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

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

If you are reading this then I hope you might have noticed that things look a little different on here. I have used Squarespace for my website for a few years now and last week I took it upon myself to spend a few early mornings overhauling the website and blog to freshen things up a bit.

It’s still the same content but for example I wanted to give my photos more room to breathe by changing up the way the galleries work and giving them more space across a screen - which I might add you will most likely not really notice if you are looking at this on a mobile phone. I get completely that a hell of a lot of people access the internet from their mobiles these days, indeed a few issues I had with this redesign were making sure that the Fishing Tackle pages worked okay, but for me and my photos and how I want to show them off I can’t help but default my thinking to a larger computer monitor or at least a tablet screen. I want my fishing photos to jump out at you!

I don’t know how you get to this blog page (saved link, homepage, blog landing page etc.), but I tried to keep the actual main “these are the latest blog posts” landing page as simple and close to my last one as possible (as per above) because it seems to work well and I like the lack of clutter.

Please note that you can efficiently search all my blog posts by using the Search box. I use it myself when I am trying to find references on certain blog posts and this search facility works really well. I don’t know how many of you use it, but I have highlighted where it is on the blog landing page above. I hope it helps.

At the bottom of this blog landing page there is a also an option to subscribe to the blog - loads of you kindly do - and please believe me when I say that your email addresses go no further than me. Below that Subscribe option there is then the facility to click through to a wildly exciting page which is in fact a list of all the blog posts I have ever written, organised by date and highlighted above.

The Fishing Tackle pages are the same (loads of) information on all the tackle tartery that so many of us love, so please make sure to scroll down the page and click through to the various pages if that’s what you are after. Again I have tried to make all this easily accessible and simple to view. To be honest it’s a resource that I sometimes struggle to keep on top of with but I also recognise that it seems to help a number of anglers out with their buying decisions - and I would like to thank those of you who kindly buy some of your stuff through the affiliate links. It is hugely appreciated and it genuinely does help me to keep going with the fishing tackle side of things on here. Thank you!

And of course if you are reading this then I hope you like the new main blog page which I hope is cleaner and less cluttered than the old one. It’s deliberately meant to be about the blog post and nothing else and I’d be interested to know what you think in the comments section below. I got rid of the sidebars to allow the content to do its thing and now I have lived with the new design for a few days I am really happy. It’s the same but different!

Early January bass down here in parts of Cornwall to be honest are kind of expected if the conditions don’t go to hell in a mass of filthy water and huge swells as we annoyingly had for what seemed like the whole of December 2018 - but what about February and March? I can’t personally recall ever having caught a bass from the shore on a lure in either of these two months, but I know people who have down here and I wonder if this might be the year when it’s more than possible?

January 2017 Cornwall bass

Or does saying that now mean it’s all going to go to hell with the conditions and cabin fever will then rage until at least early April! I don’t know how or even if you do keep a loose eye on what’s going on via social media and/or various forums or contacts, but I find it absolutely fascinating firstly that so many lure anglers are still getting out there, and secondly that a high percentage seem to be finding bass. Does this mean that in years gone by that perhaps too many anglers were knocking things on the head that bit early, or are things really are warming up that much that at least some bass are hanging around for longer than they usually would? I find it fascinating.

I nipped out yesterday morning for a very quick local session, and whilst I didn’t get a sniff of a bass but did get a few annoying taps from pesky little garfish, it just didn’t feel remotely like the middle of January at all. The water doesn’t feel particularly cold to me, the sea conditions and water clarity/colour were about as good as I would ever hope to see anytime in a fishing year, the air temperature just isn’t very cold at all at the moment, and with where I was I literally felt that on every single cast I could hook a bass. I keep hearing reports of dolphins herding shoals of herrings in the Tamar for example, and if there really is that much food about - hell, the other day I caught a mackerel on a surface lure - then with the relatively warm water temperatures one must wonder what might be possible this year.

January 2017, and if anything I had even better conditions yesterday morning

Unless things do go to hell I am going to keep on trying, but I am also going to use the time I’d have allocated to going fishing to keep on looking for new places to fish. I fished a night session with a friend the other day on a part of the coastline that I just don’t fish for bass myself, and on the way home I got to thinking about how much more there is around where I live that has to be worth having a go at. I think about how limited my knowledge is of too many interesting looking locations local to me that for whatever reasons I might have overlooked and as ever that constant desire to try different things keeps those fishing juices churning around. Bing Maps (better detail than Google Earth or Maps) and plenty of walking here we come…………..

