Blog - Henry Gilbey

Firstly, a very Happy New Year and I hope you all had a good Xmas where Santa saw how good you have been all year and came down the chimney with sacks of shiny lure fishing tackle. I was really good last year (?) so I went and bought myself an early Xmas present in early November in the shape of the fully-sealed Van Staal VR50 spinning reel. I simply couldn’t resist any longer - I had had a brief go with a mate’s one over in Ireland and loved it, a few guys I know have got these reels and have been loving them, so I talked myself into buying one from the US, hoping that it might be THE spinning reel for me and how I go about a lot of my bass fishing…………

And I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to love this new reel. The Van Staal VR50 is very light, size wise it kinda sits in between a Shimano 3000 and 4000 spinning reel, it’s meant to be 100% sealed against any water and/or sand or grit getting inside and damaging the reel like it’s too easy to do with too many of the spinning reels we might use, it’s far smoother and lighter and lovelier to lure fish with than the other two Van Staal reels I owned a while back and ended up despising, overall it feels like a machine, and the line-lay is better than on those older Van Staal reels albeit you can see it’s not as good as a Shimano, Daiwa, or even these modern Penn reels that grow and grow on me - so most of me absolutely loves this Van Staal VR50.

But I’ve sold it, and I am gutted. I had all these plans that the VR50 would work so well for me that I’d flog a couple of Japanese spinning reels I have here and buy a second VR50 because what it offers anglers who fish in and around saltwater makes so much sense - but for me it’s not to be, and I will explain why…………..

I bought the VR50 from the US to use on the single best lure fishing rod I have ever used, this ridiculously good Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g (review here) that has been in my armoury for nearly a year now and I am still finding reasons to love it more and more each time I fish with it. I didn’t technically need a new spinning reel to go with this rod, but I just so liked the idea of a lightweight, 100% sealed spinning reel that I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about getting wet or dunked or even using the rod/reel as a wading stick when needs be. My mate who has owned his VR50 since about May last year assures me that he hasn’t yet shown it a freshwater hose in all that time and all the reel is just getting better over time.

So my VR50 did indeed sit very nicely on this particular 9’6’’ Shimano rod, and I loaded it up with a brand new Sufix braid that’s not on the UK market yet and took it out fishing. I can remember that first session with this rod and reel combination - it was early November and I had a few bass off the top in some fairly bouncy conditions and everything worked perfectly. As per the photo above I had loaded my new VR50 up fairly close to the spool lip and I had no issues at all when casting hard lures like the Patchinko and so on. All good so far.

Now in truth I haven’t fished with the VR50 nearly as much as I’d have liked to thanks to the raging conditions and/or filthy water that we were then beset with for most of the pre-Xmas time that I so look forward to each year for bass fishing - but obviously accepting that it’s winter, and in some winters we are going to get a pasting from the weather. The few times I did manage to get out and at least have a bit of a go and the Shimano rod and Van Staal VR50 combination worked great, although I did drop the line level down a bit after a couple of very minor wind-knots. I put this down to me initially overloading the reel in the first place and it worried me not one bit, and I also tried the reel on a new lure rod that I will review soon but it’s already a go-to for me because it’s so good and it fills a gap for me. Again, all good save for a those minor wind-knots.

But then conditions calmed right down after Xmas, and whilst I haven’t exactly been hauling the bass in, at least it gave us a legitimate chance - and my mate Mark did drop a couple of very tidy fish the other day. I feel for him of course, but at least it keeps the hope alive. Calmer conditions though was when things started to go wrong for me and this lovely VR50 - clear water and/or flatter seas and I am often going to turn to my beloved 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick rigged weedless and weightless, and at say 75% casting power this 9’6’’ Shimano rod and VR50 spinning reel combination was as sweet an experience as I had hoped for from the off. I know when I’m loving my gear because I think I sometimes give a little grunt of satisfaction as the lure flies out and everything feels so much like a natural extension of my arm - is that just me?!

It’s when I would sometimes turn to cast a DoLive into a bit of breeze and put a bit more power into my cast that I started to get problems - I could feel the odd cast almost “catching” in the first ring/guide on the rod, and then from that I got a few wind-knots that I couldn’t unravel. I thought about it some more, I dropped the line level even more (as per the photo above), and I took the rod/reel combination out fishing again. Again, utterly sublime at full power with various hard lures, and all good at say 75% on the DoLives, but even with that low line level I’d get that “catching” feeling with more power on the cast, and then I got a really proper wind-knot that kinda finished it off for me.

Now there could of course be a number of reasons why this was happening, but the simple fact is that when using a number of different spinning reels on the same rod (Shimano and Penn), I haven’t had a single “catch” or wind-knot or hint of an issue - and I don’t need or want this VR50 so badly that I’m prepared to make allowances for a spinning reel I can’t trust 100%. With other anglers I know and know of getting on so well with their own VR50 reels there could of course be an issue with how I cast a lure when I turn the power on a bit, but again, I can turn it on with all my other reels and I don’t get a problem.

Is it a case of one single spinning reel refusing to play nice on one particular lure rod, which annoyingly I own and can’t get enough of and wanted the reel for this rod? I have been loving the new Sufix braid which was on my VR50, but to give the reel a fair chance I even changed the braid over on the VR50 to another new Sufix braid that isn’t quite on the UK market yet but will be replacing the outstanding Sufix Performance Pro 8 (this new stuff is easily as good and quite possibly a bit better again at around the same price, but in reality how do you really tell if a fantastic braid is that bit better than another fantastic braid?), and again I got the same problems but this time at an even lower line level, as per above. Both new Sufix braids have performed absolutely flawlessly for me on other reels, so it’s not the braids which I think are pretty damn special.

So I sold the reel, and I’m gutted. I realise that these issues could be completely unique to me and how I was fishing the reel on my Shimano rod, but with how well so many spinning reels work so well at so many different prices these days, I’d rather go fishing than have to spend time ironing out the variables to try and get what is potentially such an incredible spinning reel for our lure fishing to work properly for me. I know I’d be fine with hard lures and casting weightless soft plastics at 75%, but sometimes I want to put the power on, and blow me down but sometimes my casting isn’t quite in the groove and I need a reel to behave with me. Damn, damn, damn. So near yet so far, but I am now doubly interested to see the smallest 2500 size of the new Penn Spinfisher VI because the two bigger ones I have been playing with (3500 and 4500) are turning out to be very, very interesting reels with a lot of resistance to water and sand ingress at some remarkably cheap prices and I can fill them right up and they are performing flawlessly………..

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I hadn’t actually stopped to think about it much before but it banged home yesterday and I now realise that I do do this as a matter of course - Mark and I fish together a lot, and some of the marks we know pretty well I suppose and we have fished on them a lot. I have obviously seen Mark hook and land a huge number of bass now and I tend to know the various sections or gullies or rocks or whatever on a particular mark that he most likes to fish, or at least make sure he puts his lure through while we are there - and I suppose it’s the same for me………..

And without having consciously decided to do this, I tend to leave these particular bits of the marks alone so that Mark can at least fish them first. We haven’t spoken about this because I had never really stopped to think about why or even if I was doing it, but I definitely am and I suppose at the end of the day I consider it to be good manners and/or simple, decent human behaviour to make sure that your mate can at least get their lure wet through the parts of a mark that they have done well on before and therefore will naturally most want to get back to. I do the same if a friend comes along to fish with me - I would always make sure they get a proper chance at fishing the specific parts of a mark that I would feel most confident fishing myself.

So yesterday morning we fished a short session locally on a mark that we both know well and if I stop to think about it we definitely have particular spots on this mark that we have done well on before. I went one way and Mark went the other when we got there, I suppose to make sure we at least put lures through the particular gullies or holes or whatever where we have caught bass in the past at certain states of the tide and would naturally want to cover before fishing other parts of the mark.

Now it wasn’t exactly epic bass fishing yesterday morning, but it’s early January after a blown-out December and both of us felt with the tides and conditions that there’s a good chance of seeing fish. Almost by default I suppose we most likely fished those bits of the marks we have good history on, and there is one particular gully that I know Mark really likes but he gave it a good go yesterday morning and nothing happened.

And I sort of walked past this gully when Mark was off fishing a different bit of the mark and my Tackle House Feed Shallow sort of unclipped from my rod and fell into this particular gully about twenty yards out, and on about the third time that my lure by mistake swam through this gully a rather lovely but not very big January bass nailed it good and proper. Now I know Mark well and I know that it wouldn’t even enter his head to have been remotely bothered by this, and as I said, all of this me tending to leave sections of a mark alone at least until Mark has gone through them first isn’t remotely a “thing”, but as I said to the judge, my lure couldn’t help having a quick dip in that gully and that yes, I did feel a bit guilty!

It’s not as if there are suddenly a load of bass around for all us shore anglers to catch and of course near the end of March rarely tends to be a prolific time of year for most of us, but on the other hand there is always the argument that you’ll never have a chance of connecting with an early bass if you are sitting at home………..

And no, I am not here to report on an early season bass or two that I have managed to winkle out - we tried yesterday morning, damn it felt good to get out on the coast, no sign of bass - but it doesn’t half give you a big jolt of buzz when some lads you know also head out to give it a bit of a go and they do go and catch bass at this time of year. OK, so they were somewhere on the north coast I believe and we were fishing the south coast (I don’t know where and it’s none of my business), but I take my hat off to those anglers who dust down their lure gear and give it a go.

