Blog - Henry Gilbey

This is copied from a Facebook post that Neal Dews put up on Monday to describe what happened to him on the north coast of Cornwall last Sunday: “Yesterday morning this saved my life no questions asked I wouldn’t be here without it ! (there was a photo of an inflated lifejacket on this post). After passing through a cave from one beach to the next And coming out the other side put my head torch on and the sea was about 100 yards away , I took about a dozen steps and noticed a small swell coming in around kneehigh so I stood side on and brace myself only to see three waves coming over the top head high next thing im upside down under the water slammed into the rocks like jacket goes off and Surfaces me , winded , shiting myself with waders full of water. T/P (spinning reel) and tailwalk (rod) nowhere to be seen , then I noticed my lure snagged on a rock and the tip of my road sticking out of the water 20 yards away luckily managed to retrieve this , not so lucky what’s the double sided lure box that floated out to sea , don’t care though ! After the last 24 hours thinking this over and pulling sand from places I never even knew existed the facts of the matter are £70 saved my life , Don’t think about buying one do it boys ! Battered and bruised just walking but still here.”

So I messaged Neal through Facebook and said firstly that I was bloody glad he got out of this alive, and secondly if he would mind me calling him to ask about what happened and also ask why he was wearing a lifejacket. You need to know that not for one single second am I doing any of this lifejacket and angler safety work with the RNLI for any kind of glorification - and the RNLI know all about how long it takes to get messages and indeed culture changes like this through to enthusiasts as stubborn as we collectively are - but when I heard that Neal was wearing a lifejacket because of what we have been doing I cannot tell you how pleased I was for so many reasons. A very experienced angler got into serious trouble on a mark he has been fishing for twenty one years up on the north coast of Cornwall and he got to come home to his wife and two kids because he was wearing a roughly £70 auto inflate Crewsaver lifejacket that his family had given him for his recent 50th birthday - this one here that I reviewed a while back in fact and was wearing myself on Monday afternoon in some surprisingly bouncy south coast conditions. It’s such an easy bit of kit to wear.

Amendment: Apologies, I think Neal and I got our wires slightly crossed as regards the make of the lifejacket he had on when the proverbial hit the fan last Sunday. I am pretty sure it was actually a “Kru Sport 170”, and not the Crewsaver - but it makes no difference. Good lifejackets like these need not cost much and it’s a lot of essential gear for not much money.

Neal and I spoke for a fair while on Monday evening, and the way he described what happened to him sent a chill down my spine. It was very interesting to hear him use the word panic almost straight away. Bear in mind he’s been fishing the north coast for twenty one years, so he knows all about swell and the unpredictability of it - yet he got caught out big time, and it all went wrong horribly quickly. Some of what he said tied in almost uncannily to a talk I did at the fishing show on on Sunday, when somebody was asking me about how we might be able to take our chest waders off if we end up in the water, and somebody else asked me how you use a sling-bag when you’ve got a lifejacket on. You ain’t getting your waders off and I would ask if a certain way of carrying lures (and there are other ways of doing so) is more important than giving yourself the best possible chance of not dying when the shit hits the fan as it did with Neal.

Panic, and how fast things happened, that is what really struck me from talking with Neal. What happened to Neal hasn’t happened to me, but with the testing we have done and what I am learning as I go along, it has been my growing suspicion that if things go so badly wrong so damn quickly and unexpectedly - as it did with Neal on Sunday - I don’t care how experienced you are. You are going to panic, end of, and Neal said that as he very suddenly ended up in what sounds like a horrendous washing machine kind of situation, he was upended, his waders very quickly filled up with water and also sand (I never even thought about heavy sand getting into your waders), his sling-bag that he had left open filled up with water, the hood on his jacket filled up with water, and all this combined to give all that turbulent water lots more traction as such, and increase the sense of panic and helplessness. I am not trying to scare-monger at all here, but I asked Neal again and again: “would you have survived without your lifejacket?” You know the answer. He was amazed at how quickly his lifejacket auto-inflated and helped to right him and float after he had been literally upended, and then keep him afloat and his airways clear until the water receded and he could self-rescue.

I have not met Neal before but I am so bloody glad he survived this incident and got to go home to his wife and kids. Too many anglers over the years have not got to go home to their families. We need to be honest about all this and acknowledge how stupid and/or ignorant far too many of us are about our own safety when we are out fishing, and wearing a lifejacket for a lot of your shore based lure fishing is going to give you a far greater chance at getting out of a bad situation alive. The Art of Fishing are listing three different Crewsaver lifejackets on their website at the moment - check here - and yes, they are the full RRP and you could most likely search around the internet and find them a few quid cheaper. Firstly here I would ask you to please get your arse in gear and buy a lifejacket and then actually bloody wear it, and secondly to buy it from the Art of Fishing because any of the profits derived from the Crewsaver lifejacket sales are going to the RNLI.

If you ever end up in a situation like this, you seriously want to be wearing a lifejacket - this is a photo I shot while we were working with the RNLI this summer

All I am trying to do with this safety related stuff is use my voice as such to try and get the messages and information out there to try and help save anglers’ lives - there is nothing more to it than that. Haters will always hate, doubters will always doubt and say really helpful things like you shouldn’t be out fishing if you need to wear a lifejacket, and keyboard warriors/experts always know it all anyway, but I firmly believe that together with the RNLI we can get to the right people and do a lot of good here. Everything I have been doing with the RNLI feels so incredibly worth it because Neal survived due to the fact he was wearing a lifejacket because of what we have been doing. Some of you here kindly buy some of your fishing tackle via my affiliate links on this blog and website, but you need to know that there will never be an affiliate link associated with anything safety related. I don’t do this safety stuff for money and in some respects I am probably not really a very good businessman for getting involved like this, but some things to me are far more important than dosh. So glad you’re safe Neal and thanks for kindly being okay with me writing this blog post.

Never has this fishing safety related work we are doing with the RNLI felt more relevant, and if you are wondering why then I would ask you to read my previous blog post. I’m not going to bang on today because I’d rather let this new video do the talking - I put it up on Facebook last night and it’s gone a bit bananas with anglers viewing it and sharing it around, but my hope as ever is that anglers watch this new video and actually buy and wear at the very minimum an auto-inflate lifejacket. And of course it’s a profound thanks from me to all the people involved in putting this new video together. Please watch right to the end and you will understand why I am asking this.

You all have a good weekend - currently breaking my head here with the current weather conditions because there are bass around and I can’t get at them. My youngest girl turns 12 tomorrow and then at 3pm is the reason why I am currently feeling sick with excitement and nerves - England v New Zealand, holy frigging cow. Could we do it?

Damn I am loving the bit of surf based lure fishing for bass that I’m getting to do, and as with the whole lure fishing thing I am once again amazed at how much there is to learn and appreciate and fall head over heels in love with. If chucking lures at bass is your thing I fail to see how you could not love standing in a tumbling surf as the sound of crashing waves surrounds you and something slams into your lure amidst all that glorious turbulence………

I love how banging various metal lures out there is such a simple but effective way to catch bass, but as with all of this you can of course delve deeper into it all and start playing around a bit. The more of it I do, the more I am forced to learn about different kinds of surf and how the bass seem to react, how different lures do and do not work in different conditions, the kind of lure rod that I think works best for me when I am fishing like this, and so on. And I am absolutely fascinated in the whole slow jigging thing that has come over from Japan - metals can simply be metals, but they can also so much more.

Crumbs have I got a lot to learn about it, but I am also reminded that sometimes the most direct and simple approach is the way to go because the conditions dictate it. We were fishing a local beach early last week and we had what looked to be some pretty tasty surf fishing conditions. I had loaded up my lure box with a bunch of different metals and I had every intention of having a proper play with a few Major Craft slow jigs that I had picked up at the European Sport Fishing Show the other day.

Best laid plans eh? And that is why Mike Tyson’s famous saying “everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth” keeps rolling around my head when I make a few fishing plans in my head before I get out there and in amongst it - and then the actual conditions demand that we adopt and adapt our plans if we want to have the best chance at catching fish. I am often almost visualising how I’d like to fish before I get out there, but the wind direction and strength is of course the punch in the mouth.

Now you have to bear in mind that I am at day one with the whole slow jigging thing from the shore, but a few years ago I played around a bit with some metals rigged with assist hooks and they nailed bass and pollack big time. I am interested in it and I want to do more of it, but I hope that I am also realistic about when I can properly fish like this - and the other day was not the time for this. Make all the plans you like but I would argue that now you’ve got a strongish wind right in your kisser and/or slightly across and you’re also trying to time where you stand with the surges and any attempts at “technical lure fishing” kinda fly right out of the window. It seems to me that the whole point to this slow jigging stuff is maintaining proper and direct contact with your lure - which of course you can’t properly do when the wind especially is pumping right at you. That slack in my line is hugely reducing how I can properly work a lure.

So I do what I think I need to do to keep myself fishing - I “whack and crank”. I put on something nice and easy like the 28g Savage Gear Seeker, I whack it out there, and I crank it back. What more do you need to be doing when the conditions dictate this kind of approach? And wow do I love it when a bass around the 6lb mark goes and jumps on the end of this simple metal lure that I was doing nothing more to than winding it in. Surf fishing to me is another arrow in the quiver and I want to do more and more of it because it’s so bloody exciting………

I was shocked to get back from blanking yesterday and find out that John Wilson had died of a stroke over in Thailand I believe, and whilst the word “legend” is in my opinion grossly overused these days, to me John was a proper legend of our fishing world. It depends on your age of course, but I would guess that a fair number of you reading this are in the same boat as me and grew up watching John Wilson’s outstanding programmes on terrestrial TV, indeed it’s easy to forget that there was a time when we only had very few TV channels and John was the voice of fishing.

