. I have usually got at least one Fiiish Black Minnow with me because it seems to be another of those “if there are any wrasse around they’ll chow that one for sure” sort of lures, but I couldn’t find any in my bag to use that one as another yardstick.

Sure, the fact that I suddenly went and caught a couple of wrasse when previously it seemed to be barren could be down to other factors such as the state of tide etc., but in reality I was standing in the same spot and covering the same sort of ground at essentially the same time when I chose to finally try the black coloured soft plastic. I also accept that there are many times when wrasse will hammer almost any colour or type of soft plastic, but I can’t help but think about how some fish suddenly switched on when I started using a black lure colour, and then whether that state of fish seeming to have lockjaw to not having lockjaw can and does apply with bass fishing? Do you happen to carry different colours of the same type of lure when you go out bass fishing, and how many times have you not been catching, changed colour, and then caught? Or have you had it happen when a mate is using a certain colour of lure and is catching fish, and you are not using that colour and blanking? More food for thought if you ask me. More stuff to mess with my already lure messed head!

True story - I went to a fishing tackle trade shows a few years back, and while I was wandering round I bumped into somebody I knew who worked for a tackle company that I am not going to name. Arranged on a rather smart looking rack was a range of spinning rods that looked interesting, so I asked what they were like, what they were designed for etc., and I received this answer: “not a clue, they haven’t been tested”. So what you might ask? Well the point is that the range of rods was being shown at the trade show because they ready for sale - and they hadn’t even been tested/used out in the real fishing world………

Now of course this left a bad impression on me, but to be perfectly honest I wonder at times how much some gear does actually get tested out in that “real fishing world”, or on the flipside to this, if the gear does get “properly tested” (whatever that actually is), what then constitutes a proper testing period which then tells the company the item or items are indeed ready to be sold to the fishing public - the likes of you and I. Now I am sure that we would all love to imagine that the fishing tackle we buy has all been through a rigorous and carefully structured programme of specialist testing in the various environments into which the products are likely to be sold, but really? Some companies do this for sure, but can you imagine the costs involved? And you simply can’t account for some things happening way down the line.

I have always loved the way that the US fishing apparel company Simms makes such a big deal of its gear being so heavily used and abused by reams of professional guides around the world who use it for their work at the end of the day. Pro fishing guides tend to  use fishing gear hard, and especially stuff like waders, wading boots, waterproof jackets etc., indeed if any company needed anything like that tested properly, and I mean properly, properly tested in a harsh saltwater environment, then I can’t think of anybody better placed than the bass guide John Quinlan of Thatch Cottage Ireland. Wow does he go through waders, wading boots and jackets through the course of his working year. If I was to set up a tackle company dealing with that sort of gear when I’d be asking John to test the gear out for me, and I would actually act on the feedback instead of some companies which don’t actually want to hear about anything that may actually be wrong with their gear.

Anyway, via three different pairs of Simms wading boots failing on me last year, I must assume that they don’t get any saltwater guides to test these items of gear out, or if they do, the testing period simply wasn’t long or harsh enough - but how long is long enough? Early on last year I was kindly sent a pair of breathable waders to try out (not Simms waders, a different company), and for about three+ months they were performing impeccably, and I mean completely problem free. I was absolutely loving them and in fact I was about to write a blog review which would have praised them to the hilt - and then out of the blue I was wading across a gully and I thought I must have involuntarily wet myself! Whilst I might now be north of 40, so far I haven’t yet wet myself by mistake - nope, right out of the blue the previously impeccable waders started leaking through the crotch area, and then water started coming in through the foot as well. I found that the tape had started to come away from the seams and it was end of waders.

So those waders were on the market. I wasn’t testing them out prior to them going on sale, rather it was a kind soul who let me use a pair to see how they might do. After a lot of use in saltwater they failed on me, but would the waders have possibly gone through a similar testing period before they actually came to market? I doubt it. In summer last year I received a new pair of waders from a different company that looked frigging awesome - yet they leaked through the neoprene sock on my first day of use! Same with the second pair, albeit they lasted three days I think. Potentially such a good pair of waders - great cut, a few nice features, but let down by a god-awful neoprene sock. I just don’t believe those particular waders could have ever been properly tested - sure, one leaky pair might well be unlucky, but two pairs which leaked in exactly the same place so quickly? A worrying lack of real world fishing testing if you ask me, or is it testers simply saying yes sir, no sir because there are no systems in place to accurately take on board feedback and of course constructive criticisms and work them through for a better product.

The smaller Penn Clash 2500 - my mate has just bought one. Very impressive bit of kit so far.

I now have a couple of these Penn Clash spinning reels here - the 3000 (check here and here), and now the smaller 2500 as well. As it stands right now, in my opinion these are some incredible spinning reels for a quite incredible price, and I will properly review them in due course - but then report back if any faults develop after those reviews. Because these reels are doing so well I am thinking (hoping?) that Penn put them through a rigorous testing process, but I was interested to see that the company got a bunch of fishing journalists together out in Costa Rica I think it was to put the reels through their paces in the hands of the “fishing press”. I bet it was a blast, but let’s say that trip was a week of fishing at best - do the resulting reviews from what I am guessing was a bit of a jolly then constitute “proper reviews”? What does a week with an item like a spinning reel tell you?