This is not my photo by the way

All I know is that Charlie caught this rather good looking 62cm bass yesterday (I acquired the photo off FB, hope this is ok lads!), and that the successful lure was a 140mm Fiiish Black Minnow in that rather good looking new Blue Lagoon colour. Does colour matter? Who really knows, but it interests me how these lads I know have a big thing for paddletails with some blue on them - and damn right I keep an eye on Charlie when I am fishing with him because he’s bloody good at fishing the Black Minnow over shallowish, rough ground and I’d be a remarkably stupid angler if I didn’t strive to learn off anglers.

Well done lads and it proves yet again that if you don’t give it a go you never really know. I accept completely that all the different parts of the UK and indeed Ireland where we might catch bass tend to fish that little bit differently, but surely there is also the argument that it’s all too easy to tell yourself that you don’t stand a chance for whatever reason - the water temperature is too low, the recent cold weather we’ve had will surely delay things, and so on.

Every year has to be subtly different because we are dealing with the natural world, but when you hear about some of that Guernsey based lure fishing that’s been going on all winter (and I would guess their water isn’t very warm either) and then after all that snow and ice and cold weather but those north coast lads headed out yesterday and landed a cracker of a bass, I can’t help but ask the question yet again - as human beings, what do we really know about the ins and outs of the natural world? Our human logic for sure says this late cold weather may well delay things kicking off - and by no means am I saying here that we’re suddenly off and flying with this year’s bass fishing! - but everywhere is subtly different and I can’t help but come back to either sitting there and waiting, or getting out there and having a go. I bet you those north Cornwall lads are absolutely buzzing right now with that why the hell not attitude having paid off like that. Well done once again and my profound thanks for giving us all that vital bit of hope…………..

Monday’s blog post really got me thinking, and not just because Charlie landed that fine fish before the end of March. As his mate Jody said to me on Facebook, he could literally hear my brain buzzing away! I am endlessly fascinated by how different anglers approach different locations, and whilst there are of course endless ways to skin the proverbial cat in lure fishing for bass, surely you’re in the same boat as me here in that you can’t help but often default to the lures and methods that have worked at so and so place before……….

But is that always the best approach? Just because so and so lure or technique has worked there in the past, does it mean that it’s going to this time around? It might well of course, but then how often are you either blanking or the fishing isn’t nearly as good as conditions suggest and a change of method goes and produces the goods? If I had been fishing with Charlie and Jody when he caught that bass the other day, how would I have been fishing and would it have worked? If there is one thing fishing throws up it’s questions, and I love thinking about the various answers and potential solutions to the eternal conundrums.

And because Charlie happened to catch his fine fish on a Fiiish Black Minnow, it takes me back to an earlyish season session three of us had around here in south east Cornwall a few years back. You know me well enough by now I hope to know that I have less than zero interest in boasting about the fish I might (or might not!) catch, but this one session has always stuck in my head for a number of reasons. At the time Nikon UK had loaned me a new DSLR camera to see if I liked it, the sea conditions were stunning, the light was kinda harsh but it worked with the swell and crashing white water rolling in, and you could literally smell the bass - but the bloody things were resolutely not playing ball, and with the photos of the lads fishing it was frying my brain that I didn’t have a grip and grin of angler plus bass to tie it all in.

Now this particular spot is a bit of rock running out to mainly sandy ground, but when there’s a bit of bounce on it can sometimes fish well with the rip currents that are created. In the past we have done well here on your regular sort of hard lures that get out there and grip in - Hound Glides, Tide Minnows, Sasukes etc., I know Mark has done well with this beloved Feed Shallow, and so on. It’s a classic place to punch regular diving minnows out there and swim them back in, but on this particular day with all that good stuff coming together for me and my photos the sodding fish weren’t having it at all.

Bear in mind that I haven’t fished yet. I get as much of a kick from photographing fishing as I do actually fishing, and if there’s a bass or two swimming around then I trust the guys who are fishing will nail them. I had my fishing gear with me, but messing around with a new camera when there’s lovely white water crashing around and it’s hard for me to put the photography gear down and pick up my fishing rod.

But still no bass, and whilst a blank session is always a possibility, from previous days around “our” coastline we knew there were fish around, and with the tides and conditions we had there simply have to be at least a bass in front of us - but the guys weren’t connecting. Out went those hard lures that we’d usually fish on this mark, but not a frigging sniff.

So it gets to the stage when I can’t not fish because it’s perplexing me so much! As I said earlier, in no way am I trying to tell you how my managing to catch a bass makes me a hero, rather it would have been somewhat daft for me to put down my camera gear, pick up my lure rod, and whack out the same kind of lure that the other two were fishing with when those lures obviously weren’t working today for whatever reason. By photographing fishing I get the benefit of watching anglers fish, and whilst it’s very easy to get almost stuck in the moment and persist with lures or techniques because they have worked here before, my detachment if you like on that particular day told me to try something different to at least see if I could get a sniff of a fish.

Now I’d like to say I picked out a 12g/120mm Fiiish Black Minnow because I had thought all about wind, tide, current and light conditions, but in truth I had a box full of diving minnows, a couple of surface lures no doubt, and then a few Black Minnows happened to be my something a bit different - and I can remember the new at the time Khaki Glitter colour and really wanting to try it. On it went.

So out it goes, and I am sure you can guess what happens next. I feel the Black Minnow hit the sandy bottom and I start that controlled sort of sink and draw retrieve - and sod’s bloody law on that first cast I go and get nailed by a nice bass which I manage to land and Mark is kind enough to hold the fish for a few photos. We only got the one fish that session, but it’s always stuck out to me as a simple example of doing something different to how you’d have usually done it which went and worked on that occasion. I had the benefit if you like of watching/photographing two good anglers not catching and thus showing me the way if you like, so me changing my approach was a no-brainer and I am not remotely claiming any kind of victory! But how often does standing back and then changing things up go and produce some fish?

As much as that day we did with the RNLI at their training tank in Poole was principally about wearing auto-inflate lifejackets and finding out how invaluable they can be if something goes wrong, because the four of us were jumping into the tank in the sort of fishing clothing we would wear when we are actually fishing, waders had to come into it. So whilst I can’t get away from how an easy to wear modern lifejacket could one day save my life (which of course is common bloody sense if you really stop and think about it), I am unable to ignore the various questions that wearing waders raised……………

So to those of you here who routinely wear breathable chest waders for your saltwater shore based lure fishing - how much do you know about how our waders behave firstly if you end up in the water, and perhaps more importantly as I found out in the RNLI tank, what about if you need to try and say scramble up some rocks when you’ve been in the water for a while? I got a hell of a shock if that’s any help, and as a result I feel duty-bound to try and find a solution.

Do we really need chest high waders to fish a mark like this, and what happens if you end up in water like this in a pair of chest waders?

There’s a whole lot to this subject that I will keep coming back to over time, but very basically I need to find an alternative to breathable chest waders for those places I fish where if I ended up in the drink I might need to try and haul myself up and out of the sea. There is the argument as well that for a lot of these types of locations I am not actually wading much if at all and as such I don’t need a full on pair of chest waders. I wear them because I like what they offer me and I haven’t found anything I prefer wearing - but I can’t get away from some potential issues which have come to light.

But what are these issues? It’s when you might end up in deeper water and you could have to try and climb up and out if something goes wrong. Whilst wearing a wading belt is important, it’s still not going to actually stop water getting into your waders, and if you end up spending a bit of time in the water and then you get the chance to try and scramble out, do you have any idea how much that water now in your waders weighs? It’s pretty bloody scary, and because you’re now a bit tired and stressed and potentially cold and disorientated, if my brief experiences of the RNLI tank and a full pair of chest waders are anything to go by then I would suggest there’s every chance you won’t be able to clamber out because of that insane amount of extra (water) weight.

Even when we're wading for our lure fishing, are we often out as deep as we tend to think we might be?

So let’s say that with what I have discovered, I feel comfortable using my breathable chest waders for a certain percentage of my lure fishing (shallow beaches, estuaries, shallow reefs etc.) - what are my options for the other locations? If I stop and think about how much I actually need to wade above say my lower thighs against how potentially dangerous these things are if they fill up with water and you need to try and climb out of the water, well I need to find an alternative for when I don’t actually need what chest waders can give me.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and whilst there surely have to be various wetsuit based options (as per many of those Japanese lure fishing videos for example), I don’t like the idea of potentially having to fish with wet feet for hours on end. And no, I am not interested in wet wading either in the UK or Ireland for about 99.99% of the year. I could quite easily go and buy say a ¾ length 3mm wetsuit and wear a pair of neoprene socks and my wading boots, but let’s say I’m fishing a long day or night over in Ireland and I wade out to my knees early on and my feet get wet - call me a wimp, but I simply don’t want wet feet for the next ten hours or so. But as far as I can tell something wetsuit based would of course take away the issue of filling up with water as per the chest waders, so I am trying to explore these options.

I was talking to a friend other day and he said why not try a pair of breathable waist waders. If you go looking you can actually find a few makes of breathable waist waders, and whilst to be honest I have dismissed them in the past because I am so used to chest high waders, with what I have learnt recently I am now really interested in how they could work for me - and of course how not being able to get so much water inside might well give me the ability to clamber out of a scary situation if needs be.

The Vision Ikon waist waders

Please, please note that I don’t know if this is fact, but if by wearing a pair of lightweight, breathable waist waders I can’t now fill up with water beyond my waistline then that’s a hell of a lot less weight to be potentially unable to drag up and out of the water if needs be. I am going to try a pair of the Vision Ikon waist waders out because the Vision Ikon chest waders do so well for me, and safety concerns aside for the moment, I bet you I could actually do a hell of a lot of my lure fishing in a pair of waist and not chest waders. I would imagine that for walking longer distances they would also be a bit more comfortable, and as long as my waterproof jacket comes down over them then I should be just as well protected from rain and spray as with a pair of chest waders. More to come……..