My profound apologies for “borrowing” this photo from the Angling Times website I think it was, but I don’t have any photos of John

Apparently John Wilson made 16 TV series in all and he also wrote a heap of fishing books and took some pretty serious photographs and so on, but as a youngster who was obsessed with fishing, John’s TV programmes were a big inspiration to me and I distinctly remember being gripped every single week because he was so damn skilful at getting across his knowledge and love for all kinds of fishing. You can imagine I am sure how much of a thrill it was for a young angler like me to go and stay with my godmother in Norfolk and go into John’s Norwich based tackle shop to buy bait and tackle from the man himself for the coarse fishing I was doing up there.

And then I got to meet John properly as such at a bunch of different fishing shows over the years and he could not have been more friendly or encouraging of my own very minor TV work that let’s be honest wasn’t a patch on how effortlessly he could convey his own incredible fishing skills. I will always remember when I was first “approached” by a guy to see if I was interested in trying out in front of the camera and seeing if we could start making some fishing programmes together, because that director who got hold of me had in fact directed a huge number of John’s TV programmes - so when we started working together I would naturally ask endless questions about all that amazing TV work and travel they did together.

Fishing has lost one of its legends in my opinion. Without a doubt John Wilson paved the way for the various satellite channels to pick up on fishing and pump out far too many lesser programmes and series (and I include my stuff in that statement) that no doubt found some kind of audience but were never, ever going to have the immense kind of impact that John’s TV work had on so many people. I grew up watching John’s shows and I credit him with helping to inspire my love for fishing. RIP John Wilson - the fishing world is not quite as good today with you not being a part of it……….

We were on the beach for about 5.45am this morning and the conditions were pretty damn tasty. By no means did we end up having an epic session, but to me there is something so wonderfully and eternally enjoyable about being out fishing with a good friend and connecting with a few bass. I get that we live in a small, over-populated country and we must do all we can to protect our fishing in a variety of different ways, but as long as I live I will hold on to how fun it is simply going fishing, and it so floats my boat when I am fishing with somebody who feels the same way………

Please have a close look at the photo above that I shot this morning of Mark bending into a bass he’s just hooked in the surf. Bear in mind that Mark is just north of 50 years old and he works in the Art of Fishing tackle shop and therefore is surrounded by all things fishing all week long. How easy would it be to lose a bit of that love for fishing when it’s your work as well, so the photo above speaks volumes to me with how much simple fun it is to go fishing and catch some fish. Look at that smile on Mark’s face - surely it’s the perfect advert for how much we so love what we do? We went fishing early this morning, we caught a few fish, and we had a complete blast - does it need to get much better?

And I also got to christen a brand new spinning reel that I took out fishing for the first time. I have been itching to get my hands on the new and not very expensive but apparently very well sealed against a good amount of saltwater ingress Penn Spinfisher VI, and yesterday a 4500 size arrived for a bit of a play. This Penn Spinfisher VI 4500 (380g loaded with line) weighs 50g less than the hugely impressive Penn Slammer III 4500 (429g loaded with line) and it sits rather nicely on a 10’ lure rod that I am trying out for my surf fishing. I have watched a few YouTube videos about this new Penn reel and they said it’s fine to load it up to the brim with braid (you would never do that with the Penn Clash!), so I put 300m of the “Blue Camo” 20lb Spiderwire Stealth 8 braid on with a load of mono backing and took it out fishing this morning.

Now the reel’s a little “tighter” when you wind a lure in than on say a Shimano, but it’s as smooth as you like, it casts like a dream, and I am guessing that little bit of “tightness” is down to the various seals (which I seriously want) and will most likely loosen up a bit more over time. Very early days of course with this new Penn Spinfisher VI 4500, but some very early impressions are that a spinning reel like this which I am seeing online for around the £130 mark could be a seriously handy weapon for a lot of the lure fishing we do, and I like how there is also a smaller 3500 and a 2500 version as well. Don’t get me wrong, I do love an ultra-lightweight, turns as smooth as butter Shimano or Daiwa, but I do not love those lovely Japanese reels when there’s a load of saltwater washing over and into them - plenty more to come. You all have a good weekend and the best of luck to Ireland tomorrow evening in what is surely the rugby match of the year…………..

Nope, I am not telling you to go out and buy a new fishing rod because if you want to bang a few lures out into an autumnal or winter surf the chances are that you already have a lure rod that’ll do just fine. I’m merely thinking aloud here and because it’s the way my brain is wired, when I am out fishing I am often thinking about how I might better deal with the specific conditions I am faced with……..

So I take a session from last week for example which I alluded to here in fact. Good sessions and then blank sessions are starting to really inform me about what surf conditions I need to be looking for and so on (because not all surf is remotely the same), but the common factor with surf fishing seems to be wind, or rather the fact that when I head out to chuck lures off a beach and into some surf I am having to deal with generally a lot more breeze than when I might chuck a DoLive Stick around a quiet estuary or something like that.

And for that “direct contact” kind of lure fishing I’ll take the loveliest high-end Japanese lure rods you can throw at me thank you very much, but when that wind starts to blow and my braid is all over the place, tables of tugging surf are trying to knock me off my feet, and I am struggling to maintain contact with my (more often than not) metal lure, well in my opinion you can forget about all that lovely high-end subtlety. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and it seems to me that the surf type of lure rod I am leaning towards doesn’t actually need to break the bank.

The one thing I am finding out that I seriously don’t want from a lure rod for my surf fishing is a rod tip that bounces around in the breeze - which means I am after a pretty “stiff in the tip” lure rod but very importantly I don’t want it to be so bloody powerful that my shoulders want to fall off after an hour or so. I am increasingly leaning towards a good 25-40g and perhaps 50g metal that cuts into the wind as being about as heavy as I am needing to go so far, hence I don’t find myself needing a scaffold pole of a rod which of course it could be if I want something fairly stiff or extremely “steely” and fast.

The new Palms/Zetz Slow Blatt Cast Up 40g

I tried out a new lure rod at the start of last week and for banging lures out it’s an absolute dream - so easy and effortless and efficient. But now I am trying to work that same rod in a strongish side wind and it’s driving me mad how the tip is flapping around like a demented tulip and I feel like I have lost all connection to my lure. I grant you that for simply whacking and cranking metals this might not really matter, but I am increasingly drawn to some of those fantastic looking and very interesting slow-jigs for some of my surf fishing - and for them I need all the contact to my lure I can get.

The not cheap and by a margin the best 9’6’’ lure rod I have ever fished with as an example doesn’t do it for me when I am faced with some proper surf. I have never liked a lure rod as much as this incredible Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod (review here), and the tip on it is utterly sublime, but I find myself increasingly drawn to some considerably cheaper lure rods for my surf fishing because their slightly lack of subtlety in the tip sections is in fact what I want.

The rather impressive Apia Grandage 100M 10' 12-42g lure rod in action

I am starting to play around with the HTO Nebula 10’ 15-56g lure rod for example, and whilst its power and stiffness make it into a lure rod I don’t really want for my day to day lure fishing as such, I absolutely love it in a decent bit of surf, a whole lot of breeze, and some metals on the end of my line. Paired with the awesome Penn Slammer III 3500 or 4500 spinning reel (review here) or indeed the brand new Penn Spinfisher VI 3500 or 4500 which are cheaper, lighter and nearly as well protected against saltwater intrusion than the incredible Slammers, it’s a hell of a sweet combination for some fairly heavy duty surf fishing. What I really want now is that rather fantastic HTO Nebula 9’ 12-42g lure rod (review here) taken to 10’ long and at the same casting weight, because this I reckon would make for a brilliant surf style lure rod for targeting our bass in some wonderfully turbulent conditions, but with a touch more “precision” in the tip than the heavier 15-56g version. Another lure rod I have had a few casts with and am starting to fall for in a big way is the new Apia Grandage 100M 10' 12-42g lure rod. Give me more time with it for a proper review, but to me it’s a lot better than the previous generation and now discontinued APIA Foojin’R Grand Swell 96MH 9’6’’ 7-42g which I really liked, and overall it’s a lot more versatile than the admittedly somewhat cheaper HTO Nebula 10’ 15-56g. Lots more to think about as I hope for lots more ideal surf fishing conditions over the next couple of months………….

The new Penn Spinfisher VI 4500 spinning reel, loaded up with 20lb Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid in the rather nice “Blue Camo” colour - because I am a hopeless tackle tart………

It’s pretty bloody obvious that I’ve got a very serious issue with lure fishing rods, but if there is one thing that all this rod testing/playing around with has done for me, it’s to seriously nail how a lure rod needs to be for me to really, really like it. I like a number of different rods, but I really, really like only a few - I knew I was going to at least like this brand new Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod from the very first waggle I had with it on the Art of Fishing stand at this year’s European Sport Fishing Show, but what do I think now I have actually fished with it?

Crumbs, or words to that effect. If we were to meet up and you were to ask me to pick the one 9’6’’ lure fishing rod that is available off the shelf here in the UK and essentially suits me perfectly, then as of November 2018 I’d show you this new Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod. I am trying my best to be a grownup reviewer and find a fault or two with this lure fishing rod, but I can’t, indeed if a fishing tackle company could get inside my head and build me a 9’6’’ lure fishing rod for how I go about a huge amount of my lure fishing for bass here and over in Ireland then they’d end up making a rod like this one that I am reviewing here. Yep, I really, really like this rod, and if I didn’t own the best 9’6’’ lure rod I have ever come across and I was in the market for one then I’d be seriously contemplating dropping my cash on this one. This Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod is from Tailwalk’s “Borderless” range of lure rods, and via some dodgy Google translate my understanding is that these lure rods are designed to cover all kinds of lure fishing based on the weights of lures you might use and the length of rod you might like.