Well in some respects a fair amount, but on the other hand it’s often after a much longer period when things start to go wrong of course. I still reckon the 2015 Daiwa Caldia 3000-A Mag Sealed spinning reel is an incredible product for some very sensible money (review here), but sometime after that review the roller bearing failed on me (check here). I have to attach some blame to myself for not keeping a proper eye on its roller bearing - I am now very much doing so on all the spinning reels I have! - but because it happened to me, does that show up insufficient testing of the product, or was it simply natural wear and tear and quite possibly an error on my part? Same with the Shimano Sustain 4000FG (review here) - way down the line of me using the reel, I came to realise that the bearings are quite possibly not exactly the finest ever put in a spinning reel, but for a good long time the reel was as smooth as warm butter to fish with.

A company could test and test and test and never actually get a product to market. A reviewer could test and test and test (after the product has come to market of course) and never actually produce a review because he or she never actually completes their testing process! I am sure many of you fish with items of gear that work flawlessly, but then sometimes we are all left angry and annoyed when something fails for what seems to be a simple/stupid reason, and in reality that reason should most likely have been picked up during testing and then put right. Sometimes it bugs the hell out of me that some items of gear fail for whatever reason, but then I also understand how impossible it must be to sell something like braid for example. It might be the most tested braid ever in the history of braid. It might have performed flawlessly for months on end, dealing with the biggest fish in the harshest environments - but then it goes to market, and a few anglers end up buying the braid who, how shall we say, can’t tie a decent braid to leader knot for starters. Or they can’t cast very well. Or they are seriously overloading their reel. Or they are using an ancient spinning reel that was never designed for a modern braid. Or they get dragged over some sharp rocks by some monster fish and get broken off - but of course, none of this is remotely the customer’s fault. No way, not a chance. Gotta be because the braid’s rubbish! Who’d make fishing gear for saltwater use especially?

OK, not really, but when it’s nearly May and the wind has finally swung around to the west, there’s a touch more warmth in the air, and the conditions are increasingly bouncing, yesterday afternoon was one of those sessions when I had said to myself that something was going to get flung in the tide if at least a single sodding bass had not been caught. Lures in the tide? Rod? Camera gear? Mark? Storm? Whatever the case, confidence was high that we might at least see something impaling itself on one of our lures……….

Are we all slightly guilty of basing our expectations on when the bass fishing might kick on the previous season, almost regardless of the actual conditions? Well they were here at so and so time last year, so they are damn well going to be here at the same time this year! When we’re well into the bass season as such I reckon you stand a far greater chance of catching a few fish when conditions are less than ideal, but as we have had recently with a lot of E/NE winds and then this recent winter blast, let’s just say that early season conditions have been less than ideal. But then the forecast was saying the wind was going to shift from NW round to W/SW through yesterday and freshen right up come the afternoon.

We wanted to run down to the spot but we couldn’t because what passes for a path is so bloody overgrown, and if you take a wrong step you end up neck deep in gorse. Be gone you bad person, of course I would not laugh if this happened to Mark! Storm did a hell of an impression of a gazelle when the tried to pounce on a pheasant, but she just about managed to extricate herself and stay with us. On the one hand this pathetic excuse for a path hides how to get down to this particular rock platform rather nicely, but wow do you not want to be wearing a nice pair of waders that you care deeply about. Not much of a worry for Mark because, how shall I put it, his waders receive that much care and attention that at times they could walk down to the spot on their own! Conditions are pretty stunning and there’s also a decent drop of light bouncing around which always helps to stop me fishing too much and instead rattling off photos because quite simply I can’t not, but fishing and photography are one and the same to me so it’s par for the course.

So only the one small bass was landed, but just before Mark went and hooked it I was about to say that line “if we don’t catch a fish today I’m giving up”. He caught it on a very battered DUO Tide Minnow Slim 140 that had been rigged with those very good Seaspin Gamu SW single hooks, and I know Mark was made up both to catch the bass and also because hooking the fish in such bouncy conditions helped to give him another confidence boost with using single hooks on hard lures. Isn’t it amazing how a shift in the weather and one small bass can do so much to one’s mental state? We spoke about how there had to have been more fish there, but with a rapidly freshening westerly wind that was coming side on to us, how effectively were our lures really fishing when that belly of braid catches the wind so much and seems to really affect how the lures swim?

Yesterday aside, I wanted to draw your attention to the filth above. I am struggling to control my mature self with this brand new custom colour Fiiish Black Minnow that is exclusive to the UK and will be in shops sometime soon I believe. The photo doesn’t actually do enough justice to the body colour of the lure, and what is really messing with my head is how the back of the lure glows in the dark. Yes, I know, I understand. Lie down and be calm. Rest assured I have been lurking in a dark corner of my house looking at this lure and thinking about what I might do with it. My girls think their dad is even dafter than before. And to save me from having to answer emails and messages about this new custom colour Black Minnow, if you’re in the trade and want to stock Fiiish in the UK or Ireland then contact Top Water Lures. As for us lure-weak individuals, keep an eye on your local Fiiish stockist or various lure websites. I have the one sample here and I have kissed it all over. Have a good weekend and may the conditions come properly right for you.