Oh, and until I can find a viable solution that I know categorically will work with me rather than against me in an emergency situation, I have decided to strap a rescue knife to the belt on which my HPA Chest Pack lure bag sits. I hope I never need to use this HPA rescue knife, but my thinking is that if I end up in the drink and my chest or indeed waist waders are full up with water and I’ve got a chance to try and clamber up and out of the sea then I could try cutting my waders open to let a load of water out.

And if you think that this is me doing some unnecessary scaremongering, then please try this - put your chest waders on, turn on your garden hose, and fill yourself up with water to your waist. Now try walking around and stepping up onto a chair a few times - not easy, but doable. Now fill yourself up to say the top of your tummy and try the same walking around and stepping up onto your chair. If you actually do this then you will understand completely where I am coming from with this blog post. So many of us wear waders yet we haven’t got a frigging clue what can happen if we end up in the drink in them……….

I’m going to make this nice and easy if you want to save yourself from reading another of my lure rod reviews - this brand new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g lure rod is the best “available off the shelf in the UK”, as near as dammit “do it all” lure rod that I have ever fished with. There, I’ve said it. But how on earth can I come to that conclusion about a fishing rod that only arrived in the UK yesterday and will be in shops I guess either today or next week? Well the truth is that I have been fishing with the exact blank on which this new HTO rod is made on and off for nearly a year and a half already (in a couple of slightly different guises) - with plenty of on rather than off because it’s such an awesome lure fishing rod…………..

So how come this new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g lure rod does it for me so much? Simple really - it just feels completely right for me and how I do the bulk of my bass fishing. Give me only the one rod length to fish with and I will go for 9’, so the 9’3’’ length sits perfectly in the middle for me - this rod feels like an outstanding 9’ lure rod when I am fishing with it, but that extra 3’’ will I imagine appeal to lure anglers who need or simply want to get their lures out there as far as possible but might not want to step up to a 9’6’’. And yes, before you ask, this new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g sits perfectly in the middle of their current Shore Game range - the wand like 8’8’’ (review here) and the more powerful but very versatile 9’6’’ (review here).

I prefer the overall handle design on this new HTO version over the current handles on the other two Shore Game rods - these new 9’3’’ duplon grips are slightly chunkier compared to the handles on that HTO Shore Game 9’6’’ which I have found over a long period of time to be a little too slim for my liking (but that of course is a very personal thing), and thank the lord of flies there’s now some duplon at the back of the reelseat on this new HTO 9’3’’ instead of some plastic locking nut which isn’t much cop when your hands are wet. I also prefer the tougher butt cap design on this 9’3’’ over the 9’6’ as well, and I love that the not cheap but worth every penny HTO Shore Game range of lure rods are rung with the outstanding Fuji Torzite guides. As far as I can tell it’s the same or at least very similar overall handle design on this new Shore Game 9’3’’ as you find on the outrageous HTO Nebula rods, as per the photo above.

Because I am often trying different rods out it means that a rod which I like might then be left alone for a while until I come back to it - and if there is one surefire way to tell if I do actually like a rod as much as I think I do, it’s when you come back to it after a period of not fishing with it and how you now feel about it. This new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g is exactly that rod - I couldn’t get enough of it when I first started fishing with it, and then each time I have left it alone to fish with something else and come back to it I have liked it even more. Yep, this rod is about as good as it gets for me.

If you read my rod reviews then I am sure you have gathered that I like at least moderately fast to fast lure rods with tips that don’t collapse, and if I could bottle up the way this new Shore Game 9’3’’ fishes and keep it as my go-to lure rod action then that would be great. I simply don’t get why soft rod tips are meant to work better with soft plastics and I tend to struggle with lure rods that don’t have enough grunt in the butt for how I cast - so I absolutely love how this rod bends and fishes. Awesome, just awesome.

If I feel that a lure rod fishes as well with a 6’’ DoLive Stick as it does when bumping a Black Minnow over sand and rock and then casting and walking the Xorus Patchinko at the serious range you can put that lure out then I am a happy angler, and you’ve got this in spades with this new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g (and as versatile as the more powerful 9’6’’ Shore Game is, because I fish so much with soft plastics like the DoLive Stick, this new 9’3’’ would be the better all round rod for me). Hell, I have tried and tried over the course of all this time fishing with this 9’3’’ blank to trip it up with anything bass lure related up to 30g that I might turn to for my own bass fishing - and I’ve failed. The rod just doesn’t break a sweat and I am thinking of asking it to marry me. Polygamy in south east Cornwall? It’s the done thing around here!

The rod is nice and fast but not remotely overpowering, obviously it’s nice and light, I love the overall build, and I have absolute faith in the blank because of my extended time with it, as well as the slightly longer and more powerful HTO Shore Game 9’6’’. Yet again I must doff my cap to the HTO people for making a rod as good as this 9’3’’ available to anglers here in the UK. I don’t know what is in the water at the HTO headquarters, but they are doing some serious lure fishing gear - hell, if a better lure rod for the money than their outrageous Nebula 9’ 7-35g comes along then I will be gobsmacked (and I believe the 9’ 7-35g Nebula will be available again soon, review here). So there you go - as it stands at the time of this review, the new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g is the best bass lure fishing rod that’s available off the shelf in the UK that I have fished with. Sure it’s not cheap, but with the lure rods I have used and with how much you are getting for your money here I actually think this brand new HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g is a bit of a steal. Holy frigging cow do I not want to send this one back!

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.

Not a fish was caught yesterday yet it was the most intensely enjoyable few hours of fishing - the sun was out, it actually felt like spring, the water was beautifully clear and green, the swell was rolling in which required us to fish somewhere different to our original plans, and it was just utterly glorious being out on the rocks and feeling like we were in with a shout at a bass……….

OK, so the sum of our efforts was a big fat blank, but with reports starting to come in of a few bass showing up in a few different places, I’m starting to feel the love that things might be about to kick off. Mark and I headed for the north coast of Cornwall yesterday, and whilst we were obviously hoping to connect with a bass or two, just getting out and meaningfully fishing and trying out a few different things on some new gear that the little bastard called Cabin Fever somehow put into my hands over the winter felt so damn good.

And for all the technical marvels that I worked through that beautiful water yesterday, it was the oddly shaped and not very expensive Salmo Wave lure in the 9cm/24g size that got me a follow from a small bass. Wow that lure flies, and you can simply wind it in at different speeds depending on what depth you want to fish it, or jig it around a bit - it’s got the most seductive little wiggle and I can see myself chucking this thing around a fair bit when there’s a bit of swell running especially.

You know when you haven’t seen a follow for a while and you doubt what your eyes are telling you? I saw this small bass rise up behind my lure, follow it for a while, and then drop out of sight, and perhaps because it saw my grinning mug staring over the edge of the rocks and making very little effort to keep down because I was so damn excited to see that little fish moving around! Small it may well have been, but I’d have loved it if that little bass had committed to my lure.

I wore my new pair of Vision Ikon Guiding waist waders yesterday, and within about five minutes of moving around the rocks and keeping back from the swell I was wondering why on earth I haven’t worn waist waders before. I was never going to go deep wading where we were yesterday and with the lively conditions we had, but I do like dry legs and feet and wearing these Vision waist waders felt a bit bloody brilliant. Time will tell and I will report back in due course, but initial impressions are very good.

And I’ve been trying out a pair of the rather clever Hodgman Vion wading boots for a while now - I have always liked the idea of being able to change soles on a pair of wading boots, but for saltwater use I seriously don’t like that too clever for its own good Boa metal lacing system. I have gone and proved to myself that you can spend not much money on a pair of “wading boots” and get something very usable (as per here), but I can’t get away from how I do like a really good pair of proper wading boots if they last a decent length of time - so far these not cheap Hodgman Vion wading boots with their regular laces and interchangeable soles have been fantastic. I can’t find any signs of wear yet, they are incredibly comfortable, the soles are easy to change, and I particularly like the studded rubber or the studded felt soles out on the rocks. I am aware of a few anglers who have been heavily using these boots for a good period of time in saltwater without any issues at all, so the signs are good. Again, I will report back in due course.

Anyway, that’s it for this morning. It’s hardly epic bass fishing yet and to be perfectly honest I would not expect it to be in early April, but wow am I feeling more hopeful than I was the other day when it was snowing……….

If shore based anglers are going to wear a lifejacket for some of their fishing - and I include me here - then it’s got to be as light as possible, very comfortable, and not remotely annoying when it’s in place. The other day I reviewed the rather excellent Spinlock Deckvest Lite lifejacket (check here), and I was wearing that exact lifejacket for my fishing the other day on the north coast of Cornwall when the conditions were on the lively side - if you secure it to you correctly (it’s vital that you clip the crotch strap into place), then you simply don’t know you are wearing it.

Which of course begs the question why not? Why not wear a simple auto-inflate lifejacket when you’re out fishing if they can be that easy to wear and they could well save your life is something goes wrong? So I’ve got another lifejacket here that I have worn a fair bit and it’s another of those remarkably comfortable and easy to wear ones that I reckon suits us anglers down to the ground - this one is the Crewsaver Crewfit 165N Sport, and like the Spinlock Deckvest Lite this Crewsaver lifejacket is so lightweight and comfortable that after a few minutes of fishing you simply don’t know you have it on.