And at the “on offer” price of £199.99 it is in my humble opinion a complete steal how much rod you are getting for the money, indeed I think that when compared to other lure rods out there it’s still fantastic value for money at the £279.99 price I believe it will go back up to when current stocks run out and another order is put in by those purveyors of fine lure fishing filth at the Art of Fishing tackle shop in Wadebridge. I don’t mean in any way to belittle spending around £200 on something, rather that I think for what you are getting this lure fishing rod represents a serious bargain.

Now of course it goes without saying that we all like different fishing rods, but I would also suggest that you and I are more than likely into different kinds of lure rods than we might have been a while back - and to me a lot of this comes about from how we learn more about lure fishing for bass and how our methods and techniques naturally evolve and change. With how much I fish with soft plastics these days for example, I can’t help it that my opinions on lure fishing rods around the specs of something like this “Max 35g” Tailwalk rod will naturally be based around how said rod fishes with soft plastics - and then onto the other lures I’d fish with………...

Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' up to 35g lure rod 03.gif

I have never understood it when some anglers say that a rod designed for soft plastics needs a soft tip on it, but then I also don’t want a poker of a rod that feels dead in the hands. Give me a rod somewhere around 8’ to 9’6’’ long and rated up to say 30g or 35g like this one and if the tip on it doesn’t feel right to me when I am working a 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick rigged weedless and weightless then I am most likely going to leave the rod alone. I then need the rod to feel just right when working a bunch of different surface lures, whacking various hard lures, and then bumping something like a Fiiish Black Minnow around. Rightly or wrongly I expect a 9’6’’ rod rated to cast lures up to 35g to be as close to a “do as much as possible” style of lure rod whilst obviously accepting that I am not going to be fishing in a raging surf and blasting 50g metals on a lure rod like this. Horses for courses and all that.

I want a lure rod like this to be as light and responsive as possible. I want it to sit in my hands and feel like it’s all working together when I am fishing, and this Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g is just that type of lure fishing rod to me. For how I’d use a lure rod like this and for what I’d expect it to cope with, this thing is just frigging sublime - wonderfully crisp and steely and light and responsive. I love the handle, I like Fuji stainless SIC guides, and overall it seems to be very well built. The only potential issue could be the grip on the end of the butt section as per the photo above - five minutes with the rod and it feels perfectly normal, but I guess the minimal size and design could be a marmite thing. To me it suits the design and feel of the rod.

The Daiwa Morethan Scouter 110S surface lure

I have absolutely belted one of Mark’s 32g Kilty Catcher metal lures on it and I have turned into a strong wind and wound a rather interesting surface lure up with no worries at all - the 30g Daiwa Morethan Scouter 110S (110mm, 30g, and wow does this thing get out there and I am really interested to see how over time it might do against the larger Patchinko which I know is a killer surface lure but it’s increasingly annoying me how a lure this expensive doesn’t seem to be made very well). For sure this rod can cast up to 35g if you need to, but you wouldn’t be buying a lure rod like this if all you wanted to do with it was fish 35g lures. It’s the same with all these kinds of rods - there’s a sweet spot, and to me this outstanding Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g is at its most responsive with lures up to about the 30g mark, and with how well it fishes a DoLive Stick or some of the smaller hard lures then I’d suggest it’s hugely versatile and perfectly suited to how so many of us go about our shore based lure fishing for bass. Wow.

And so you know, there are a bunch of EGinn rods in this new range of Tailwalk Borderless rods, and most of them seem to be on offer here in the UK at the moment - check here and here. I waggled a bunch of them at the recent fishing show and there are some incredibly impressive rods in there. Please bear in mind though that just because you might have two rods from two different companies but with the same sort of specs, it doesn’t then mean that the two rods are the same. Without a doubt I’d describe this Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod as a “precision” kind of lure rod, whereas something like the similar specced Apia Grandage 96ML 9’6’’ 7-28g (review here) is to me far more of a “rough and tumble” kind of lure rod. Does that make sense? Both rods will do a huge amount of our lure fishing, but I’d tend to take the Tailwalk over the APIA because I think the added “precision” of the Tailwalk better suits soft plastics and lighter surface lures like the killer Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire, whereas I’d take the APIA over the Tailwalk if I fished say the bigger Patchinko or bouncier north coast conditions more of the time - and so on.

As ever I must give a lot of credit to the anglers behind these SOS (Save our Sea Bass) campaigns - they are working tirelessly to try and improve the whole bass stocks situation, they are doing it for free, and with how vital this work is and how easy they make it for us anglers to go on their website and lend our support, well to me to do so is a complete no-brainer and I would urge you to do so. Please, please get behind this new SOS campaign and stop burying your head in the sand and hoping that we somehow magically end up with more and bigger bass to catch…………

From the SOS homepage: “A number of fixed netters have been illegally targeting sea bass – cynically abusing their “unavoidable by-catch only” allowance. To stop this, the EU Commission has proposed to restrict the amount of bass they can land to 1% of their total daily catch. A percentage of catch restriction is the final step needed to make the bass fishery sustainable and transform the quality of bass angling across Northern Europe. We now need to persuade our Fisheries Ministers, George Eustice, to push hard for this to be accepted at the December Fishing Opportunities meeting. Please click on the link here to send a message to your MP to crank up the pressure”.

How hard is it to follow this link and follow the very easy to understand instructions? Hell, SOS have even given you the text to copy and paste into your email, plus a simple search facility to find your local MP and send the email to them. Here’s the text from that link: “Sea Bass – Percentage of catch restriction for commercial fixed netters. The only people who can now legally target bass are sea anglers and commercial hook and liners – the most sustainable stakeholders, yielding the greatest social and economic benefits. However, the bass stock is still currently below a safe level and a number of commercial fixed netters have been illegally targeting bass and landing them, abusing their “unavoidable by-catch only” allowance. The EU Commission has responded by proposing to extend to fixed netters the law that currently applies to bottom trawlers: bass landings to be restricted to 1% of their daily catch. This is an excellent proposal, the last piece of the jigsaw needed to deliver a sustainable bass fishery for future generations. But it needs to be tweaked to perhaps 10% of daily catch, to avoid discarding of bass legitimately caught as bycatch by fixed nets in a mixed fishery. Unfortunately, Defra is intending to oppose the EU Commission’s proposal because Defra has never really accepted the EU law and policy that fixed netters should not be allowed to target bass. Challenging the EU Commission’s proposal is effectively saying “we support fixed netters illegally targeting bass” – not an attractive position for the Government to be taking. Defra points to fixed netting landings having reduced to 80 tonnes, but this simply does not address the matter of stopping the illegal activity that is taking place. I should be very grateful indeed if you would: discuss this matter with George Eustice prior to the 17 December Fishing Opportunities meeting in Brussels and seek to persuade him that the UK should not be trying to subvert a previously agreed policy decision and should be supporting measures to stop illegal bass fishing activity; and raise this issue at the annual Fisheries Debate. Thank you very much for your help.”

And a big thank you from me to you for supporting this campaign. Remember, all you need to do is go to this webpage here and follow the instructions. It’s so easy to do that I am entirely convinced even a few “computer challenged” mates of mine could successfully complete the email and send it off to their local MP! You all have a good weekend and may England please sign off their autumn campaign with a thoroughly convincing thumping of the Aussies. And a belated congratulations to Ireland on such an incredible win over the All Blacks last weekend. Ireland never looked liked losing, what an epic game of rugby, and the Six Nations is now looking ever more worrying………..

I am sure you are no different to me in that you use certain lures more than others firstly because they have caught well for you in the past, and secondly because you or I then naturally believe that they are a bit better than other similar lures. Confidence is of course key - and I would suggest that it is of particular importance when you are lure fishing - but if you dial it down and think about it, how do you actually prove whether one lure really is better than another lure?

It matters not really, but it always interests me when various anglers rave about certain lures working so well for them and a part of me often wonders whether a different lure might have worked even better and so on - and I am in the same boat here. You can only catch with what you have on of course, and if you or I have a good session and/or catch a particularly good fish then it’s pretty obvious that the lure we had on was working well, and also that because it did, we will naturally turn to it again and think to ourselves how much better it is than another lure - and so on.

It was so satisfying to see some nice Irish bass jump on the Spittin’ Wire as well…………

So yesterday morning we were out fishing and Mark and I gravitated towards our rucksacks at a certain point to grab some coffee etc. I happened to have the Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lure on the end of my clip and I happened to say to Mark how much this lure had become my go-to surface lure and that it was a frigging killer and so on (this is not a blog post about the Spittin’ Wire because you could insert a number of different lures into the mix here and I am sure a number of you have similar stories) - but is it really a better surface lure than other similar lures though? Well it doesn’t matter because I chose to buy some and you don’t remotely have to, rather that I have come to firmly trust in this surface lure because it has caught me a number of decent bass fish this year in estuaries and on the open coast, in the UK and over in Ireland. You most likely have a lure in your armoury that you like as much as I like this Spittin’ Wire, and so on.