I am really pleased that I can make it over to the 2016 Irish Bass Festival this year, but if you are intending to go yourself - and you should! - then make sure you don’t miss out on registration which I believe closes on 15th May. Rather than me waffle on about what a great fishing event this is, I have copied some text from the Irish Bass Festival website below:

“The festival is open to all lure anglers being a lure only event and will take place along the south coast of Ireland. Anglers are free to roam around and fish wherever they please in search of bass. We will be running a fully catch and release concept and all the rules for the festival can be found in the "Festival Rules" tab here. Full details on how you enter can be found in the "How to Enter" tab here. Tickets for the festival will be available from Absolute Fishing in Tramore. All anglers are welcome whether you are a novice or a hardened lure angler. There will be people on hand to help and give tips and advice on any questions you may have. We hope you will be able to enjoy a great social weekend and get a taste of the outstanding lure fishing we have along the southern coastline of Ireland which we believe is the "Bass Mecca of Europe".

It’s a blast, and whatever the weather decides to do I am confident that just like the last few years there will be some outstanding bass caught. Sure, local knowledge helps, but there are separate prizes for locals and visitors, and you’ll get plenty of help and advice from the lads in Absolute Fishing. It’s just a great way to spend a few days in a very special part of the world that I love with a passion, the Sunday night do is a lot of fun (honestly, I lost a monster etc.!), and everybody is in with a shout at landing the bass of a lifetime. If it goes flat calm and crystal clear, either look for running water (estuaries etc.) or get out on the Copper Coast at night - and if it’s all lovely and fizzed up then bring it on! I hope to see some of you over there. Below are some sneak previews at my work in Sea Angler magazine this month.

What on earth do we know? Not exactly what you would wish for on a relatively early season trip over to the south coast of Ireland, but the last couple of days has seen some pretty damn impressive fishing - with Saturday afternoon especially being about as good as it gets in my book. Steve and I are bracing ourselves against an increasingly fresh and cold easterly wind, the rain is coming right at us in the face, and it’s not as if we’re feeling a huge amount of love about proceedings…….

But we smashed them, and off the top as well. No real size to the bass and the photo of Steve with a fish around the 4lb mark is in fact from the previous evening to that session when I wasn’t contending with horizontal rain straight in at my camera lens. Sure, it may well have been blowing a fairly fresh easterly, but the actual conditions were stunning, and to me when it’s like that it just screams surface lures. You know when the waves are coming in and you momentarily lose your surface lure behind them as they roll on through? We had that, and it’s lovely. Early season it may well be, and compared to a couple of days earlier the temperature drop was quite something, but the bass have been incredibly fizzed up and smashing into surface lures so hard that some of the time they either aren’t connecting or we hook them but they come off pretty quickly. When they stick though, wow it’s a lot of fun.

As per the title of this blog post, fishing doesn’t get much better if you ask me, and it would be fair to say that Steve and I have been a little taken aback by the numbers of fish around if you do find where they seem to be lurking, and how willing they have been to smash surface lures. I have been using those three new custom coloured IMA Salt Skimmers a lot and have smashed bass on the lemon back and the ghost anchovy ones, and dropped a nice fish on the mackerel colour. As much as I have a serious thing for the IMA Salt Skimmer though (really?), Saturday afternoon was bouncing that much that there was only surface lure I own that was properly up to the job of getting out there, staying nice and stable in all that bounce and wind, and then making enough disturbance to get the fish razzed up. I think a lot of you know the lure, and it begins with a P! Anyway, back to it and more to come……….

I’ll do a preview post very soon, but Steve and I have both been fishing out here in Ireland with the brand new 2016 Daiwa Certate spinning reels in the 3000 size, both loaded up with the cheap as chips 20lb Daiwa J-Braid. Sweet!!!!! What a combination.

As ever, time is going to be the key here, but after a week or so of solid use, this brand new 2016 Daiwa Certate that I have got here is without doubt up there as one of the nicest spinning reels I have ever had the pleasure of lure fishing with. Will it stay as ridiculously smooth as it is right now? I don’t know, but I have to hope that at the price and specification it will stay this way for a decent period of time - it’s so smooth and easy to fish with that I can’t really see how a spinning reel can actually feel much better………

What do I need to tell you about this stunning looking Certate that either you don’t know already, or at the price you can’t pretty much guess? It’s very light, it feels great on the 9’ and 9’6’’ lure rods I tend to fish with these days, the line lay is immaculate, and I have had not one single braid problem so far (the reel’s loaded up with what seems to be the rather fantastic 20lb Daiwa J-Braid). I have been fishing with the Daiwa Certate 3012H High Speed and I notice that the handle is a little larger than on my mate’s regular 2016 Certate 3000 that he has been using at the same time, but I’m fine with that. Aside from the roller bearing issues I had with the current Daiwa Caldia 3000, I still think it's a seriously class spinning reel that is incredible value for money, but without a doubt this 2016 Certate is another step up again. If the Caldia is smooth to reel in, then this Certate is even smoother again and feels totally at ease as it does its thing. Does this catch me more fish? Nope, but then that’s not the point - some people want and can have big flash cars, and some people can’t or won’t. Most cars will get you from A to B just fine, and most spinning reels will help you catch fish - what you choose to use is up to you.