As I have said before on here, I am late to the game with lifejackets and as such I am on a sort of accelerated learning course with trying to get myself up to speed with how they work, what our options are, and also what it might be worth avoiding. I have a very interesting document here from the RNLI which they have said I can quote from - and I will in due course - because from extensive testing they firmly believe that for a lifejacket to work as it’s meant to when you hit the water, you really should have a crotch strap in place that then stops the rapidly inflating lifejacket blowing up and over your head which could in turn stop the thing keeping you afloat. If you are looking for a lifejacket for your fishing then please avoid buying any that don’t come with a crotch strap.

You don’t need to spend a heap of money on a lifejacket, but again I can’t help but come back to how much the best chance at survival is worth for if and when something goes badly wrong. I went looking around for the prices on this Crewsaver Crewfit 165N Sport lifejacket and I can find it online for around £70, and as per above you can see that there are various manual and automatic options available. This is a seriously comfortable lifejacket that provides 165N of buoyancy which is in fact above the recommended 150N. What’s not to like? OK, so overall the more expensive Spinlock Deckvest Lite is a tiny bit easier to secure around you with how the straps tighten up, but at best the difference is marginal. Both lifejackets have obviously been properly thought out as serious items of safety gear which are also very easy to put on and very comfortable to wear.

And because this rather excellent Crewsaver lifejacket is not very expensive at all, to me it throws up a few options that perhaps answer a few questions I have been asked recently - the auto or manual inflate thing. Whilst it makes most sense that your lifejacket does auto-inflate if you end up in the water very unexpectedly (washed off a rock etc.), I can think of a few estuaries I might fish for example where I can end up over waist high in the water for hours on end, and sometimes that current is absolutely snorting past me. How about wading out into a big surf on your own? I would prefer the option of a manual inflate lifejacket here, for as much as these auto-inflate mechanisms aren’t meant to go off in the rain or if we get splashed by a bit of sea water, if I wade too deep or stumble or get hit in the face by a wave then I don’t want it going off.

But if I make a mistake and get taken by the current and can’t get back on my feet (and I know what I am like and how I can’t help myself), then I can simply pull the toggle and the lifejacket will now inflate (a manual lifejacket still has a gas canister which inflates it, just that you need to pull the toggle for it to happen). Please note as well that an auto-inflate lifejacket does have an inflation toggle as well in case for whatever reason the auto-inflate mechanism didn’t work - more to come on this, but it’s up to us the lifejacket buyers to get them serviced, and especially when used around saltwater and the potential for metal components to rust. And yes, as I learn about this I will get the details up here, but I believe the RNLI will teach you how to do it yourself if you go along and ask them. I will be doing this and reporting back.

With say the Spinlock Deckvest Lite you can buy a “Manual Conversion Kit” for not very much money and essentially now have two lifejackets in one because you now have two inflate options. But with how cheap this Crewsaver Crewfit 165N Sport can be found for, to me you could actually buy two versions if you felt the need for the two inflate options. Go for an auto-inflate and a manual and you’re sorted for a bunch of different fishing situations. I now keep one of those waterproof blue Ikea bags in the back of my epic Berlingo with my lifejackets in, but make sure to hang your lifejacket up to properly dry out if it’s sopping wet from the rain etc.

I can’t really tell you much more than this about this rather excellent Crewsaver Crewfit 165N Sport lifejacket, save for like a good lifejacket there are various add ons that you can buy. More to come as I learn more about the add ons that do in fact make a difference if you end up in the water and with how the RNLI might rescue you if things do go badly wrong, so don’t for one second dismiss a light that turns on via contact with the water (do you fish at night?) and spray hood options.

I didn’t grow up by the sea and I will never lose that thrill at having all that fishing so close by and so easy to access. I don’t take it for granted but on the other hand I love how a seaside kind of life is what my two girls have known all their lives - put them on a beach and since they could first crawl they have known how to have that wonderfully simple and uncomplicated fun that spending time by the sea can be………

As with fishing we have our regular beaches that we like to go to, but also as with my fishing, I like to get my lot off the beaten track sometimes to go and find other places. Whilst I know how lucky I am to be able to go fishing so easily around here, and I also love getting to know a bunch of ground better and better the more I fish there, I guess it’s in my DNA that sometimes I need to down tools as such and go wandering. Having such easy access to the sea used to be a holiday only thing for me until I was about 19, so having it all on my doorstep since then is a thrill that has never diminished. We are all different, but for me I can’t live in a part of the world like this and not want to see more of all that coastline there is around me that I don’t know and haven’t seen and haven’t fished.

And there’s a stretch of the Cornish coastline recently that’s been playing on my mind. I spent the odd weekend up around there many moons ago with some friends of my wife, but as much as we used to walk the coastline, I wasn’t into bass fishing back then and as such I wasn’t seeing it with “bass eyes” on. What, you’re telling me that you don’t engineer it that at least “some” of the coast walks you might do with your family aren’t bloody good excuses to check a few fishing spots out? I think I was rumbled many moons ago when my then girlfriend (now wife) and I headed out to the south Devon coast one day and I had a coil of rope over my shoulder plus a spike and club hammer - and no, I am pretty sure she never thought I was a serial killer!

Anyway, I don’t know what online resources you might use to try and get a good virtual look at some potential new fishing spots - or even if you do look for new spots - but for a start I reckon Bing Maps is far better than Google Earth for getting a good look at a coastline from above. For some reason the clarity and detail is better on Bing Maps, and there is also the option for an Ordnance Survey view on there which of course helps to show the various footpaths and parking spots.

But as helpful as all these online resources are these days, to me there’s still nothing that can beat actually getting out there and having a good walk or hike around - so that’s what I did. Last week I put Storm my sheepdog in the back of my epic Berlingo, chucked my hiking boots in along with a couple of bottles of water, set the Sat Nav for where I wanted to park up - and went for a bit of an explore. It’s the Easter holidays (and my wife and girls were away for a few days), the sun was out, it was utterly glorious out on the cliffs, and I didn’t see a soul. How lucky are we here in places like Cornwall and Devon to have free access to such an amazing resource as South West Coast Path?

I walked about four miles or so, Storm is never happier than when out and about in the fresh air, and I saw what looks like some awesome bass fishing ground. I don’t know anybody who fishes it and I have a suspicion that with the walking involved and how getting down to the shoreline isn’t exactly straightforward that where I went looking at isn’t exactly heavily fished. I know that these days there can hardly be any “secret spots” as such, but I do love that feeling of fishing off the beaten track.

Maybe my hunch will not pay off and where I went walking won’t produce the goods, but damn I’m going to have some fun finding out and starting to get to grips with the mass of reefs and boulders and gullies and headlands and beaches and other such bass attracting delights! I never, ever mind a blank if I am trying something different and feel that I am really learning into the bargain.

Oh, and I caught a small garfish on a lure the other evening - do I take that as a good sign? We saw mullet and garfish moving around in the shallows. Where I went for this bit of an explore last week I saw one of my favourite birds flying around, and to me it’s always a good sign when swallows turn up. Has spring sprung? Damn my cabin fever related products hope so! You all have a good weekend.

We gave it a go yesterday morning in some increasingly bouncing conditions that I so wish had not come in because things are definitely starting to happen out there on the bass front (nice follow Richard!), and although we were struggling to fish it properly and the water was turning to muck right right in front of us, it was banged home to me once again that when you really need to get out there when it’s pumping in your face like that, I know of no other type of lure that does so like a decent bit of metal………

Savage Gear Seeker ISP

And it was the first time yesterday that I meaningfully fished for a while with the not very expensive Savage Gear Seeker ISP metal lures - into that strong wind it was incredible how the lure got out there, and although a crosswind and then large waves coming right at us with one hell of a left to right rip off the front of the rocks made it somewhat challenging, for a while I felt that the 28g version of the Savage Gear Seeker on the end of my line was giving me a chance. There was a good looking bit of water that I just couldn’t get at with any of the hard lures I was carrying and know well, but clip that metal lure on and it was a different story. Holy cow they go!

Have any of you here had any decent experience with these Savage Gear Seeker ISP metal lures? I know that when I left Kerry last year after my October co-guiding trip, some lads came in and did well in the surf and estuary edge on these lures, and over the winter my brain has been bouncing away with how useful it can be to squirrel a couple of metals away in my lure box and give them more of a go than I have been. Whack ‘em out and wind them in (shock horror, like a spinner!), or you can of course work them more like a jig and so on, and I like the fact that so many of these metals don’t cost much.

Westin D360 Distance

I’ve had some fish in the past on a not cheap but rather lovely 35g DUO Press Bait Fusion Slim which I think is now discontinued, and last year I came across the not expensive and goes out like an arrow Westin D360 Distance metal lure. Whilst I understand that the line-through concept is good for sea trout fishing and I am hearing of more and more good bass fishing on the Savage Gear Line-Thru Sandeels (which frigging fly), in truth I wish that we had some not line-through options on these lures, mainly because I don’t see the need for that extra rigging in our bass fishing - and the Westin D360 is a line-through metal lure. It matters not at the end of the day, and of course you can pre-rig these lures before you go out fishing - which I do - but I am all for less knots and swivels and clips and beads etc.

Anyway, and then I came across the Savage Gear Seeker ISP metal lure which kinda gives me the same sort of body shape and casting ability of the metal lures I have talked about above, and with three different size/weight options - 16g, 23g, and 28g, and a range of colours. I know there are endless metal lures out there which are all doing fairly similar things, but I like that bit of a “wedge” shape on the bottom of this Savage Gear Seeker (like the above DUO and Westin lures) as I think it gives a bit more of an erratic movement when you jig them.