And I said to Mark yesterday morning that damn was I glad I trusted in that kind Spanish angler who told me about this surface lure earlier in the year, and I was glad I took the punt and bought a couple, but that although the lure had worked well for me (and for Mark I might add), at the end of the day could we really be sure that there was something a bit special about this Spittin’ Wire because you can only fish with the one lure, and would another lure have produced the various bass for us?

That’s just it - you will never quite know, but Mark did say something very interesting yesterday morning. He told me to think back to a couple of sessions where we were fishing close together and I had recently bought my first ever couple of Spittin’ Wire lures and Mark hadn’t yet. I must admit that numbers and sizes of bass tend to blend into one overall experience for me, but Mark pointed out the fact that on those particular couple of sessions I had not only outfished him, but the bass I caught were noticeably bigger than the ones Mark caught. I was fishing with my new Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lures, and Mark was fishing with the Tackle House Vulture and the Xorus Patchinko 125 he told me - two surface lures I happen to like as well but I’ll still take the IMA Salt Skimmer.

Now you know me by now I would hope - I don’t compete with my fishing and it bothers me not who catches the most of the biggest fish if at the end of the day we have had a blast. Even better for me if the light goes off and I can nail some photographs that float my boat. I hate seeing it when anglers get all arsey with each other because so and so catches more or bigger bass and they end up begrudging their mate’s success, but I guess that fishing does it for us in many different ways.

Anyway, so Mark was saying to me yesterday morning that he did his utmost to ignore the fact that I had been fishing with a different surface lure for those couple of sessions in particular, because most of us have quite enough lures already and do we really need many more? No comment! Seriously though, I have a bunch of different surface lures here at home that have all caught bass for me, so did I really need to buy a couple of those Spittin’ Wire ones? Whatever the case, it obviously got Mark thinking - we were fishing close together, but I happened to catch more and bigger bass and the one variable seemed to be the lure.

So Mark did what many of us here would do, and me very much included - he bought some of those Spittin’ Wire surface lures himself, which now means that we have often been fishing the same surface lure at the same time on the same marks, so this then takes that “different” lure factor out of the equation. But Mark has caught a number of big bass now on the lure and a while back landed his second biggest shore caught bass ever at 76cms long.

So when Mark and I both ended up raving to each other about how well the lure had done for us this year and of course how killer we believe it to be, I guess that for us it’s all the “proof” we need - because of course there is nothing remotely scientific here and you can only catch with what you have on. As I said earlier, insert your lure of choice in here and I am sure loads of you have had similar experiences. Ask either one of us though and we’re going to tell you that in our opinion this particular surface lure is absolutely lethal. But why? Now that’s another story and Mark has an interesting theory! More to come……….

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you. And please note that there are no links here to this Spittin’ Wire lure, but a little birdy tells me that the Art of Fishing do have a bunch of them in the shop but that they are not putting them on the website. Do with that info as you will, because I know I am!

Following on from Monday’s post and partly because the weather is raging outside and not really having a viable fishing option doesn’t half get the old grey cells racing - the subject of what kind of sound, if any, a surface lure makes, and I would suggest that even if we buy a “silent” surface lure and also because I don’t know what fish do or do not hear in comparison to us human beings, a lure that has split rings and hooks and splashes around on the surface is always going to be making some kind of noise or commotion regardless……….

Are those ball bearings and the sound they make the key, or is it profile and how the lure works across the top?

Anyway, as per that post from Monday, it was something my mate Mark said when we were out fishing the other day that’s got me rattling every single surface lure I can find here at home right up against my ear to try and get an idea of the different kinds of sounds they are making (are we talking about the pitch?). This has to be a blog post about that Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire lure again because that was the lure Mark and I were talking about, but please note that there are no affiliate links here concerned with that lure and there are of course loads of other surface lures out there that catch plenty of bass! In this day and age of regular people lashing out on social media before they would ever stoop to stop and think before doing so (when did the facts ever actually matter eh?!), sadly I feel the need to lay this one out for you - I AM NOT TRYING TO GET YOU TO BUY THE SPITTIN’ WIRE SURFACE LURE! Hell, if I could afford it I would buy them all anyway.

Anyway, back to the subject of sound, and then insert whatever lure into the discussion as you see fit. I was asking Mark why he thought that this innocuous looking and not very big surface lure had done so well for us this year, and he said something which I must admit I hadn’t thought of - for sure this Spittin’ Wire has a ball bearing that moves around and makes a distinct rattling sound when you either shake it or indeed work it along the surface (i.e. it’s not a “silent” surface lure), but Mark had come to a conclusion that it was the “density” or I think pitch of that rattling sound that was doing it so much for the bass when compared to other surface lures he has used.

Xorus Patchinko 125 surface lure

So we’re standing there on a rock on Sunday morning as dawn begins to make itself known, and I am obviously now carefully rattling my Spittin’ Wire right up against my ear to try and better understand what I am hearing. The only other surface lure I had in my lure box was the rather lovely Xorus Patchinko 125 and the differences in the sound were very obvious.

You need to bear in mind here that my ears have been carefully trained over many years now to understand the subtle nuances in all manner of extreme metal music, and especially black metal and all its glorious sub-genres. So I reckon I’ve got pretty handy ears! Anyway, I get back home and I start my experiments as such - which consist of rooting around in various boxes to find a bunch of different surface lures, and then I sit here at my desk and I scientifically rattle them all up against my ear to see if I can hear any discernible differences.

And I can, indeed all the surface lures I have here which are obviously designed to make some sort of rattling or clicking sound when you work them across the top all seem to be making a subtly different kind of sound. Now not for one second am I trying to tell you that these differences in sound make any kind of difference to your catch rates (do I need to put that in capitals?!), but I do happen to find it really interesting how Mark has a theory about why the Spittin’ Wire has worked so well for us - and as per my post from Monday and not really being able to properly prove or disprove theories like this, who is to say that he hasn’t hit the nail on the head? Or is it profile and/or size and/or colour and/or quality of sound and so on?

From day one with it, the IMA Salt Skimmer has been a killer surface lure for me

What I have found interesting after my very scientific sound experiments here at my desk is that a lure that has yet to do it for me - the Xorus Frosty (and yes, I know plenty of anglers who slay on it) - has a very high-pitched kind of sound from what I assume are a few very small ball bearings sitting in an internal chamber, whereas a surface lure that has seriously done it for me over the years - the IMA Salt Skimmer - has a correspondingly deep-pitched sound from what seems to be one single and larger ball bearing in its chamber. And so on. This Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire seems to have a fairly deep-pitched rattling sound that does seem to sound subtly different to any other surface lure I have got here, and it’s also interesting to note how another surface lure that I have started to really like this year - the Xorus Patchinko 125 - seems to have a sound that pitch wise sits between the Frosty and the Spittin’ Wire. And so on.

I have seen plenty of good fish caught on the Xorus Frosty, but for whatever reason it has yet to do it properly for me

What does any of this prove? Absolutely nothing of course, and as I said earlier, I am not in any way trying to tell you that the Spittin’ Wire is any better than any other surface lures out there. Mark’s theory has got me thinking though, and to me that has to be a good thing, and especially with the depths of winter coming up and what then manifests itself into my urge to buy a few new lures for the season ahead because I am weak-willed and tell myself that something subtly different might just be the key. Is the particular sound that this Spittin’ Wire makes making a difference? Are the fish remotely hearing or sensing what we are hearing? Who the hell really knows? And that’s just fine by me………

Sexual chocolate?

I absolutely love this time of year here in Cornwall for bass fishing, but what the hell can you do but hope for the right conditions in a season which in some respects owes us nothing, and especially after that quite incredible late spring and early summer we had. It’s as good as December and I feel kinda bad that in many parts of the UK you bass nuts have hung up your lure gear until sometime in spring or early summer next year, but here’s me banging on about how good the bass fishing can still be down here - if we get the right conditions though……….

Early December last year

Which of course is pretty bloody obvious when our fishing lives revolve around the sea and her many moods, but more so at this time of year when we simply can’t go complaining when the wind and rain hits like it did the last couple of days for example. It is winter after all and what on earth should we expect? Hell, it wasn’t that many years ago that I was literally praying to the weather gods to give me as many SW gales per winter as possible for my cod fishing, yet here we are now and because I am an angler and we will always ask for more, I am now asking for “nice” weather conditions that give me a decent bit of fizz but don’t blow the coastline out and give me mountainous seas which we can’t attack with our lure gear.

Xmas Eve last year…………still plenty of time!

Anglers eh?! If I could control the weather I’d actually be asking for flat calm conditions on the next new moon set of tides because I have got my eye on a few particular locations that I so badly want to fish at night - and I need calm conditions for this. Then I’d like lovely choppy conditions please as we come off those tides so I can head for the north coast and fish a few spots that traditionally tend to work pretty well at this time of year - and so on. Will I get this? Most likely not of course, but what’s the harm in asking? There is no other god than the mighty Rotting Christ and the brand new song they have just released below (best band in the world, and that’s a fact), but I firmly believe in the weather gods and I shall be on my knees to ask for just the right conditions please! You all have a good weekend and I hope that some of you here find some bass which are intent on smashing your lures.

I was going to put these annual Gear of the Year posts up next week, but thanks to the sodding weather and the coastline being in such bad shape at the moment I thought I’d get on with it. As ever these Gear of the Year things are no more than my opinions after a decent amount of time with the various items - I know what I like and no doubt you will like different stuff, but if my thoughts and opinion manage to help a few of you out then that’s more than enough for me. If there is a bit of fishing tackle which has done particularly well or particularly badly, then please let me know down in the comments section at the bottom of the blog post. Enjoy……

Product of the year no.1 2018 - An auto-inflate lifejacket that comes with a crotch strap. Take your pick from the lifejackets I have either reviewed (check here and here) or that I am continuing to wear and will review in due course. A complete no-brainer to me for much of the lure fishing that so many of us do here. Easy items to find online, and please keep an eye on the Art of Fishing website or speak to them if you are going to buy a lifejacket as their profits on lifejacket sales are going to the RNLI.