So could this be the year when I do manage to land some bass in February and March? Time will tell of course, but I am going to keep trying if things stay remotely like this - which now means it’s going to snow next week I bet! Are you still going and are you finding fish? Would you usually still be going at this time of year or has the warmer weather and/or reports of other anglers finding bass inspired you to not to put your lure gear away just yet?

I was alerted to yet another tragic death of an angler from the other day. I quote: “In memory of Damian Dixon died on Sunday 13/01/2019 whilst participating in his favourite hobby sea angling whilst setting up on the rocks at howick north Northumberland he accidentally entered the sea and as a result was rescued by the RNLI and tragically passed away later that day. He leaves behind a partner, young daughter and close family”. And then last night an angler from Sicily posted this on my Facebook page: “17 year old died this morning while fishing, washed away by a wave, in Sicily. Very sad.” Fishing the way so many of us do is of course has a lot of inherent risk, but how many of you here for example now own and regularly wear an auto-inflate lifejacket when you are out fishing? In due course I will blog about how easy it is to maintain and service lifejackets, because we look after our rods and reels so why not keep the one item that could save your life in perfect working order? I have put myself on a long road with this angler safety stuff but I am not giving up…………..

I posted this on my Facebook page yesterday: A big reason for me asking various questions on here is because there are some mighty fine anglers checking in who are often kind enough to share information that can help us all catch a few more fish. The experts will always know it all anyway, but if you are anything like me then you are doing all you can to keep on learning about fishing - with my profound thanks to Marin Augustin for posting this information yesterday about a lure that I simply haven't got to grips with at all, the Samson Lures Enticer Minnow:

“Slowly slowly retrieve, leave it to sink for 2 or 3 seconds, up again on surface on retrieve and always shake softly the tip of the road, never stop shaking the rod. It's deadly when you catch the dance. From July to November Enticer give me like 300 bass on any condition. Now on my bag I have 1 box with fbm and 3 Enticers , 2 on 25 grams and 1 on 30 grams. On 25 it was the summer winner." 300 bass on the one lure last year? Yep, damn right, I am going to dig mine out and give it a damn good thrashing in exactly the way that Marin has kindly described. Thanks to all of you on here who take the time to give over tips and tricks like this.....................

Now this could of course be any lure really, but my original question the day before on Facebook was whether anybody was aware of a viable alternative to the outstanding Xorus Patchinko II surface lure. Do I need an alternative? Perhaps not, but it’s January and I am always interested in learning new stuff via research, watching other anglers, and of course asking questions. From day one we have encouraged our girls to learn and explore and ask questions and I will never understand an angler who doesn’t do the same. Surely the whole point of fishing is to try and get better at it?

And it just so happens that this Samson Lures Enticer Minnow is a lure that I did play around with a bit last year but I can’t pretend for one second that I really got to grips with it - and please note that this Samson Lures Enticer Minnow is a different lure to the Samson Lures Enticer Sub Surface Tweak Bait which I did okay on (check here). And yes, I do find the Samson Lures lure names a tad confusing! I did get very excited about those GT Ice Creams when I stumbled upon them a few years ago, but as outrageously as they cast I just haven’t seen enough bass action on them to make them a staple of my lure box - could I fish them a bit differently though, as Marin above is doing with his Enticer Minnow? They are frigging missiles and when you’ve got a good angler like that quoting around 300 bass on it I’d be daft not to sit up and take notice - and it’s a big thanks from me to those of you here who are kind enough to share information like this. You all have a good weekend and I hope that if you’re still going at the bass you manage to find a few.

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.

I guess the easiest thing to say here is that I now own this Tailwalk EGinn 106M-R 10'6'' Max 45g lure rod because it has absolutely blown me away with how fantastic it is to fish with and it fills a gap in my arsenal that I was looking to fill. Go to my webpage here and you can read about my go-to lure rods that I fish with most of the time, and when the situation changes I update that particular page - hence this Tailwalk EGinn 106M-R 10'6'' Max 45g lure rod is now on that page because to me it really is that good. I’ll tell you why…………..