These Seeker lures come with a single and a treble hook in the packet, but after snagging the treble up on a rock yesterday and then “bouncing” it out and with how easily the thing opened up, I will be putting my own treble or single hooks on the lure (and specifically these VMC ones here which I am liking more and more). I am not remotely complaining when a lure like this can be bought for less than £5, and I also very much hope to be proved wrong, but I’m just not sure on those hooks that come with the lure. I’ve put a swivel on a split ring on the front of mine as well, mainly because I feel that metal lures like this can twist braid up a bit and I hope the swivel helps prevent this.

I just don’t think it can hurt to carry a couple of metals in the two lure boxes I carry with me when I am out fishing, indeed I think they offer some options that really I should be using more. I know these cheapish metal lures aren’t exactly sexy like a high-end Japanese hard lure or a Fiiish Black Minnow, but what do the bass or pollack or mackerel care? I can’t get away from how our clients sometimes whack metals into an Irish surf and wind them in and catch bass, and it’s something I should be doing more of myself - but not just in surf. When it comes down to it, does anything get out there like a slimline, aerodynamic metal lure? Distance is not remotely the be all and end all, but it’s an option, and having something in my box that can cope with the sort of conditions we had yesterday surely can’t hurt?

Just a quick blog post today to let you know that a space has suddenly become available on one of our co-guided lure fishing trips over in Kerry, south west Ireland. If you read my blog then you will know I spend a few weeks each year working with the renowned Irish fishing guide John Quinlan out of their rather special Thatch Cottage Ireland setup. I absolutely love the work we do together and I would hope that our clients agree that these are some pretty unique fishing trips in a part of the world that is truly, truly special.

The one space that has become available is on these dates in July 2018:

Arrive at Thatch Cottage Saturday 14th July
Four full days of guided lure fishing on 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th July
Depart Thatch Cottage Thursday 19th July

If you are after a bit of lure fishing down in Kerry where if we see another angler it’s genuinely shocking then please get in touch here and I will reply to you with further details. We concentrate primarily on bass fishing, but this is Ireland and there are plenty of other options. Do not worry for one second if you are not kitted out with all the gear, for we have plenty of rods and reels etc. for our clients to use if needs be. We fish hard but I would hope that what our clients take away from these trips is how much fun we have. Come along if you can………..

A while back I blogged about these rather sublime little lure clips that to me are essentially a loop knot in your leader but easier to use because you haven’t got to keep retying knots when you want to change lures. I am really like these Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snap in the size 1 for the lighter side of my lure fishing, accepting of course that it’s more a case of me playing around with things and I am nowhere near knowing whether a clip this light might actually produce a few more fish for me yet…………

But holy cow was it rammed home to me early the other morning that keeping things nice and simple is such a fundamental crux of fishing - it wasn’t yet light and I wanted to change lures. I go to pick a new lure out of my lure box and now I try using this little snap-style Owner lure clip in the dark and it’s a frigging pain in the backside to put it mildly! I can open it up just fine because these are some beautifully made clips that you can’t quite believe can be so strong for such a thin and light design, but now I need to get that slightly hooked bit of the Owner clip into the eye of my weedless hook.

I don’t think Mark heard me swearing at myself through the inky blackness, but I was seriously berating firstly my inabloodybility to properly work the lure clip in the dark and with no light, and secondly that when I did put turn the brighter red light on my rather awesome new Nitecore NU25 headlamp (damn I am starting love this little thing, it’s just an amazing bit of kit), as good as that brighter red light is for moving around on the rocks in the dark, it makes sod all difference when I’m trying to thread the a sodding lure clip that I am not yet properly familiar with through the eye of a 5/0 weedless hook.

Why you might ask? Because I’m 45 years old and for a few years now I have been wearing glasses for close up work - computers, reading, tying knots, that sort of thing. I can see just fine for everything else out long, but that’s sod all use when I’m trying to be all ninja on a slippery rock while a fair bit of swell is rolling in and wanting to change a lure but my glasses are back on dry land in my waterproof rucksack as I don’t usually need them because for a few years now I have been using a lure clip that I know so well and is so brilliantly simple and perfect that I can easily change lures by feel alone.

So at 45 years old and with 38 years of fishing in me I learnt another simple but valuable lesson - when something works so completely perfectly as the brilliant Breakaway Mini Link lure clip does for me, don’t go changing things up at night when you are doing your absolute best to keep dark and quiet and uncomplicated. So as much as I like those rather lovely little Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snaps and especially for when I am working soft plastics around, I won’t be using them again at night! I am all for trying different stuff in fishing, but on the flipside of that urge we should all have to learn and improve all the time, that incident reminded me of the need to keep some things as simple as possible. Swearing through the darkness is not remotely cool or grownup!

I don’t think I have reviewed a Major Craft lure rod for a fair while now, not since this Japanese company in all their wisdom ceased production of the outstanding Skyroad range. I understand how product ranges need to be refreshed, but damn I’d have been reluctant to refresh those rods when they offered such outstanding value for money. Anyway, I believe the Major Craft Triple Cross range is the Skyroad replacement, and I’ve had the new Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-942SSJ Super Light Shore Jigging 9'4'' 15-40g lure rod here for a while now…………

First off let’s call this rod the Triple Cross 9’4’’ to make things a little easier, and secondly I need to tell you that my experience of “light shore jigging” rods is about squat - as is my light shore jigging experience itself, albeit in the UK and Ireland I suppose you could refer to deeper water pollack fishing from the shore as shore jigging and so on. Or how about whacking metals out into a bit of surf and working them around a bit? Is that shore jigging? Does it matter anyway?

Whatever the case, because of the 9’4’’ length of this rod and the 15-40g casting weight, I have looked at it with bass fishing eyes, and after a few casts it struck me that we’ve got a rather interesting fishing rod here - this Triple Cross 9’4’’ is obviously not in Major Craft’s standard 10-30g range, but interestingly to me it’s not quite in their more powerful next step up 15-42g range. Nope, to me this new Triple Cross 9’4’’ that comes from the “Super Light Shore Jigging” world sits slap bang in the middle of these two casting weight ranges and therefore offers an angler a good chunk of both - and I really like this. It’s the sort of lure rod that works for a lot of my bass fishing.

I guess that because of how shore jigging is meant to be done there’s a slightly longer handle length on this rod, and in a perfect world I’d like it a little shorter (44cms from reel stem to butt, and then 37.5cms on far too good for the price HTO Nebula 9’ 7-35g) - but then I fish with the rod for a while and it all starts to feel normal. I do prefer shorter handles on lure rods and I know that plenty of anglers don’t. I love the actual handle design (duplon) and I like how well built this rod is. Credit as ever to Major Craft for using components like these and keeping the price more than reasonable if you ask me. This new Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-942SSJ Super Light Shore Jigging 9'4'' 15-40g lure rod smacks of quality.

It’s so easy to wind lures up on this thing. Accessing the power is effortless - it’s not a poker of a lure rod and you can feel that butt flexing when you wind this rod up (as indeed it should), but at first I didn’t feel I was quite getting the timing of this rod. A while later though and literally anything within that 15-40g range I can hit as hard and smoothly as I possibly can and I don’t feel the rod struggling at all, and putting a 40g lure out there (the 1.5oz GT Ice Cream) is just so easy. Load this rod up, don’t lash the hell out of it, and that tempered build up of power puts lures out there a mile if needs be.

And the tip on this thing is just sublime, indeed it’s how the tip works that really floats my boat about this rod. I am assuming that shore jigging requires a certain amount of power but also finesse in the tip, and this rod’s got that in spades - for sure you can chuck say a 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick around, but now go putting the Xorus Patchinko II or the (nice long drop and wow it goes) Savage Gear Line-Thru Sandeel in the 19g or 27g size on and this Triple Cross 9’4’’ seriously starts talking. Working a surface lure at range on this tip is outstanding, and then I clip on a 120mm Fiiish Black Minnow with that rather lovely 18g Search Head and “search” this combination along a very rocky sea bed and again the tip on this rod for me is doing its magic.

I can see a true 15-40g lure rod like this Triple Cross 9’4’’ suiting a lot of bass anglers with the way it kind of crosses the divide as such, and whilst the rod must now go back from whence it came, I sure would love to whack some Fiiish Crazy Sandeels out off a lonely Irish headland and bash some pollack on this rod. Another class bit of kit from the mighty Major Craft.

Major Craft Triple Cross Super Light Shore Jigging 9'4'' 15-40g.gif

And before anybody here looks at the photos of Mark casting this rod and verbally thrashes me for so obviously giving away a location because of those houses in the background, please give me some credit here. I was spending almost every school holiday on this part of the north Cornwall coast since I was born - we moved from where we were fishing specifically so I could line Mark up for some casting shots with how the light was angled (and not show where we had been fishing/blanking!), and anyway, even if this was a top secret bass mark I would suggest that with the number of people out walking around Trevose Head on a sunny Easter Holiday weekend you are sort of big time in rather plain view! If muttering into your cornflakes about how bass fishing was better in the good old days before all these tits (like me) got into lure fishing for them then please enjoy your cornflakes!

Isn’t it interesting how you can literally feel the world around here really waking up after winter? That glorious cacophony of birdsong early in the morning, swallows coming back, hearing cuckoos, seeing sandeels in the water, giggling away because you find so many mullet stacked up at one north coast spot you can’t help but bump them with your lure as you work the gloriously green, tumbling tide rip for bass - plus at last some properly warm weather. I love this time of year……….