Best lure rod that you can buy here in the UK 2018 - Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’ 10-30g. I thought about this a lot, because whilst the awesome but a lot more expensive HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g remains for me the best all round lure rod we can get off the shelf here in the UK (review here), the brilliant Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’ 10-30g crept up on me for a few reasons - it’s a truly fantastic fishing 9’ lure rod, it is somewhat cheaper than the 9’3’’ HTO Shore Game rod, and I am so pleased that we now have a lure rod here in the UK that replaces and improves upon the discontinued Major Craft Skyroad 9’ 10-30g. Review here of the rather special Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’ 10-30g and hats off to the nice people at Chesil Bait’n’Tackle for getting this rod made. Available here and here in the UK. Special mention but I haven’t had enough time with it to consider it here - the seriously lovely Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod, review here.

This Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid has been on this reel for two years I believe, and the guy fishes hard

Braid of the year 2018 - Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8. Is it because the name “Spiderwire” is in there that this brilliant Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid doesn’t seem to be getting the love it deserves? (I never used the old Spiderwire braid, but I heard all manner of differing reports about it). I have used this newer Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid a lot though and I know one angler in particular who has had the same 20lb Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid in the red colour on his spinning reel for a couple of years now and it has hardly lost any colour and the braid truly feels as good as new. There are four braids that I trust completely which come in at under the £20 mark for a 150 yard or so spool - Sufix 832, Sufix Performance Pro 8 (just discontinued but still readily available, replacement coming soon, fishing with it at the moment and it’s fantastic), Daiwa J-Braid, and then this Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 braid which is the cheapest of the lot but is just as good as the others. Review here, and if you go looking online it’s not a hard braid to find.

Leader material of the year 2018 - Varivas Hard Top fluorocarbon. What’s not to like? I have a thing for Varivas lines as indeed I seriously do for Sufix, and I really like how this Varivas Hard Top fluoro comes in 80m spools that cost only £8.99. A fluoro leader has to feel right to me, and whilst I know that is not remotely scientific, this Varivas Hard Top just felt good from the off, and the 15lb and 20lb versions I have used for a while now have performed perfectly. It knots very well - I only use the FG knot for my braid to leader connections - and I can’t prove this but it does seem to me that this Varivas Hard Top fluoro is a very tough leader material with high abrasion resistance. I have written the breaking strains on the spools because I don’t do PE numbers and fluoro yet! My only complaint would be to ask why Varivas couldn’t have put 80m of fluoro on somewhat smaller spools that then take up less room in a rucksack. Veals Mail Order is the place for this line, see here.

Hard lure of the year 2018 - Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lure. I don’t use hard lures as much as I used to, but one hard lure I have ended up using a hell of a lot this year because I have found it to be absolutely bloody lethal for bass is the Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lure - with my eternal thanks to the Spanish angler who so kindly told me all about it and convinced me to part with my cash. Damn am I glad I did! Casts great, looks lovely on the water, and I can’t get away from how this Spittin’ Wire has caught a bunch of good bass for me this year, plus for a few anglers I know and fish with as well. Search “Spittin’ Wire” in the search box over on the right of this page and you will see what I mean. Oh, and I removed the split ring that comes rigged on the lure and I caught my biggest ever bass after doing so, so I guess it doesn’t matter. Not an easy lure to track down, but I believe the Art of Fishing still has a few that they are not putting on their website - I bought mine from a website in Spain, here.

Best way to carry my lures when I am actually fishing 2018 - HPA Chest Pack, again. I make no apologies for continuing to praise this HPA Chest Pack which in fact I wear around my waist with a shoulder strap connected to it. I do keep my eyes open for similar systems and I have seen and indeed tried on a few different ones this year, but nothing has come close to how unobtrusive and easy to wear the HPA Chest Pack is. I have used them for so long now that I know I’ll get about a year to a year and a half out of one before where the shoulder lugs attach to the bag end up giving way, but at the price and how well this HPA Chest Pack works for me, I can live with that just fine. I can’t find this item for sale in the UK, so have a look for the HPA France website and find it on there.

Waterproof jacket of the year - Vision Kust, again. I really like the Hodgman Aesis Shell waterproof jacket (review here), but it’s the minimalist design of the mighty Vision Kust that continues to do it for me that little bit more. It just works, as do their Vision’s Ikon chest waders, and I can’t really ask for much more than that. The closest to perfect waterproof jacket I have ever worn for my fishing. Easy to find online. Review here.

Wading boots of the year 2018 - Dunlop safety boots, again. I was about five months into a brand new and not cheap pair of wading boots that were easily the most comfortable wading boots I have ever worn and I was about to blog about them being a bit brilliant but then they went and failed on me. I have used a pair of Simms Freestone wading boots which I found for a nice price a fair amount this year and I do really like them - and especially because there are no metal eyelets unlike on their previous generation and truly rubbish G3 Guide boots - but I have lost a bunch of studs now that just disappeared from the soles when I have never, ever lost a single stud from a pair of Simms wading boots in the past. So it’s back to the cheap as chips Dunlop safety boots being used as wading boots, all details here. You will need to go to the hellhole that is a Sports Direct shop to find these boots.

Accessory of the year 2018 no.1 - VMC 7554B BN (Black Nickel finish) 2X-Strong Inline Barbless Treble hook. If I am putting new treble hooks on a hard lure then these are now my trebles of choice. Pretty much perfect if you ask me, but for whatever reason they still aren’t that easy to find for sale here in the UK.

Accessory of the year 2018 no.2 - STURME Locking Carabiner Aluminum D Ring Clip. I bought these cheap as chips carabiner type clips off Amazon (check here) and I use them for attaching various bits and pieces to the neoprene belt on which my HPA Chest Pack sits, as well as onto my rucksack or whatever. Obviously at this price they are not for climbing!, but as a simple way of say clipping a fish-grip to my belt which I can then easily clip on and off, then these STURME Locking Carabiner Aluminum D Ring Clip are just about perfect - very lightweight, very cheap, and showing no signs of rust either.

Product of the year no.2 2018 - Nitecore NU25 rechargeable headlamp. It still amazes me how light and small this headlamp is, it continues to perform flawlessly for me, and in my opinion it’s a complete steal for the money. This Nitecore NU25 rechargeable headlamp is just bloody brilliant and whilst the world of course moves on and new stuff comes out all the time, I will be amazed if a rechargeable headlamp that is so perfect for my night fishing these days appears on the market anytime soon. Review here, and easy to find online.

Spinning reel of the year 2018 - Penn Slammer III 3500. Sure it’s a bit heavier than a comparably sized Shimano 4000 or Daiwa equivalent, but put the Slammer III 3500 on a bunch of different rods and go out fishing with it rather than analysing the weight and/or “balance points” and it feels fantastically reassuring. The one I have been using this year is not technically my reel so I have been deliberately drowning it in saltwater on regular occasions and then washing it down under the hose when I get home and re-oiling occasionally as I would any other spinning reel - and it’s as smooth as it was when it first came out of the box. Treat an often far more expensive but admittedly buttery-smooth and lighter-weight Japanese spinning reel the same and it simply ain’t going to take it. The Penn Slammer III 3500 is a frigging machine and I love fishing with it in the surf and rougher conditions especially. Review here and available to buy here in the UK. And I love that handle!

Special mention hard lure of the year 2018 - Shimano Exsence Responder 109F. It casts great, it swims nice and shallow, and it catches bass which of course helps, but it’s a combination of how well the lure works AND how it’s remaining in such good condition that has brought about my mentioning this lovely little Shimano Exsence Responder 109F (109mm 15g) here. I have used it a fair bit this year, it’s in my lure box most of the time I guess, and I do wash my lure boxes in freshwater after most fishing trips but I’d expect my hard lures to start showing signs of rust and so on - and let’s be honest, some of these not remotely cheap hard lures should be staying in good condition a lot longer if you ask me (the regular Patchinko anyone?) - so what the hell Shimano Japan are doing to their hard lures I have no idea, but I can’t find a single sign of rust or discolouration anywhere on this killer little Shimano Exsence Responder 109F that has become one of my go-to shallow diving hard lures. The photo above is of the one that I own which first got used in anger in April when it caught me my first two (small) bass of the year, and I shot the photo above the other day - that is how good this lure still looks. And yes, those are the original split rings and treble hooks that the lure came with - it’s as good as brand new. Available here in the UK.

Waders of the year 2018 - Vision Ikon chest waders, again, plus the Vision Ikon waist waders. This is getting somewhat repetitive now, but once again it’s the Vision Ikon breathable chest waders because to me they are by miles the best value for money waders we can get our hands on, and in my opinion they compare more than favourably to waders costing far more. How do I know this? Well I have had two pairs of more expensive breathable chest waders fail on me this year as a pretty handy example, yet I go back to the Ikons and they keep on going. I’d love to be able to tell you about a new pair of chest waders that did a whole lot more for less money than the Ikons, but if they exist then I haven’t come across them yet. Review here. I am also putting the Vision Ikon waist waders into this waders of the year 2018 because they are bloody brilliant for any number of different reasons, as per here. You can often find a good deal on the Ikons if you go looking.