I am aware of the reputation that Daiwa Certate spinning reels have, but I don’t have a history with these reels and I can’t tell you whether this new one is infinitely better than the previous model. I know I am loving this 2016 version and I will be sad to see it go back to Daiwa UK when the time comes - it won’t affect me with this test reel, but I do like how there is a 2 year full warranty on Certates. I understand that in theory we are not meant to go opening these reels up for any of our own servicing as it messes with the Mag Seal thing, but a couple of mates who have had the previous generation (2014?) Certates and used them a lot for saltwater lure fishing have both had issues with their roller bearings which of course are meant to be (Mag) sealed against salt water getting in I believe.

To Daiwa UK’s credit they mended the reels FOC under the 2 year warranty, but it does give one food for thought. This friend of mine has two of the previous generation Certates - one of which was repaired - so on the other one he decided to “break the seal” as such and found very early signs of corrosion around the roller bearing area - and he now keeps a close eye and oils it up like you would on a non Mag Sealed spinning reel. I love the Mag Sealed idea, but can you really stop saltwater getting into the roller bearing area? Time will tell with this 2016 Certate I have here, and I will report back in due course unless I have had to send the reel back to Daiwa UK before I have really thrashed it for a decent period of time - bearing in mind that I also play with other reels etc.

You may be wondering what the drag on this new Certate is like - yes, it’s very smooth, but my mate who has the regular speed 2016 Certate did mention that line comes off so quietly and smoothly that a couple of times when he was playing a bass he wasn’t actually sure if the drag was paying out line or not. Nothing bad, just an observation from him. As for me? I think we attach far too much hot air to reel drags here in the UK and Ireland. The drag on this 2016 Certate feels lovely as you would expect, but if a bass is taking heaps of line off you then I would suggest that you need to locate the drag knob and then learn which way is tighter.

So all I can do so far is tell you that I have one of these 2016 Certates here, as does a mate of mine who I fish with in Ireland a lot especially. Can a spinning reel for how so many of us lure fish really get much better than this? I don’t see how, but of course it comes down to what individual anglers like or don’t like, and what you are prepared to pay for a spinning reel. This Daiwa 2016 Certate is simply sublime to fish with and it feels pretty damn special when it’s strapped to my lure rod. More to come, and sorry, but I'm not sure when they will be available to buy here in the UK and Ireland.

A nice, easy review to write - the Major Craft Truzer 9’ 10-30g lure rod (review here) is the best, most “precise” 9’ lure rod I have ever had the pleasure of fishing with. I love the Fuji Torzite guides on it and I have a bit of a thing for the cork grips. It’s not remotely a cheap rod, but it’s that good I believe it’s worth every single penny at around the £370 it costs in the UK and Ireland. There are of course a lot of lure anglers who can’t or won’t spend that sort of money on a lure fishing rod, but to me it’s a crying shame that more anglers can’t get to use a rod like this because it’s so damn good. So why am I banging on about the 9’ Truzer when the review is meant to be about the Major Craft X-Ride XRS-902ML 9' 10-30g lure rod?

Because I reckon we’re talking about either the same blank here, or if not exactly the same, so damn close that I can’t feel any difference between the two rods. I found the same thing with the 9’6’’ X-Ride and 9’6’’ Truzer. Sure, the 9’ Skyroad 10-30g (review here) is one hell of a rod that I could quite happily use for evermore, but without a doubt the Major Craft X-Ride XRS-902ML 9' 10-30g lure rod is a step up. That bit more precision - “accuracy of everything” if you like - and the overall steeliness has gone up a notch if you ask me, yet for some reason the roughly £250 9’ X-Ride is a rod that I am not hearing much about here in the UK or Ireland. Has it slipped under the radar or has the outrageously good and roughly £70 cheaper 9’ Skyroad stolen its thunder? The X-Ride to me is easily worth that price jump, but on the flipside you can’t go wrong with the 9’ Skyroad. Whatever floats your boat and all that.

Can you live without a very expensive set of Fuji Torzite guides and a cork grip on a lure rod, because if you can then the X-Ride 9' 10-30g lure rod is a serious steal of a lure rod. Yes, £250 is a lot of money, but this is a hell of a lot of rod. I love those Torzite guides on the Truzers, but perhaps that’s because they are so “luxurious” rather than offering any actual fishing benefits that I have come across. I can easily live without a set of Torzite guides, and of course I am perfectly happy with a regular duplon grip on a lure rod as well. I have fished a hell of a lot with the 9’ 10-30g Truzer now and I just keep liking it more and more, so I gave the 9’ X-Ride 10-30g an absolute thrashing in Ireland when we had all conditions from flat calm to snorting easterlies in our face. As with the Truzer, I can’t trip this X-Ride up at all, and I wonder if lure anglers are aware how good this rod really is? Read my review of the 9’ Truzer and you will see what I want to say about the blank itself - and that applies exactly the same to this Major Craft X-Ride XRS-902ML 9' 10-30g lure rod. If I ever get to fish with a better all round kind of 9’ lure rod blank than this I will be amazed. See, nice and simple eh? Have a good weekend and may a few decent fish smash your lures and baits.