Awesome north Cornwall conditions on Sunday

On Sunday we found about the best conditions you could ever hope to find on a particular spot on the rugged north coast of Cornwall, and it just felt alive. The three of us had a few bangs bumping Fiiish Black Minnows along the rocky bottom, but no hookups (I am really liking these 18g Search jig heads for the 120mm Black Minnow, they just seem to literally “walk” so well along all those contours on the bottom). Charlie saw a couple of properly big bass mooching around a gully as he went to jump from rock to rock and I reckon nearly fell in with the shock at seeing those fish - and then we found a stack of mullet which to me is a really good sign. OK, no bass landed, but the place felt alive at least, and especially with Charlie seeing a couple of shoals of sandeels.

Mark meanwhile did fall in, and I promise I didn’t laugh at all! He was wearing a prototype Mullion lifejacket we have here to test, and whilst there was nothing remotely dangerous about wading this gully, Mark got unlucky with his timing as a surge of water came through and took him off his feet. It is very impressive how quickly these auto-inflate lifejackets inflate! Charlie and I remained resolutely straight-faced?, the lifejackets work, Mark was not in any danger, and I’m still feeling weak from nearly wetting myself. Does anything provide more laughs than fishing?

So Monday early evening saw Mark and I out on our local south east Cornwall coast, and we had some pretty stunning conditions to fish the early flood on a bit of reef. Onshore conditions, a bit of breeze and bounce but not remotely out of control, a little too much weed in the water but it was ok if you moved around, grey, scudding light conditions, and damn things felt good. I find it so interesting how the ocean feels so different here in the south east compared to the north coast, and I love how we have such easy access to it all.

And then it happened. My 2018 bass fishing season kicked off in such outrageous style I was left shaking with adrenaline and then a bit of a worry about how on earth I could possibly top this mighty spring time feat (slight exaggeration as you will find out later). I had tried a few darker coloured lures to account for the very overcast conditions, but nothing, yet it’s feeling so good. A big gully is starting to fill up, I have got away from the worst of the weed, and for the life of me there’s got to be a bass or two on front of us. Sod this then, how about trying to get what I tend to think of as a sort of reaction hit by putting on a really bright, “look at me” hard lure and seeing what happens?

I do find it a particular delight when I catch a fish on a cabin fever related lure that I liked the look of during those wet winter months, took a punt and bought one, and then it goes and works! For ages I had wanted to see what a Shimano Japan hard lure might be like, and when I stumbled across what looked like a long-casting, nice and shallow swimming Shimano Exsence Responder 109F (109mm, 15g), how the hell could I resist? Chunky, very stable, I like the size, wow it casts well into a headwind, it swims nice and shallow with such a lovely wiggle that I can’t bloody resist, seems to be seriously well made, and I like this particular colour above because on other hard lures a very similar colour has worked well for me before.

And it went and caught me my first two bass of the season, plus I got another couple of hits into the bargain. I would love to regale you with tales of how this ridiculously special Shimano Exsence Infinity S900ML/RF 9’ 5-32g lure rod that I reviewed the other day manfully subdued those April bass, but to be perfectly honest both bass I reckon were about 10cms longer than the actual lure! Is there a class of bass that’s below a schoolie? Hell they were small, but they were bass, and to me that simple fact that a couple of them impaled themselves on my new lure (yippee!) gives me that all important jolt of confidence. Joking aside I’ve got a really good feeling about this Shimano Exsence Responder 109F.

Yes, there is always the possibility that another lure would have caught the same fish, but you can only catch on what you have clipped on at the time can you not? Did those bass suddenly move into that big gully and find my lure, or were they mooching around already and did that rather bright colour change just happen to do it for them as opposed to the more muted lure colours I had been previously trying? As ever I am left with questions to which I will never know the answers, but we’re off and running - small they might have been, but I’ll take ‘em!

Whilst I have a whack load more to learn about how breathable chest and indeed waist waders behave if you end up in the drink, I am kind of embarrassed at how little I knew about these items of clothing that for me are arguably as important to me as my lure rod and reel and how things go down if the worst was to happen………….

Go and ask fifty anglers what happens if you end up in a choppy to rough sea in pair of breathable chest waders and either you can get away from the rocks with your lifejacket on and await rescue, or else you end up spending a bit of time in the water and for whatever reason need to have a go at self-rescuing or you are clinging onto a throw-rope that your mate has got out to you and now you need to try and clamber up the rocks - and I bet you get fifty different answers based predominantly on what we have heard rather than what we actually know.

So I have a far better idea of what happens now, but not for one second did I head for that RNLI day at their training tank in Poole thinking that it would be the getting out in waders thing that banged home almost as hard as the obvious one which was that wearing a lifejacket quite simply gives you a much better chance at surviving when something goes badly wrong.

Slipping over in your waders and finding your feet again in shallow water while your mates piss themselves laughing at you is completely different to spending a bit of time in deeper water where you might need to try and clamber up some rocks to get yourself out. When I jumped into that RNLI tank I was wearing a pair of Hodgman breathable chest waders with a wading belt, plus another belt which holds my HPA chest pack in which I carry my lures at my side. Everything was done up fairly tight and exactly as it would be for my fishing - you don’t sink like a stone in your waders, but I can guarantee you that if you end up spending a bit of time in choppy water especially then your waders will fill up with water.

Come on, be honest, how many of check the depth with our lure rods?!

And don’t let anybody tell you that they won’t. If you are in and out pretty quickly then there may well be only a little bit of water in your waders, but spend more time in the water (which I would argue is more likely to happen with where so many of us fish) and they will start to properly fill up. I hear some anglers saying that a wading belt will stop water getting in, but it won’t - sure, I reckon it slows things down, but it’s not an airtight seal around your waist and you can’t wear the bloody thing too tight anyway otherwise you can’t breathe properly!

I can only give you my findings so far here, but if you are wearing a lifejacket which has obviously inflated then after spending a decent length of time in that tank so that my waders filled up properly then I was floating fine with my airways out of the water. Sure, life would probably be somewhat easier without a pair of waders on, and without a lifejacket and how waders aren’t exactly helping you I would suggest that in choppy water you will be in serious trouble - but with that lifejacket it’s doable.

But what shocked the hell out of me was when one of the RNLI people asked me to now try and climb out of the tank via some cargo style hard netting thing. Granted, it’s not rocks, but it matters not - nope, what really shocked me was how much extra weight those waders now full of water are, and how it’s as good as impossible to clamber out as you can see in the video. Bear in mind that I’ve spent a bit of time in the tank filling up, I wasn’t wearing a lifejacket that time around so I was tiring from trying to keep my airways clear of that horrible choppy water - and I simply didn’t have the strength to climb out. I needed some help to get myself over to the steps and just about clamber out like that. And when did you ever find some steps to get out of the ocean?

When waist waders won't do!

I have no idea how much water was actually in my waders, but it was over my wading belt level inside, and if one litre of water weighs one kilogram then I dread to think how much extra weight I was adding to my (not lightweight!) self when trying to clamber out. I now have an HPA dive knife strapped to the belt on my lure bag which I would try and use to cut open my chest waders if the need ever arose, because for a certain amount of my shore based lure fishing I find breathable chest waders to be incredibly useful. I am now trying out a couple of different pairs of breathable waist waders and for a number of situations they are incredibly useful and at some point I hope to be able to test these things out in the tank. My feeling is that they will be somewhat easier to clamber out with, but I can’t prove that yet. You all have a good weekend and I hope this video gets you thinking about things.

My chest waders are as important to me as a good rod and reel, but up until a few weeks ago I had never even tried a pair of the shorter length breathable waist waders - and to be honest I feel like a bit of a tit for so successfully ignoring breathable waist waders and how a pair of “higher up the body” chest waders sometimes aren’t really needed. I am not about to stop wearing chest waders because I think they are absolutely vital for so much of my fishing, but over the last few weeks I have been out and about a bit and only wearing waist waders - and they have proved to be a bit of a revelation.

Here's my mate Nick wearing waist waders a few years ago and doing just fine in them

OK, so I ignored what seem to be far less popular waist waders for many years, but to be perfectly honest the only reason I opened my eyes and ears to them the other day was because of all this fishing safety stuff I have been getting involved in - and as per my Friday blog post from last week, it was me getting the bloody shock of my life that has prompted me to look at waist waders (with thanks to Ben from the Art of Fishing for prompting me to think about them) and how they might work for my fishing. It’s also because apart from wearing some kind of wetsuit and potentially melting on a long walk or climb to and from my fishing - or manning up and wet wading - I haven’t yet find a logical solution to the issue. I find waders incredibly useful for my fishing, I like warm Indian Ocean water and I don’t like cold Atlantic Ocean water, and as I am finding out, for me there is a time and place for chest waders and waist waders.

One thing I have promised myself never, ever to do again is wear chest waders on a boat, indeed I am kicking myself for having done it so often. Have a look at the video above of me failing to clamber out of the RNLI tank and now tell me whether you fancy your chances at getting back on your boat or kayak when your waders are full up with scarily heavy amounts of water. Ignorance is not bloody bliss, not here it isn’t.

So thanks to some kind contacts I have a couple of pairs of breathable waist waders here to try out, and whilst this blog post is by no means a review of them because I need far more time with these items, at least I can give you some initial thoughts and impressions that may prove helpful to some of you. On the safety side of things, please, please bear in mind here that until I can prove it, it’s only my opinion so far that if I get washed in (with a lifejacket on), then I can’t help but think that waist waders are going to be easier to “manage” as such than a full on pair of chest waders in choppy seas especially. I have worn both pairs of waist waders a few times now, including a couple of longer, warm and sweaty walks to and from some fishing.