Soft plastic of the year 2018 - 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick again, but in the newish white colour. There are various soft plastics out there that you can fish like the DoLive Stick, but I still haven’t found one that floats my boat nearly as much as the DoLive Stick does, and now we have it in a solid white colour, well that was my year kinda made! The biggest shore/lure caught bass I have personally heard of this year came on the 6’’ white DoLive Stick (see here), and I have caught a bunch of bass on them from bright sunlight through to those wonderfully dark nights, and almost every condition in between. Here’s me hoping that either these solid white 6’’ long DoLive Sticks remain available forever, or that I have now panic-bought enough to last me for evermore! White DoLive Stick available here in the UK, other colours here.

Best lure rod regardless of price or not being able to buy it here in the UK because the powers that be haven’t got a clue when it comes to “modern saltwater lure fishing” and what more and more anglers are looking for and increasingly prepared to buy - Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod. On the one hand I wish it wasn’t the case that two not cheap and not available to buy here in the UK rods really were as good as these ones are (although this lot here in Ireland are now doing these rods), but on the other hand I am of course very pleased that what was a calculated gamble turned out to be by a distance the best two lure fishing rods I have ever used for bass fishing - the Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g (review here) and the shorter/lighter Shimano Exsence Infinity S900ML/RF 9’ 5-32g (review here). I have gone for the longer and slightly more powerful 9’6’’ 6-38g as my “best lure rod regardless” here though because it continues to amaze me after so much time fishing with these rods that a 9’6’’ rod which really can handle 38g can also be so ridiculously good at the sensitive stuff as well. If I had to choose one lure fishing rod to bass fish with forever more it would be this outrageously good Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g - it really is that good in my opinion, and even after all this time fishing with these two rods they continue to surprise me. I have never gambled in my life, but I am so pleased I took the punt on these two lure fishing rods. Available to buy here from a website in Ireland.

Accessory of the year 2018 no. 3 - VIMOV Fishing Lanyard. Cheap as chips from Amazon (check here) and really handy as simple, springy-type lanyards for fish-grips and pliers etc. Dispose of the split ring and carabiners that come with them and instead use the excellent STURME Locking Carabiner Aluminum D Ring Clip to make a pretty handy lanyard system for attaching various items to your belt or lure bag and so on. Obviously I am not going to hang really heavy items off these cheap lanyards, but they have worked perfectly for me attached to say a fish-grip.

Polarised sunglasses of the year 2018 - Costa del Mar, but with the perfectly brilliant Sunrise Silver Mirror lenses that to be honest I started off using mainly in more overcast conditions, but I now find myself carrying them virtually all the time for my UK and Ireland fishing - whatever the light is doing. For sure they take a bit of getting used to in brighter conditions especially, but over time I have come to seriously like a pair of Costa del Mar sunnies with these Sunrise Silver Mirror lenses in them. Costas are available here in the UK, but you might need to go looking for these specific lenses.

Van Staal VR50, underwater

Some gear that I haven’t had enough time with yet but I am really interested to see how it continues to perform:

The replacement for the sadly discontinued Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid - this new Sufix one is great so far, it’s due sometime soon I believe, and I am pretty sure at around the same price as the Pro 8.
Van Staal VR50 waterproof spinning reel - I need a lot more time with this thing, but so far so good. If all goes to plan (saltwater lure fishing gear going to plan?!) this lightweight and smooth Van Staal VR50 has the potential to become a classic, but it’s far too early for me to tell. Loving fishing with it so far………
Penn Spinfisher VI spinning reels - I have got the 4500 and 3500 versions here and for the money they seem to be a bit of a steal, but again, time will tell. Lighter than the Slammer III reels and I am led to believe just as well protected against saltwater - not 100% sealed though like the Van Staal VR50 claims, and Penn do not say so to be fair - I have high hopes for these Penn Spinfisher VI reels, and I am looking forward to the smallest 2500 model turning up for a bit of a thrashing.
A brand new, high-end and not cheap Sufix braid that does indeed seem to be a bit special. I am not here to say that we will catch more bass if we spend more money on a braid, and especially when there are a bunch of outstanding and great value for money 8-strands out there now, but this new Sufix one is rather lovely and I believe it will be on the UK market early next year.

Penn Slammer III 3500 spinning reel

In fishing terms it’s probably easier to ask where Dave Lewis hasn’t been on this glorious earth rather than trying to work out exactly where he has been! If there is a better travelled angler or fishing photo journalist out there then I am not aware of him or her, so I am really pleased to have “Destination Angler II” here, the sequel to Dave’s excellent book “Destination Angler”. I reviewed the original one here a couple of years ago now and I kinda got the impression that there were a hell of a lot more stories and photos on Dave’s archive and brain to let sleeping dogs lie and not produce another fantastic worldwide fishing book that I defy any angler with any interest in what is out there not to enjoy…………..

“Destination Angler II” is the continuation of what Dave started in the original Destination Angler book, and I love how time time around there is a wonderfully personal and amusing foreword by his wife Alison. She sounds like a complete star to me. If you are looking for an excuse to find out more about some of the fishing that can be done around the world and/or you need to nudge your better half with some ideas for your Xmas present then look no further - this book is it (you can buy it via here).

Dave Lewis writes in such an approachable and engaging way, and I can’t help but be drawn towards a book like this. There are loads of photos of fish and locations, and it’s fun to see a few photos in there of a very young and fresh-faced looking Dave Lewis, but to me it’s so much about Dave’s writing and how he so engages me and gets me turning those pages. There are no heirs and graces and never for one second do you begrudge the guy for all these wonderful experiences he has so obviously had via his outstanding (and bloody hard) work in fishing - nope, instead you can’t help but be swept along on the journey through the book and come out the other end with another heap of destinations you simply have to go to! It’s a skill to write like this and Dave is extremely good at it.

How on earth can I find fault with a fishing book that takes me around the world and is written in a style that I really enjoy reading? I have written and photographed a few books myself and I know what goes into it, so I take my hat off to Dave Lewis for this accomplishment that is Destination Angler II - and here’s hoping for a Destination Angler III, which indeed there should be because Dave seems to be here, there and everywhere with his fishing related travel. and good on him I reckon. You all have a good weekend and I am close to breaking point with the perfectly shite conditions we have got out there to at least have a half-meaningful attempt at a few bass which I know are still around………...

I am not here to tell you that the Penn spinning reels I have fished with over the last few years are the last word in lightweight refinement or “buttery smoothness” when compared to many of the Shimano and Daiwa reels I have used, but modern Penn spinning reels are becoming increasingly interesting to me the more I fish with them. When I try to weigh up the pros and cons of how long a spinning reel should really be lasting and whether it being almost ridiculously lightweight and smooth really are the factors that should mean the most, well I can’t help but be more and more interested in some of these modern Penn reels and how with some of them we seem to be getting a lot of bang for our bucks………….

Penn Clash 3000

For me this interest started with the Penn Clash spinning reels (review here) which I thought from the off were plenty light and smooth enough albeit you need to be very careful with the amount of braid you put on them. Fill a Clash to the brim and you are asking for a lot of wind knot related trouble, but get that line level right and to me they are seriously nice reels. To be honest I don’t get hung up on having to fill a reel right up because it might give me a yard extra on my cast, but yes, it does niggle me that on a modern spinning reel such as the Penn Clash you can’t go filling it right up when I look at a Shimano or Daiwa spinning reel I have here at home and they are all properly full of braid and I don’t get any wind knot issues at all.

As much as I have enjoyed fishing with the Penn Clash spinning reels though, unless I am missing something they are not offering any more resistance as such to the saltwater environment than say the outstanding and similarly priced Shimano Stradic 3000FK (review here). For a long time it seemed to me that you spend what you can or want to on a spinning reel - whether it be Penn, Shimano, Daiwa, Okuma etc. - but whatever you do actually spend isn’t buying you a whole lot more longevity in a harsh saltwater environment.

You look after your reel as best you can but for the most part they don’t like a serious dunking for starters, and yes, this whole issue of how well or not a reel lasts has become far more important to me the more I am starting to spend time chucking lures in surf conditions especially. I accept that it may not be a concern with your own fishing, but I have seen and heard about far too many often not cheap spinning reels suffering what I think are very premature deaths in these kinds of situations. Admittedly we might well be expecting too much of our gear, but to me it’s a problem and because of that I then start looking for potential solutions.

Penn Slammer III 3500

It wasn’t until I began fishing with the admittedly slightly heavier but incredibly confidence-inspiring Penn Slammer III spinning reels (review here) this year that I finally realised that there was a viable option to a completely sealed spinning reel such as the various Van Staal models. The Penn Slammer III is not completely sealed against saltwater and sand getting inside, but with its “IPX6 Sealed body and spool design” and how much time mine has been hammered in the surf this year and also deliberately drowned and dunked, I know that if I had treated any other spinning reel I own like that I’d have killed it. For sure these Penn Slammer III reels might not be the lightest reels in the world, but so far I can’t fault them and I wonder how many UK lure anglers are aware of these reels and how much toughness you are getting for your money.