And to save myself emails and messages from anglers asking where they might see or buy this rod, I have found it listed at Chesil Bait'n'Tackle and Veals Mail Order. I am sure there are other places that I am unaware of, but yes, I can’t understand why a rod this good is not stocked all over the place. Please know that I don’t work with these shops and if you buy gear from them I don’t get any form of kickback. I am merely trying to help.

I don’t believe in giving up, and I refuse to give up on finding some sort of solution to lightweight waders and the problems that so many of us get with what are a freshwater fly fishing product that we are then pressing into service for our saltwater fishing. A mate who is a phenomenal bait angler was recently raving about some new waterproofs made from a very interesting material that he had been put onto by a switched-on north Devon angler, and I take serious note of what certain people tell me. A few phone calls and emails later and I found myself heading up to Braunton to meet with the people from Reed Chillcheater Ltd., and specifically the main man Chris Reed. Whilst the waterproofs these guys are making for anglers are starting to go down a storm in some circles (and apparently they do not leak, end of), to be honest I was more interested in following up our correspondence about what they might be able to do as regards a pair of waders that would be suitable for what so many of us put them through on a regular basis, only for far too many of them to fail on us far too quickly, and often at some pretty eye-watering prices……….

Whatever happens or does not happen, I could have quite happily talked with the guys at Reed Chillcheater for days on end, and specifically Chris and his outstanding knowledge of various materials and what can be done with them. I love the fact that they are making all their gear right here in the UK. It was also an interesting experience for me as regards talking fishing related stuff with a company - here was a bloke who was really interested in listening to what I was talking about as regards the pros and cons of the sort of waders we press into service for saltwater lure fishing especially, and let me assure you that in my experience of doing stuff with companies that this way of working has, how shall we say, not always been the case. Reed Chillcheater specialise in a lot of kayak and rescue services gear, and they are small enough to be able to get into very niche markets and be able to customise their incredible range of materials to supply exactly what customers want. I am loving the sound of this.

Chris showed me the various different materials they work with and via plenty of back and forth about what I think we want from lightweight waders - and what we don’t want of course - we have come up with a plan for them to kindly make me a sample pair of waders to see how they do. Nope, they are not going to be breathable, but we are going to implement various features to make them nice and easy to walk long distances in if needs be, and to be perfectly honest I have had a bit of a gutful of “breathable” waders that I don’t think really “breathe” much anyway, and then the trade off of course is that the lightweight materials simply aren’t tough enough to deal with what we need to put them through.

We discussed the pros and cons of the main materials they use at Reed Chillcheater, and we are going to incorporate a couple of different ones into a pair of waders that should be as tough as you like but nice and lightweight, properly long lasting, properly waterproof, and then with the potential for individual customers to customise certain aspects of the waders to better suit their needs. Is this possible? Well the Reed Chillcheater people simply can’t understand why we are paying so much money yet getting so many problems around saltwater especially, and to be honest they do tie in with what various people have said to me over the years - if you want a pair of lightweight but properly tough chest waders for saltwater fishing then using breathable materials is not a good way to go. There are though different ways of making a pair of waders comfortable to walk and scramble proper distances, and we think we have come up with some interesting solutions.

So in two to three weeks I will hopefully be taking delivery of a sample pair of waders to then press into service and see how they do. I can’t imagine that we will have got it all correct on the first attempt, but the beauty of this company is the fact that they have so much expertise based in the UK, and that if things need to be changed or adapted, they don’t have to then send the sample off to say China and wait for it to come back. They are not looking to conquer the fishing world because their level of business is already about as much as they can cope with (which to me then says a lot about how highly they are respected, indeed the names of some of the organisations and clients who use their gear was mightily impressive) - but they are interested in it via these waterproofs they are making and how their fishing customers are raving about them. If this lot can make what they are making for their current customer base then I do have some high hopes for what we might be able to achieve with fishing waders that actually work for us - and then who knows what in the future? The sensible price and level of customisation could be more than interesting as well. Plenty more to come, but for now I am highly overexcited to see these sample waders and start properly testing them out.

I am really liking single hooks on the rear of most of my hard lures, but when I was over in Ireland the other day I quickly realised that I had done something wrong as regards rigging a particular lure - how do I know this? Because I got hit six times without hooking up, then changed the rear hook, chucked out again, and hooked the first bass that hit me again. I will explain……….