If we are trying to keep prices somewhere close to sensible then nothing has changed my mind over the last few years that the outstanding Vision Ikon breathable chest waders are the best bang for the buck out there, so it’s a bit brilliant to be able to wear the waist wader version of these waders (actually called the Vision Ikon Guiding Waist Waders). Everything feels just as well made except the waders obviously stop at your waist! They come with a pair of elasticated shoulder straps which even at their loosest setting end up holding the waist waders a little bit wedgie style - but you can simply unclip the shoulder straps, leave them at home, and instead I have put a webbing style belt through the belt loops.

I was a little worried that waist waders might spend their lives slipping down and driving me frigging loopy, but my worries were unfounded. Make sure they are nice and snug around your waist and I haven’t once had to hitch them up like those teenagers and their low-slung jeans with pants hanging out that make me feel properly middle aged because I want to give them a good slap and tell them to pull their bloody trousers up! I can’t find a single thing about these Vision Ikon waist waders I don’t like so far, so it now comes down to a test of time and how much grief they can take. Of course I have a very good feeling about them because the Ikon chest waders have done me so proud, but I will report back.

And then I have this rather unique pair of Scierra X-Stretch waist waders here, and there is a also a an X-Stretch chest wader version that I haven’t seen yet. From the Scierra website: “Revolutionary technical breathable waist wader in 4-way stretch abrasion resistant shell fabric for the ultimate performance and freedom – you’ve never felt this free!” I have to say that whilst they feel a bit weird when you first feel them up, when you go fishing and as a byproduct of this sometimes end walking a fair way and scrambling up and over rocks and reefs etc., well they don’t feel like a pair of waders at all, and I mean that as a really good thing. These Scierra X-Stretch waist waders feel a bit like wearing a really easy-wearing pair of lightweight trousers that don’t “catch” you anywhere when you are say lifting a leg up to clamber up onto a higher rock and so on.

I took a punt on a quiet stretch of the north coast of Cornwall during that warm spell the other day, and this involved a pretty decent walk back especially - up some cliffs, down a valley, back up the other side, and then across a few fields back to my epic Berlingo. It was saying 24C in my car and even Storm had a bit of a lie down in the shade when we got back to where I had parked - I need more time with these Scierra X-Stretch waist waders, but they do seem to be amazingly breathable. I walk fast, I am not small, and I break into a decent sweat, but I am pretty damn sure that the inside of these waist waders was far less damp (from sweat) after that hot yomp than other waders I have worn over the years - and I include my two pairs of not bloody cheap Simms chest waders that I never thought lasted anywhere near long enough for the price.

Again I can’t tell you yet how these Scierra X-Stretch waist waders might last, but they are the closest thing I have come to wearing a pair of waders that don’t actually feel like wearing waders. I hope they last well because they do seem rather clever, and as with the Vision ones I simply secure the (included neoprene) belt around my waist and they don’t slip down at all. Both pairs of waist waders I have here are so damn easy to wear to be honest, and as much as I have lived in chest waders for so many years now and I am of course completely used to them, without a doubt these waist waders do feel that bit easier and non-wader like to wear over the higher waist ones. I will get back to you after a decent length of time, and I do hope to test out my safety related theories on waist versus chest waders one day, but so far so good.

As much as I obviously have a thing for chucking soft plastics like the DoLive Stick around - and for me the hit on a lure like this that’s rigged weedless and weightless is always such a thrill - catching bass off the top is also one hell of a buzz. Like many of you I am sure, I have played with any number of different surface lures over the years, and I have caught bass on a number of them as well - but I bet if you looked in my lure box, more often than not you’d find the IMA Salt Skimmer and the larger, heavier Xorus Patchinko II (the 140mm one) in there. These are my default surface lures if you like and to me each is suited best to certain conditions.

The new Xorus Patchinko 125

And because there’s a considerable gap between the 110mm/14g IMA Salt Skimmer (which seems to defy its dimensions and frigging fly) and the 140mm/25g+ Xorus Patchinko II, I have always kept my eyes and ears open for a surface lure that sits in the middle. Do I need a lure that sits in the middle though? Well that is open to debate of course, but I’d like one, and whilst there’s no way my blog post here from a few years ago remotely influenced Ultimate Fishing over in France who do the Xorus brand, I am rather pleased that we now have this new Xorus Patchinko 125 (125mm, 18g).

There must be something about the way the bigger Patchinko II works across the top that seriously does it for bass, because to me there is no getting away from how successful this missile of a fairly substantial surface lure has been since UK anglers switched onto it - and I am giving Mick of Mr. Fish over in Jersey the credit for this as he was the tackle dealer who first introduced Ultimate Fishing products into the UK - Xorus, Tenryu, Tackle House, DUO, Decoy, etc. Credit where credit is due if you ask me.

IMA Salt Skimmer

Same with the IMA Salt Skimmer and how well it’s done for me over the years (full credit to Nick at Bass Lures for opening me up to the IMA brand some years ago now), and I did get rather excited when there was a larger and heavier “Skimmer Grande” introduced via IMA USA a while back - but it casts about as well as a banana, and as much as I am sure it works well for bass, if I can’t cover a decent amount of water and perhaps into a headwind as well then I tend to leave that particular surface lure alone and go looking for something else.

Lucky Craft Gunfish 115

I’ve fished with a few surface lures that fit in the middle, and some of them are of course brilliant lures - obviously you’ve got the killer Lucky Craft Gunfish 115 (115mm, 19g) that I know doesn’t leave the boxes of a few very good bass anglers, that Tackle House Vulture (120mm, 20g) that I stumbled upon in the Ultimate Fishing catalogue a while back, the Xorus Frosty that I know works well for many anglers, and then a surface lure that I really like but I can’t recall seeing any other anglers using - the Daiwa Morethan Scouter 110F (110mm, 19g). I have just seen that there’s a heavier version called the Scouter 130F (130mm) which weighs a substantial 31g and going by how well the 110F version casts I would hazard a guess that this Scouter 130F absolutely flies!

Xorus Patchinko 125

But there must still be something about that Patchinko sort of action on the top, and now that we have this brand new, medium sized Patchinko 125 which to me fills a logical gap in the Patchinko range (I know plenty of anglers love the smaller Patchinko 100, but I’ll take the IMA Salt Skimmer over it), well I am pretty damn excited to see how it’s going to do. I have fished with it a little bit to see how it casts and works and it was a relief to see that if you catch it right it absolutely flies - longer drop, get that timing spot on, holy cow it goes, and casting it that little bit lower into a decent bit of a headwind the other evening proved to me that it’s a comparable distance machine to its older brother when you take into account the different sizes and weights. I think it’s pretty fair to have some high hopes for this rather lovely new Xorus Patchinko 125, but as ever, time will tell. Do I need a new lure or two? Let’s no go there!

Tackle House Vulture

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Daiwa Morethan Scouter 110F

If there is one thing that makes my day as regards doing this blog it’s when I get feedback and ideas from you people, and yesterday an angler from South Africa left a really interesting comment on a blog post I wrote last year when I got back from some mainly striped bass related stuff in the USA - have a look here at that blog post, but in summary it was how this awesome Cape Cod Canal specialist angler I have been privileged to fish with a fair few times now manages to put his mainly surface lures out a frigging country mile on some light braids.

I am not going to repeat how he does it when you can easily go back and read that blog post, but this comment left by a South African angler really got me thinking, and I hope he doesn’t mind if I quote the entire comment here: “Hallo Henry. Here in South Africa most of us make use of a Braid Leader PE 2.5 (35lbs) that we joined to our main casting braid PE 1.5 (20 lbs) on our medium Spinning setups. In my case the Major Craft N-One 1062 (30 - 60gram). Contrary to some opinions that braid leaders reduce casting distance, I have found the opposite. The FG knot that I and most Spinning guys use to join the braid leader to the thinner casting braid travels silently and effortlessly through the Fuji concept guides. The braid leader protects the first few meters of casting braid, which removes the fear of snap-offs during casting from one’s mind. This in the long run improves casting rhythm/consistency, which benefits distance. I also find that the slight extra weight of the short braid leader (about 3.5 meters) travelling behind the lure stabilises the lure during flight, reducing lure tumbling and tail-wagging through the air, similar to the feather effect behind an arrow or a dart. With the lure doing less unwanted movements through the air (poorer aerodynamics) casting distance is increased. These individual elements add up to increase overall casting performance.”

Now if there is one thing that I have found over the years is that there are some scary-good rock and surf anglers plying their trade in southern Africa, and they are often dealing with conditions and locations and often fish of the sort of size and power that we ain’t going to get anywhere close to here in the UK or Ireland. So when a South African leaves such a detailed comment like that (and a big thank you to this angler by the way), firstly I am going to make sure I really read it properly, then I’m going to read it again, and when I did just that was when my brain clicked into gear! As per the title of this blog post - “Is using a thicker braid leader a case of me missing something blindingly obvious, or is it just overcomplicating things?”

If we take into consideration the fact that a lot of the warmer water species of fish fight a lot harder than our colder water fish, then one could quite simply dismiss this information as being over the top for the fish we might catch and so on - but to me that would be a remarkably ignorant thing to do, indeed surely fishing teaches all of us to never say never……….

OK, so in reality we don’t need really strong braids for the fish we catch, but of course the mainline debate goes beyond that - we might be casting some heavier lures really hard sometimes, most anglers don’t know that their drag knob can actually be tightened up, and a lot of the time we are putting our lures and the ends of our mainlines into and through some pretty foul ground. I don’t really need more than say a good quality 10lb 8-strand braid can give me pure strength wise if we are talking only about the bass I might connect with, but on the flipside I would not feel remotely comfortable fishing with a braid that light into some of the ground I happen to fish.