Penn Spinfisher VI 4500

And then along come these new and lighter Penn Spinfisher VI spinning reels - I have the 3500 and 4500 versions here and I am waiting for the smallest 2500 to turn up. If it helps, the Spinfisher VI 3500 is essentially the same size as a Shimano 4000, and the 4500 is a little bit bigger and sits really nicely on a more powerful 9’6’’ or 10’ lure rod (note that because Daiwa have decided to change their spinning reel sizes again with their new LT reels I simply can’t be bothered trying to make sense of their stuff). I reckon the Spinfisher VI 2500 is around the same size as a Shimano 3000. If it helps, I have weighed the similar sized reels below when they are loaded up with line, because surely that’s the weight that means the most because surely you’re going to take a reel out fishing with line on it!:

Penn Slammer III 3500 - 403g
Penn Spinfisher VI 3500 - 359g
Shimano Sustain 4000FG (discontinued) - 300g
Penn Clash 3000 - 300g

Now if the long and incredibly detailed video above is to be believed, then at time 13:40 the guy claims that on the regular Penn Spinfisher VI reels I have here (i.e not the Live Liner or the Long Cast versions) the waterproof rating is actually the same IPX6 as the Slammer III. The video says that to make things more easily understandable, Penn have claimed an IPX5 rating for these new Spinfisher VI reels, but all is explained at that 13:40 time and onwards in the video. You can find plenty of IPX waterproof info online, but as far as I can tell an IPX6 rating is giving us as much resistance to water ingress as possible on a reel that is not actually 100% sealed.

Line lay out of the box on the Penn Spinfisher VI 4500

And this is one of the reasons why I think these new Penn Spinfisher VI reels have the potential to be so interesting for our lure fishing. The awesome Slammer III reels have a “7+1 stainless steel bearing system” and these new Spinfisher VI reels have a “5+1 sealed stainless steel ball bearing system”, and I don’t pretend to know if that will make any meaningful difference over time - but I do know that these Spinfisher VI reels are that bit lighter, they are wonderfully smooth so far (although they are a little “tighter” than a new Shimano reel when you wind a lure in), and I have filled both of them up to the brim with braid and have had no issues so far which I would never be able to do on the Clash. Out of the box I got a perfect line lay on the 4500 size Spinfisher VI, but I had to fiddle around with the washers to get a comparable line lay on the 3500 one - is this because they aren’t being set up in the same way when they leave the factory.

Penn Spinfisher VI 3500

Please take note the word “if” in the title of this blog post. This is not a review because I simply haven’t had enough meaningful fishing time yet with these Spinfisher VI reels, but my initial impressions are that I think they are every bit as nice to fish with in a real fishing environment as a similar priced Shimano (and not turning handles in a shop with all the oohing and ahhing). Put them on a rod and go out fishing and the slight weight increase over a similar sized Shimano to me is now meaningless. The equivalent Slammer III feels like a machine and I love it, but I wonder with the weight savings whether this new Penn Spinfisher VI 3500 for example is a more than viable alternative to a 4000 size Shimano spinning reel for a lot of lure anglers. I very much like the price of course, and if all that resistance to saltwater getting inside and killing it does actually happen and the reel stays nice and smooth for a decent length of time - whatever that actually is - then wow are these reels going to make a lot of sense to me……………..

So you’re out fishing and wearing a lifejacket, and things very suddenly go wrong and you end up in the water. You are on your own, nobody knows where you are fishing nor when to expect you back home, and you can’t self-rescue - so how on earth do you get hold of the rescue services to start the process of rescuing you? As Steve says in the short film: “Help’s not going to come if you don’t call for it”. So obvious, but how many of you have even thought about this? It’s all very well wearing a lifejacket, but there are other steps to take in order to do all you can to come home safe if it all goes wrong.

Please have a look at this short film we made with the RNLI because we deal with some simple but very effective ways of contacting the rescue services if needs be. Please take note of the throw-rope which could be the thing that gets you out of the water if you are fishing with other people and you’ve discussed what to do if one of you ends up in the water and the throw rope is to hand and you all know how to use it. Cheap, easy to carry, and very easy to use. And yes, I have practised with my throw rope on my girls in the garden!

Once again I am in no way trying to be all health and safety or dramatic, but I would ask the question why not at least examine these ways of calling for help? As ever though there’s no point thinking about this angler safety stuff and not then actually doing something about it. Who can predict when something might go badly wrong? Hell, I went looking for green water on Wednesday morning (blankety blank) and I wasn’t a million miles away from getting washed in myself - I spotted a wave that looked considerably bigger than any others rolling in, but I didn’t have much of an “out” as such. I backed off as much as I could, grabbed some rocks, and held on. I was wearing a lifejacket and I turned my back just as the water hit me and I was fine, but if I had still been standing where I had been fishing I’d have fancied my chances of being knocked right off my feet and possibly ending up in the water.

I spent a day last week with the RNLI and an angler who got into very serious trouble recently but thankfully he got to go home to his wife and two kids because he was wearing as lifejacket that his family had given him for a recent birthday present. Both he and his wife had been watching and reading about all this angler safety work we have been doing recently and I am so bloody glad that this lad had been wearing a lifejacket and survived. It was an emotional day to say the least and there will be a short film about it coming out soon. This angler is utterly convinced that without an auto-inflate lifejacket on he would have died, end of. You all have a good weekend and please think about this……..

As a more powerful, natural step up over the more regular 10-30g rods from Major Craft I really like how effortless it is to get at the power on this rather good looking Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g lure rod. As a logical “next step up on power” lure rod it’s fantastic, but although the word “Surf” is in the rod name, it is actually in the surf when the wind is blowing that this rod doesn’t float my boat as much - read on though and you will find out that in fact plenty of lure rods don’t do it for me in the surf, including rods that cost way, way more than this one………...

As ever these reviews are merely my thoughts and opinions, but to me this rather nice Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g lure rod is quite simply a really good rod if you are finding that you need to cast and fish with heavier lures than you can on say the outstanding 10-30g 9’ (my lure rod of the Year 2018) and 9’6’’ Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom rods (reviews here and here). Obvious? Perhaps, but I haven’t seen or fished with the next step up within that EU Custom range, the Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-962M/EU Custom 15-42g rod - and going on how good those other two rods are I have to assume this one is at least pretty damn handy - but you can’t go far wrong with this new Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g.

This rod is not a scaffold pole and I like the way it bends in what feels to me like a perfectly natural way if that makes sense - if there is one thing I really don’t like it’s a poker of a butt and mid section with a soft as you like tip stuck on the end. This Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g is very easy to wind up and fish with. There’s no problems at all if you need to properly blast a 40g lure and as much as this rod will fish say a 6’’ DoLive Stick if needs be, I hope it’s fairly obvious that you aren’t going to be buying a 10-45g lure rod to spend your whole time fishing with much lighter lures that require as much touch and feel as a lighter rod. This rod likes being wound up to me, and I really like how easy it is to get all manner of sub-surface and surface lures out there a very long way if required. Working something like the Fiiish Black Minnow over a serious bit of reef is so good on this rod and I know a very good Dorset lure angler who raves about this rod with the increasingly impressive range of Major Craft casting jigs. I like the chunky handle on the rod and a spinning reel like the hugely impressive Penn Slammer III 3500 (my spinning reel of the year 2018) is a natural match for me on a rod like this and with how I would mostly fish with it.

So at the top I said that I wasn’t big into this rod for fishing in the surf, but this is down to me working out what kind of rod I do actually want when surf fishing - and if there is one thing I am finding that I do want it is actually a poker of a lure rod with a pretty stiff tip which doesn’t flap around in the wind (more to come on this). Now this then takes a lot more effort and timing to properly wind this sort of rod up, so whilst I’ll take that bit of a poker for my surf fishing which revolves a lot around simply blasting metals out and winding them straight back in, I don’t then much want a rod like that for the rest of my lure fishing because it takes so much effort to get it working. That stiff as you like tip renders the rod a little “dead” in my hands for when you are actually working lures instead of simply whacking and cranking - great for windy conditions if you ask me, but not ideal for a lot of other, often heavier lure work.

Which is when a lure rod like this Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g comes in for those times when I am out there and I need more grunt but also with a high degree of usability. To be honest if I was personally going to drop my own cash on a more powerful rod I’d probably err towards something a little bit steelier than this Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g, but on the other hand it’s a rod that feels better and better the more I fish with it - which is of course called getting used to a rod as it opens up to you. In truth I can see a lot of lure anglers getting a hell of a lot out of this rod if they are after something with a bit more power that isn’t going to give you and shoulder ache after fishing with it for hours on end. Well done Major Craft yet again.

Calling it cabin fever would be too easy. In theory we can’t complain because it’s less than a week until Christmas and what right do we as lure anglers have to expect decent conditions for fishing at this time of year, but in reality this not being able to go fishing because the conditions are so bad is seriously breaking my head - and if there is one thing I don’t really need as well as not being able to get out on the coastline, it’s more lure fishing tackle………..

But something strange seems to happen in winter either if the season is essentially over or the weather is sodding things up when in fact you could have a bloody good chance at some good bass fishing. I catch myself looking at fishing tackle websites and about to click buy on gear that in reality I am not sure I really need. Then I start thinking about how I might refine this or that approach and as naturally as one of the pros on Strictly Come Dancing might glide across the dancefloor (what an epic final), my head starts to weigh things up and in no time at all I have talked myself into buying something shiny and new. Cabin fever and the associated weakness it brings about should be illegal.

Take my current dilemma which because I can’t get out there fishing has manifested itself like a little devil on my shoulder - I don’t fish with regular diving hard lures as much as I used to, but a while back I saw that the IMA Japan website had stopped listing the killer IMA Hound 125F Glide lure. Help! Now I know the lure’s not doing anything particularly special as such in the water, but it’s how well it gets out there and “grips” in bouncy conditions - and catches fish of course - that has made this my go-to lure for that kind of rougher weather bass fishing for a long time now. I also know of a very good angler who absolutely swears by the Hound Glide at night.