IMA Calm 110 rigged with that small size 4 single on the rear

When you have no choice but to sit around on your arse for a few weeks, not only does your mind play wicked tricks on you about the actual reason for having to sit still in the first place, but with it being winter as well, of course all manner of fishing related stuff was churning round and round my brain! I was increasingly conscious that I have a few hard lures squirrelled away here that I simply haven’t given proper water time to, and via my increasing confidence in lures like a (soft plastic) senko that does very little that we can see in the water, I came across the little IMA Calm 110 (110mm, 11g) that for whatever daft reason I hadn’t ever actually fished with. I most likely bought it because it looked nice, and then because I am a bit of a tit like that I went and forgot all about it. So I drag it out of some obscure box and find that the two little trebles on the lure are all rusted up and need changing. On the front goes a barbless treble hook and on the rear I put a small size 4 Cox and Rawle barbless single lure hook that I happened to have. Seemed to make sense to put a small single hook like that on what is a pretty small hard lure.

Anyway, Steve and I happen to be on some out of the way mark over in Ireland the other day and we are battering a bunch of bass on the IMA Salt Skimmers. Now don’t get me wrong, I love catching a bunch of fish, and especially off the top, but if there is one thing I do like doing is using those times when there’s a lot of fish around to either experiment, or otherwise try and catch on some lures that I have never caught on before. Come on, admit it, however much you might like the look of whatever lure, you never feel truly confident in it until you’ve caught on it - at least I don’t anyway.

I happened to have the little IMA Calm 110 with me, so on it goes. I can’t believe how well it flies for starters, and I couldn’t really think of a better way to fish it over such shallow ground other than to very simply straight-retrieve it at a medium sort of speed - which depending on how excitable you are could be anything. Straight away I get hit by a bass, but it doesn’t hook up. I counted three times on the first retrieve that I was hit, and then three times on the next, and it’s frustrating me - over the moon that bass want to hit the lure, but of course I want to hook up. I reckon Steve can actually hear the cogs in my brain churning over now……….

I look around, and yes, Steve’s got a pair of those green and black IMA pliers strapped to his waist, the ones with the split ring bit on the end. I always keep a pair of these pliers at home because I think they are excellent for crushing barbs and changing split rings, but luckily Steve actually had a pair with him. I borrow the pliers and set about taking off that small size 4 single hook and changing it for a larger Seaspin Gamu SW size 1 single hook that I took off another hard lure of mine. On it goes, I give the pliers back to Steve, and I launch the little Calm 110 out there again.

And hook a bass almost straight away, only this time it stays connected and I land it, and after a couple of fish I change the lure because I want to try and catch on something else. I can’t find any other variable to that incident other than I had gone and mistakenly rigged up the little IMA Calm 110 with a rear single hook that was simply too small. Whilst it is of course possible to catch bass on very small hooks, I imagine that when a hard lure like that is moving through the water, the small rear single simply isn’t able to hook them up - ok, so I could have persisted with the small size 4 single, but six hits and no connections told me what I needed to know, and then the change to the larger size 1 single confirmed it. Interesting though that the bass didn’t hook up on the front treble……...

I so, so wish I had been there to see this bass landed! I was over in Ireland the other day when I got a phone call from a very, very excited friend who I fish with a lot at home. Why the excitement? Well he’s only gone and bloody done it! A lifelong passion for bass fishing and he had gone and landed his fish of a lifetime, and whilst I was having a great time in Ireland and catching plenty of fish, I cannot tell you how much I would have given to have been there to see Mark hook and land that special bass - 79cms long, over the magical 10lbs, how good does it get?

Photo courtesy Mark Quinton, shot by Andy Bignell

I don’t think he’s come down yet! Life goes on, nothing radically changes and non-anglers won’t have a clue how much catching a fish like this means to us, but that’s just it - we are anglers, we “get” fishing completely, and there are certain sizes of fish or indeed locations to fish in that we spend a lot of time dreaming about. Some people fish for a bunch of different species and some anglers specialise in fishing for a certain species that floats their boat quite enough to sustain that lifelong obsession. As I have said multiple times before, fishing is so damn awesome because it is big enough to fit us all in, and it means so many different things to so many different people. I know how much Mark loves his bass fishing, and I know how much the capture of his bass of a lifetime means to him. Big, big respect, and I am gutted that I wasn’t there to witness it and take the photos of one rather happy angler.

This 79cms long bass was caught from a spot that we have finally worked out how to get down to, so whilst I wasn’t there to see it caught, it does make my day that such a special fish came from a location that we had had a hunch about for a while (and especially Mark). Hugely well done Mark obviously for catching such a special fish, but also for having made the call to fish that particular spot on that particular morning. Mark and Andy had that one bass only, but I think it was enough fish to fuel a lifetime more of dreaming about more fish of a lifetime if that makes sense! Mark caught the fish within ten casts of starting the session on a forecast that to be honest wasn’t exactly what you’d have chosen, but the fact that it was early in the morning must have been ideal. As with nailing a bunch of bass over in Ireland on east winds, what do we really know about when the food is going to be there for bass to come in and feed on it?