So I really got to thinking about this lad’s comment and how they are putting a decent length of heavier braid on the end of their regular braid mainline via the FG knot - which in its most basic form would give me that length of thicker braid near the business end. Together with my fluoro leader I reckon I’ve now got the potential for an increased dollop of abrasion resistance which to me can only be a good thing when you’re really fishing in the bricks especially. I know bass aren’t dirty fighters like wrasse, but sharp spikes of rocks and reef edges can and do get in the way of tight mainlines as I am sure some of you know all about. I do. In some respects I can see the logic behind fishing say a 50lb braid into the really rough ground, but do I really want to be fishing lighter soft plastics on a mainline like that? This braid leader method could well be the best of both worlds.

OK, so if you were still to use a fluoro leader with this lot you’re now talking about two knots, but with how stupidly strong the FG knot is I don’t see this as a problem save for the time it takes to tie them. If and when I pull for a break with a snagged lure, nine times out of ten with this FG knot it’s the fluoro knot to my Breakaway Mini Link lure clip that’s breaking and therefore I don’t need to tie a new leader on. I wonder if that might happen with this longer braid leader setup?

I could simply use a much longer fluoro leader to my mainline, and yes, although the FG knot does tend to go fairly well through the guides on most lure rods, in truth the knot does catch sometimes and then the braid can wrap around the tip etc. The sound of the knot going through the guides also freaks me out a bit, hence I use leaders that are of a length that I can keep the leader knot outside the rod when I am casting.

So I read the comment, got to thinking about it, and then I went rummaging around to find some heavier braid. I went and tied a roughly 3m length of 40lb braid onto the end of my 20lb Sufix 832 mainline, and then tied my usual length 20lb Sufix Invisiline leader on the end of that 40lb braid “rubbing leader” as such. I grabbed the rod and a lure and took Storm for a bit of walk that involved water and a bit of casting, and for the life of me I couldn't feel let alone hear that tiny little braid to braid FG knot going through the guides. There are plenty of turns of heavier braid around the reel to act as a shockleader if I was to drop right down in mainline strength to see how that goes.

For me there’s only one thing to do here - try it out for a while and see how it goes. I know that some lure anglers don’t like using a leader at all - and I do wonder if this extra, heavier braid leader might negate the need for one - so this way of getting some tougher braid near the business end might be worth exploring for you guys. I also wonder if I could drop down to say a 10lb or so Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid mainline and then have that long braid leader on the end to firstly cushion my casting and then to get some thicker line near where it’s most needed - and then the benefits of an even thinner mainline cutting through wind and current might sometimes be useful.

Anyway, I hope that might be some food for thought. Thanks to the lad who left the comment and got me thinking about all this. I am open to trying it and I am also happy to admit that if it does end up as a part of armoury in the future then it’s something so obvious that I can’t believe I never thought of it before - but then isn’t a lot of fishing like that? It might not work out for me, but the idea of this braid rubbing leader makes a lot of sense and I want to see how it goes.

I do love this night fishing for bass thing, and I particularly love it when you get that unmistakable thump on the end of your rod and the fish is hooked up good and proper. Now it might just be me here, but I do get a number of hits on a lure like a white senko which are often some proper thumps - yet they don’t result in hooked bass.

I have blogged about this before and I do wonder if it’s mainly smaller bass doing this, but the thing I can’t ignore is that even if it is mainly smaller bass, I’d like to hook more of these thumps because in my head you just never quite now. When was fishing ever full of hard and fast rules? I know I can clip a needlefish on that has either a treble or single hook on the rear end, but even so I had a hit on one of Jim’s Lures rather lovely needlefish the other night that was a good thump yet the fish didn’t hook up.

And on a soft plastic like a white senko or an Albie Snax, for some reason bass seem to sometimes hit them in such a way that even with a 6/0 weedless hook in they don’t always hook up. So when somebody kindly sent me the link to the video above, I made sure to watch it - ok, so I don’t particularly like treble hooks at night especially, but the video shows such a clever but simple way of getting a (treble) hook further back down the soft plastic that I had to give it a go.

I’ve had a couple of shortish night sessions recently when I had a decent thump on a white senko rigged how I would usually fish one - with a barbless 6/0 weedless hook in it. So I got those thumps which didn’t connect and on both occasions I then changed over to my “special senko” rigged as per the photo above and hooked fish pretty quickly afterwards, indeed this is the exact senko I caught those bass on. On each night I changed over after a “thump but no hookup” and my next hit resulted in a hooked and landed bass - albeit not very big fish! - and whilst that rear treble doesn’t exactly float my boat, not once has the thing moved or come out when I’ve been casting and retrieving the lure, and with both those bass they were hooked on the treble hook which came free of the senko and the 6/0 weedless hook was still in place and not in the fish’s mouth.

OK, so they were small bass and of course it’s so much better when larger fish just nail the whole lure, but it would be somewhat daft if I didn’t try to find a way to hook up with more of these thumps and instead simply continued to fish the same way and write these missed hits off as no more than small fish. I’d rather catch the fish and have that chance it’s a decent fish rather than not know, and whilst I am not about to start hooking up with everything now with this new rigging system, for me it’s something worth exploring because of how it’s worked already for me - if there is one thing I like doing it’s experimenting with stuff to see if I can improve my own fishing.

But I don’t really like treble hooks at night especially, even if the barbs are all crushed down - with trying to use minimal or no light, I do find that single hooks are so much easier to get out of fish. So I’ve rigged a white senko up as per the photo above, with a wide gape single hook in the rear of the lure via this clever braid related way of rigging in the video. The next step for me now is to see this method might work, and yes, as you might have guessed, the old grey cells are still churning away!

I have known about these new solid white DoLive Sticks for a while now and then a few months ago I saw a photograph of one hot off the press as such, but they are now available here in the UK, I have some in my grubby paws, and I am over the frigging moon! Finally, a solid white 6’’ long OSP DoLive Stick is a real lure and not just me hassling various bods to see if they could get them made for our market…………

OK, so I like white lures, indeed if you made me choose only one lure colour that I could use for bass fishing for the rest of my fishing days I reckon I’d go for white. I love white lures for night fishing of course, but way before I even knew that you could catch bass at night on lures, I caught my first bass on a senko in some fairly murky water over in Ireland - and the colour of that senko was, yes, you’ve guessed it, white! I really like white lures in more coloured water when bass fishing during the day, but then I’ve also caught bass on white hard and soft lures in crystal clear water, and so on. Hell, I used to own a white IMA Salt Skimmer that I think Sakura over in France got IMA to make for their market, and that slayed as well - or at least it did until I went and lost it to a bit of rock I shouldn’t have cast at.

So I’ve now got my favourite soft plastic jerkbait style lure in a colour that seriously does it for me in a lot of different situations, so please forgive my overexcitement. My life is now complete! I’ve done just fine on a white senko at night over the last few years, but I keep hearing more reports from some very good bass anglers who have had some serious fishing on DoLive Sticks at night, fished somewhat slower and therefore a little deeper than I might fish a white senko. Now I accept completely that colour preferences at night may well be in our heads only, but I can’t get away from how well white lures have done for a number of us - and now I’ve got a solid white 6’’ DoLive Stick! Is this the best of both worlds? Be still my beating heart.

If you are interested in this new DoLive Stick colour then they are only available here I believe. I take my hat off to the Lurefishingforbass.co.uk people for sticking their necks out and getting this custom colour made for our market after I asked them if it could be done - thank you, thank you, thank you! I know that bass fishing is 99% about where and when, indeed I hope that goes without saying - but as you have probably guessed, the tools of this fine trade we ply seriously fascinate me along with the actual fishing itself, and now that a pure white 6’’ DoLive Stick is a reality, well let’s just say that I wasn’t really designed for dressing up in compression gear and dancing a jig around my office. Damn it feels good though, and especially together with the Cornish uniform of crocs and socks that enable year round use from these awesome shoes. You all have a good weekend. I’m off for a lie down………...

Amendment - I am getting a few questions from people asking me what hook I like the most for these 6'' DoLive Sticks, and it's this hook here if that helps. Further details can be found here.

Van Staal VR50 review - not cheap, bought in the US, have now sold it, gutted……….

Sorry your honor, my lure sort of fell off my rod and into that particular gully………

You’ll never know unless you give it a go

Do we tend to default to fishing the same spots with the same lures because it’s worked before, but could a change work better?

I wonder how much of my lure fishing I could do in a pair of breathable waist waders, and there is a serious reason for trying this

HTO Shore Game S932ML 9'3'' 7-30g lure rod review - £339.99 UK RRP

A follow makes a glorious early season blank feel so much better

Crewsaver Crewfit 165N Sport lifejacket review - well under £100 with the auto inflate option

I love that buzz of getting out there and walking around and looking for new spots to fish

Has anybody here had much fishing time with these not very expensive Savage Gear Seeker ISP metal lures?

We’ve had a cancellation so one space has become available on our second July co-guided Ireland lure fishing trip

K.T.S.A.N.B.I.G.O - Keep Things Simple At Night Because I’m Getting Older

Major Craft Triple Cross TCX-942SSJ Super Light Shore Jigging 9'4'' 15-40g lure rod review - £199.99 UK price

How will I top that epic start to the bass season?

The second video from our day with the RNLI - waders and trying to climb out

Breathable waist waders - where have you been all my life?

I’ve got high hopes for this brand new, medium sized Xorus Patchinko 125

Is using a thicker braid leader a case of me missing something blindingly obvious, or is it just overcomplicating things?

A very clever way of getting a rear hook into a soft plastic, and it works

The brand new, solid white 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick is real, it's available now in the UK, and I’m so excited I am dancing around my office in my compression gear plus Crocs with socks