Now I do have a few Hound Glides here, but that bastard called cabin fever is niggling away at me about how this lure seems to be discontinued and therefore I need to find something similar for sometime in the future when I have lost the ones I have and I can’t buy anymore. Is this really a pressing issue though? Of course not, but you try telling that to the little bastard sitting on my shoulder who whispers into my ear as cabin fever consumes me. That little bastard also puts endless Xmas songs into my head that my youngest girl likes to listen to as she does her arts and crafts she so loves doing, and then those sodding Xmas mixes on the Amazon music app churn around my brain on some sort of satanic repeat mode. Honestly, I was on a dog walk yesterday and try as I might I could not get the song Rudolf the red nosed reindeer out of my head. Sorry, I digress…………..

I do obviously have a few hard lures here that can do a similar job to the Hound Glide albeit my head has convinced me beyond all reasonable doubt that I still need to find something about the same size which casts and grips that bit better again. Is this possible from a hard lure around the 125mm size? I’m not sure, but cabin fever has got me looking all over again and because that one little Shimano hard lure that I talked about in one of my Gear of the Year posts is such a stunner of a lure that isn’t showing any signs of rust (the killer Shimano Exsence Responder 109F), the little bastard devil on my shoulder tells me that I need to look at more Shimano lures, because who knows what I might find! Yep, this isn’t a blog post about logical thought.

And then if my magic a lad I know alerts me to the fact that those horrible temptresses at Chesil Bait’n’Tackle are now actually stocking a few Shimano Japan hard lures (how on earth does he know what is going on in my cabin fevered brain?), they happen to have a 10% sale on for December, and blow me down and as if my magic I’ve suddenly got a parcel of wonderfully shiny and good looking lures arriving on my doorstep which in the cold light of day I am not sure I actually need. Damn they look nice though - very important of course - and the Exsence Silent Assassin 129F (floating) and the Exsence Silent Assassin 129S (sinking) cast really well and I know they will work great if the bloody weather behaves and this fug of cabin fever lifts and saves me from my own lure fishing tackle related weaknesses.

It’s not even Christmas yet and already I am fully cabin fevered up and who the hell knows where I’ll be in a couple more months. A new rod perhaps? Damn, I was trying to keep that one quiet because quite frankly it’s a bit embarrassing how this cabin fever gets, but holy cow this thing’s a bit special and I will do a review in due course where you will no doubt marvel when I explain how seamlessly this new rod slots into my current armoury to the point where I am wondering how I managed without it.

See what I mean? Help is required………….

I thought it might be a bit of fun to do a kind of review of the year that isn’t about fishing gear. I love my films, music, books etc., and I’d be interested to know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section at the bottom if you would be so kind. It doesn’t seem quite right that Christmas Day is next week when another year has flown by so quickly, but hey ho and here we go……...

Film of the year 2018 - Sicario 2. The original Sicario was just about a perfect film in my book and I was really excited to hear they were making a sequel. I read a few slightly sniffy reviews of Sicario 2, but as ever nothing beats watching a film and making your own mind up. Holy cow Sicario 2 is one tense film, and I absolutely love it. “You want to see this thing through, I’m going to have to get dirty…………...dirty is exactly why you’re here.” It was never going to be quite as good as the first film, but I really like where they went with Sicario 2 and I was interested to see how they left it open to a potentially very interesting part 3.

TV series of the year 2018 - The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix). I have always loved a good horror film and I have often wondered if a TV series could sustain the kind of tension and scares that a good film can - and then along comes The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix and it absolutely fried my brain how incredible these ten episodes were. It’s the kind of TV series that I so need to watch again to understand more of the nuances. Outstanding, with a few great jump-scares in there for good measure.

TV series I couldn’t take any more of and gave up on it 2018 - Westworld Season 2. I just about got through Season 1 when it came out, but it annoys the hell out of me when all a TV series seems to want to do is confuse the bejesus out of you with tricked-up timelines and so on. I think I gave Season 2 a couple of episodes and then decided that life was too short for this kind of crap, and especially when there is so much good stuff out there these days.

Podcast of the year 2018 - Rugby Union Weekly. Consistently brilliant (great Johnny Sexton interview the other day for example), and with my eternal thanks to my youngest brother for persuading me to start exploring the world of podcasts a couple of years ago. Driving especially has never been more enjoyable. He’s been on at me to try my hand at creating a fishing podcast…………...

Album of the year 2018 - “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” by the mighty Deafheaven. Music doesn’t get any better than this and I have listened to this album over and over and over again this year and loved it that bit more every time. Beautifully savage and endlessly surprising. Metal is officially the way and has been for virtually all my life.

Novel of the year 2018 - Obviously not written this year, but “Lonesome Dove” by the American author Larry McMurtry is absolutely sublime and when I was reading it I was in a constant state of loving every second of it but also dreading getting to the end and having to finish such an incredible novel. Straight into my list of one of the best books I have ever read.

Fishing book of the year 2018 - Review to come on this in due course, but crumbs Marc Cowling of South Devon Bass Guide’s outstanding book “The Lure of the Bass” is an impressive read. I have just heard he’s taken stock of a load more copies, so go here to read more about this book and then do yourself a favour and order it. Holy cow this is some fishing book.

Proud dad moments of the year 2018 - Am I allowed to indulge myself here? First off it was my youngest girl (11 at the time) and her run in the City College Plymouth Secondary Schools 5K Challenge back in October. She loves her distance running but so many races she runs in her age group are not really far enough for her and how far she loves to run, so this was her first chance to do a proper 5k race against other kids (not including Park Runs which both my girls run on most Saturday mornings). My youngest girl was running against boys and girls from 11 to 18 years old and she ran 22.00mins dead for 16th place overall and 5th fastest girl. She trains and pushes herself so hard with her running and we were so proud of her, and also for how she is always the first to congratulate her friends and competitors.

And then both my girls swept the board with trophies for their dinghy sailing in the summer when they went to spend a couple of weeks with their in-laws. Competitive dad?! My eldest girl is not a runner as such and she is also a teenager (!!) but she chooses to get up on a Saturday morning and do the 5K Park Run when she doesn’t have to at all - the other weekend she hit her 50 Park Runs milestone and I am so proud of her. She broke her PB time at the Eden Project Park Run the other day in fact. Apologies, but if you are a parent you will understand where I am coming from here.

Most memorable fish 2018 (had to include something fishing related in here!) - Our client Paul’s 82cm monster bass that he caught when he was on one of our co-guided fishing trips over in Kerry in September. It’s such fun watching good people catch fish in such a special place as Kerry, and when Paul’s donkey of a bass popped out and we realised just how big it was (plus what happened afterwards which I will end up laughing about for many years to come eh Paul?!), well holy cow was that a special moment. I don’t personally chase bass for any kind of glory or to boast about numbers, size or length, so whilst I was lucky enough to catch my biggest ever shore-caught bass this year and of course I was chuffed to bits, it’s Paul’s 82cm bass that will live longest in my memory.

I am going to bow out from my 2018 blogging with the most intensely personal and powerful fishing related short film I have ever seen, and I am honoured and also incredibly proud to have been involved in some small way. Please go back and read this blog post here that I put up in November, because this short film below has come about from that. Yet again it’s a big thank you to the RNLI for getting involved so quickly and sensitively in this, and of course to the angler Neal Dews who has bravely put himself out there like this to let his scary as hell experience be yet another example of why we should be at the very least looking into wearing lifejackets for a lot of our shore based fishing. Neal is utterly convinced he would not be here to have Christmas with his wife and kids if he had not been wearing a lifejacket.

I don’t need to say much more here. I found it hard to watch this film having met Neal and talked a lot about what he went through, but I have never seen a short fishing related film like it. The RNLI have worked their socks off to turn this film around in such a short space of time. You all have a fantastic Christmas and may this high pressure that’s meant to be coming in clear the water up and let us get at a bit of fishing because I am convinced there’s still a good chance……...

Photo courtesy of the RNLI

This angler bought a lifejacket because of what we’ve been doing, he got into serious trouble in Cornwall last Sunday, and he is alive because he was wearing his lifejacket

Our latest and I think strongest so far fishing safety related video from our work with the RNLI

“Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth” - to me this Mike Tyson quote could be describing surf fishing for bass

RIP John Wilson - in my mind a true legend of fishing

Just look at the sheer joy on an adult angler’s face - fishing can be as serious as you want it to be, but it will forever be about having fun to me

The more surf based lure fishing I do, the more I am leaning towards a specific lure rod for it

Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod review - £279.99 UK RRP, but they are on offer at £199.99 until current stocks run out

Please support the “Get the Nets Out!” campaign from SOS (Save our Sea Bass)

How on earth can you ever really prove whether one lure is really better than another lure?

Does the type of sound a lure puts out make a difference? And yes, I am sitting here rattling my different surface lures up against my ear in a very scientific way……...

Arguably my favourite bass fishing time of year here in Cornwall, but crumbs are we in the lap of the weather gods

Gear of the Year 2018 - Part 1

Gear of the Year 2018 - Part 2

Destination Angler II, by Dave Lewis - book review (you seriously want this in your stocking!)

If these new Penn Spinfisher VI spinning reels continue to fish as well as they currently are then I’m all over them

Help’s not going to come if you don’t call for it - another of our short RNLI films

Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-982SURF 9’8’’ 10-45g lure rod review - £199.99 UK price (but it’s 10% off everything online and in store at Chesil Bait’n’Tackle for December)

There is an undeniable correlation between not being able to go fishing and spending money on new lure fishing gear

My non-fishing Review of the Year 2018

The most intensely personal and powerful fishing related short film I have ever seen - and a Happy Xmas