He caught the fish close in on a Tackle House Feed Shallow lure, Major Craft Truzer 9’ 7-23g rod, Penn Clash 2500 spinning reel and Duel Hardcore X4 braid if that helps. I know how good Mark is at really searching the close in ground all around him: “Never ignore really shallow water twenty feet in front of you, even if you risk losing a lure or two”, and it’s something I think we could all learn from. Sure, having the ability to put lures out a long way and cover lots of ground is so handy, but nobody could ever accuse the regular size Feed Shallow of being a long-range missile of a lure, yet Mark goes and hooks his bass of a lifetime not very far off his rod tip. Right time, right place, right lure, right cast, right decision. Sometimes things are just meant to be, and whilst fishing owes none of us anything, I can’t help but feel that Mark quite simply deserved that special fish. It was his time, everything went right for him, and I am so frigging made up that a good friend has successfully caught (and released) his fish of a lifetime. And yes, it can’t help but buzz me up that bit more that such a fish was caught not very far from where I live. Well done Mark, that is some mighty fine fishing and it could not have happened to a nicer bloke. Wow!

Crumbs. Two very smooth feeling and frigging lovely to fish with 8-strand braids that are on sale at prices which can’t help but shake things up a bit. No longer do anglers need to buy a 4-strand braid because an 8-strand costs too much money. Nope, with these two 8-strand braids at the prices they are, to me the choice between a 4-strand and an 8-strand now comes down to what you want from your braid and what you prefer fishing with. Sure, the really high end 8-strands aren’t suddenly going away, but I must imagine that various line companies are at least a little worried with the might of Daiwa especially behind such a good value for money, “proper” 8-strand braid.

Daiwa J-Braid on the 2016 Certate

But why be worried about Daiwa more than Sufix? Is one of these braids better than the other? Not at all, indeed these are two equally good braids for lure fishing in my opinion. What I mean is that Daiwa’s a seriously big player in the global fishing tackle world and has obviously decided to chuck its might behind their newish J-Braid, whereas as much as I am a serious fan of Sufix monos and braids and I wish we saw more of them here in the UK, the fact is that Sufix is not in the same league size wise as Daiwa and as such they don’t have the global marketing reach to get behind their outstanding Performance Pro 8 braid like Daiwa can with their J-Braid. Daiwa make some serious gear and I am seeing more of this J-Braid for sale in the UK and Ireland, but it strikes me as such a shame that you’ve got what I reckon is one of the best line companies in the world in Sufix not being properly represented here and as a result I wonder how many people will get to see just how good their Performance Pro 8 braid is? Choice is a good thing if you ask me, and especially when we have two similar types of braid here that can do so much good stuff for us consumers.

Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid on a Penn Clash spinning reel

It’s pretty simple if you ask me. Buy either one of these braids for your lure fishing and you can’t really go wrong. Of course I recognise the supposed advantages of a good 4-strand braid for rougher ground fishing or wrassing on the plastics especially, but I do enjoy bass fishing especially with a really smooth, long-casting 8-strand braid. I accept that the best gear is always going to cost, but sometimes stuff comes along which for me kinda redefines what we can get for a certain amount of money. The Major Craft Skyroad rods have done that for me big time for me as regards lure rods for example, and Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid and Daiwa J-Braid are now doing it for me on the braid front.

What can I really tell you about these lines other than they are lovely 8-strand braids to go fishing with? I like the range of colours - and yes, bright braids do it for me, but both are available in a dark green if you don’t - and there are endless diameters and breaking strains to suit a wide range of fishing applications. I like the spool sizes for my UK and Irish lure fishing (150m/135m), but I can buy larger spools if needs be. Daiwa J-Braid seems to be pretty widely available now, but if you want to get some Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid then it’s easy to find some say in Europe (check my preview blog post here for example). I can’t believe how cheaply such good 8-strand braids can be sold for, but it’s good news for us anglers.

Daiwa J-Braid in action

I have ranted about line diameters and breaking strains before (check here). I have no idea if the figures for both these braids are true, and of course there are wildly different figures depending on where you buy the lines - both lines feel very thin though, and as before I am going on the European specs. I know that some anglers do their own kind of line testing and that’s great. I don’t. I’d rather go fishing, use my lines in real fishing situations, and then make my own judgements from there. I reckon I’ve used enough 20lb braids (whatever that actually is) for my fishing to know when I’ve got a good or a bad one as regards actual strength and how it fishes - bearing in mind of course that you need to keep a close eye for line damage on those first few feet of braid especially, regardless of whether you use a leader or not.

Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid on a Penn Clash spinning reel

And with the 20lb/0.16mm Daiwa J-Braid and then the 21lb/0.15mm Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid (European figures, and no, I don’t know how “true” they are), I’ve got two mainlines here for my lure fishing which I reckon are doing what I have come to expect as such from a quality 20lb braid. These are serious mainlines and I am struggling now to justify spending more money on an 8-strand braid mainline. I only use the FG knot to attach my leaders to my braids, and I retie leader knots and change leaders often. Sure, I have a bit of thing for the far more expensive Varivas 8-strands, but as much as I like them because I know them inside out and I trust them implicitly, I can’t sit here and tell you hand on heart that they are much better than these two much cheaper 8-strands. Things are changing and I am all for it if it gives us anglers greater choice and better gear for our money. I reckon Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid and Daiwa J-Braid are fantastic braids and are now a more than viable options for those of us who want to fish with those smooth feeling 8-strand braids but don’t want to sell body parts off to do so.

You can have all the lures, rods, reels, braids and as much knowledge about where to fish and when as you have amassed, yet nature continues to do its own thing and teach us every single year that every single year is different. However much we go back over our records and plan for say bass fishing on the lures to kick off again on a specific set of tides or something like that, I love how at times we are reduced almost to beginners in our quest to beat nature at her own game. In 2015 things suddenly kicked off around here in south east Cornwall around the middle of April, but here we are towards the end of May and aside from a few catches of decent fish we are still waiting for the bass fishing kick off properly……...

Whitsand Bay is full of May bloom and has been for a couple of weeks now. It’ll disappear sometime soon, but wow are some of us tearing our hair out! We didn’t get it last year so you can’t help but sort of stupidly assume that perhaps we weren’t going to get it this year either. But no, nature has other ideas, and nature does what nature does. We try to move to her rhythms and we continue to look to all manner of weather forecasts and hope for “ideal conditions”, yet at the end of the day we are merely human beings doing our best to outwit something that I have always believed retains the upper hand however much we think we might know. And I love that. We will never be bigger than fishing or nature however hard we try.

How has it been for you so far this year? I had a good few days in Ireland when we caught a lot more bass than we thought we might with the forecast, so yet again it proves to me that it’s far too easy to write things off because of past experiences. I do it and I am sure most of you here have written off certain conditions, but I am pretty sure bass aren’t coming close inshore to satisfy our urge to try and catch them. Nope, I am pretty sure they are there to feed, and to feed they need food. We strive to learn all we can about bass fishing, but do we spend anywhere near enough time on learning when certain food sources are available for the predators we might fish for?

I am still having almost unnatural feelings towards the khaki glitter Black Minnow. Yes, I am obsessed!

You might have gathered that the fishing so far this year has thrown up a lot of questions for me, and you would be right. I know what I know and I do all I can to learn as much as possible as I go along, but there are plenty of anglers out there with a whackload more knowledge about it all than I will ever have. Do those anglers have questions that they simply don’t know the answers to when each year comes along and plays with your expectations? Of course I know it’s unrealistic to expect each year to behave in some sort of uniform manner, but if you really stop and think about it, do we really know what happens from year to year? I’ve got a thousand theories about the slow start, but am I anywhere close to the truth? We are anglers and when the fishing suddenly fires we forget all about the tough times. We are endless optimists and we hope for those occasions when everything comes together in what we feel is a perfect way. Doesn’t it amaze you how different things are year on year?

I was weedkilling out in the garden the other day and I came very close to spraying the top of my old Ford Focus estate to try and kill the various species of mould that continue to grow on the roof. I did an online valuation of it the other day and I was quoted the whopping sum of £315.00, and that was without anybody actually seeing the actual state of the car. Yes, the time has come. I need a new car. Help! What on earth do I go for?

If I didn’t have kids then it would be easy because I would still be driving a van, which to me is the ideal fishing wagon. But I have a couple of girls so the van thing doesn’t work these days. I have driven my Ford Focus estate for I think about twelve years now and it’s done me proud, so I could of course simply look around for a decent second hand one of them or even look into those PCP financing schemes for a new one that you then change over after say three years etc. I was asking around on Facebook the other day though and via that and looking around the internet it seems that the Skoda Octavia is pretty hard to beat as an estate - and yes, I need a car with plenty of space.

Now a mate of mine drives one of those Nissan Qashqai SUV things, and whilst I have rather disparagingly referred to it as a hairdresser’s car before - not that there is anything remotely wrong with hairdressers! - I have actually started to think that perhaps one of these SUV type cars is the way to go. I don’t need a 4x4 to negotiate any steep gravel drives leading up to a Chelsea mansion, there is no point me buying something that doesn’t do a decent bunch of miles to the gallon, I am not after some high performance driving machine that is best suited to a racetrack, and I am not into buying a car as some kind of appendage extension. But I do like the idea of slightly higher ground clearance because my current Ford Focus struggles to get down a slightly rutted lane with its lack of clearance, and it seems that some of these SUV cars have a good amount of backseat space for the kids.

My principal worry about an SUV is the fact that the boots don’t seem to be as large as you might find in something like that Skoda Octavia estate, or indeed my current mould sprouting car. Am I wrong to think like this? My wife has an estate so it’s not a big problem if we need to go somewhere with a load of stuff plus the dog of course, and a lot of the time I am travelling on my own or with a mate over to Ireland say, and it’s easy to put back seats down and fit enough crap in the car I suppose.

Any thoughts on these SUV cars, or should I avoid them completely? I don’t really want one of the larger ones and I reckon around that Qashqai or Mazda CX5 size sort of thing would do me. I am perfectly happy with a decent turbo diesel engine for the sort of driving and milage I do - I like a decent MPG figure of course - and I kinda take it that most modern cars have a half decent stereo etc. I’m not interested in flashy alloy wheels or any of that rubbish, but I would seriously welcome your help and thoughts on what I should be looking at. I’d think I’d be perfectly happy with say a Skoda Octavia estate or indeed another Ford Focus estate, but I am guessing that some of you here drive an SUV thing and I’d be interested to know your thoughts. And yes, I know squat about cars and I find it somewhat easier buying a lure rod! Have a good weekend and my thanks in advance for any help you can give me here.