I remember first picking this new 10’6’’ EGinn rod from the Tailwalk “Borderless” range at the 2018 European Sport Fishing Show on the Art of Fishing stand and thinking crumbs, this feels like it could be rather special. I don’t have that much experience with lure rods longer than 9’6’’ and for the most part I simply could not have imagined that I would come across a 10’+ lure rod which I would actively want to use for my day to day fishing as such, but in reality the rod felt so nice in the hand that I stopped worrying about how long it was and waited until I could get out fishing with it. Holy cow to put it mildly.

I’ll explain my thinking behind adding a rod like this to my armoury, and please bear in mind that I am a hopeless tackle tart but I do actually lure fish for bass in a bunch of different ways on a bunch of different marks in a bunch of different conditions, and as much as I will default when possible to that “one lure rod which as near as dammit does it all” , in reality one rod can’t do it all if you like to get out there and mix things up like so many of us do. For about a year now that one rod has been the almost stupidly good Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g (review here), but if I didn’t have that particular rod it would be the sublime Tailwalk EGinn 9’6’’ Max 35g (review here). And yes, of course there is an element of tackle-tartery in there that gets me moving seamlessly through a few different rods like a lion stalks a gazelle on the African plains. Okay, perhaps not, but you get my drift!

As much as I can easily push my Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g in some livelier conditions, in reality it’s such a stunningly light and responsive and subtle rod that I have found myself turning to it far more than I ever envisaged for some of the lighter work. Just because a rod says 38g and can in fact chuck 38g pretty easily like this rod can doesn’t then mean you want to fish its top end all the time, indeed I’d always suggest that if you are buying say a 7-35g rod to lure fish with lures of 30g+ all the time then you are buying the wrong rod and you should be moving up to something like a 12-42g rod - and so on. It’s outrageous how accomplished this 9’6’’ Shimano is, but without a doubt the rod is most alive to me when I am staying under say 30g with it.

So I’ve had half an eye on a particular type of “next step up in power but not a scaffold pole” lure rod for a while now but without going actively looking for one - until that is this I came across this extraordinary 10’6’’ Tailwalk. I do want more power but I don’t want a complete poker, I still want the rod to feel nice and fast and crisp/steely but it has to have “feel”, I want it to be as light as possible, and I need the rod to feel at ease in bouncy conditions. It has to fish a 6’’ DoLive Stick as well as a Hound Glide or Spittin’ Wire or bigger Patchinko, I want it to be very good at working something like a 25g head/120mm body (35g total) Fiiish Black Minnow or a Savage Gear Sandeel either along the bottom or retrieved like a hard lure, and then I might want to sometimes chuck a 40g casting jig into a bit of turbulence at long range and be able to properly work the lure - plus almost everything in between. I know a lot of UK and Irish bass anglers love the 140mm long Xorus Patchinko, so if it’s any help, I have never, ever put this long-casting surface lure out as far as I can on this Tailwalk rod. Honestly, my mate Mark and I were giggling for about twenty minutes the other day when we were casting the Patchinko because it was going so far. Mature eh?!

To be honest I don’t care how long this rod I have been looking for is, or at least I don’t now because this extraordinary Tailwalk EGinn 106M-R 10'6'' Max 45g lure rod is doing the above paragraph for me in such an efficient and enjoyable way that its 10’6’’ length to me has become inconsequential. I was on the lookout for a lure rod that could do all of the above and by pure chance it happens to be this particular rod at this particular length. These EGinn rods have got really good handles on them, I know how well stainless-frame Fuji SIC guides work and last if you wash the rod down in freshwater, and after a bit of time that smaller butt grip feels pretty good (same as the 9’6’’, above).

I know the phrase “it doesn’t feel like it’s 10’6’’ long” makes no real sense because of course this rod actually is that long - and for a long time I shied away from longer rods because in the UK especially, longer spinning rods have tended to be heavy and floppy and horrible to fish with - but this Tailwalk is so light and responsive and steely it just feels like an awesome lure rod rather than a slightly compromised longer lure rod if that makes sense. I’d have gone for it if it had been 9’6’’ or whatever, but it happens to be 10’6’’ long and it bothers me not a single bit with how much I like fishing with this thing. I also like how this rod feels just as good with an uber lightweight Shimano 4000 reel or a slightly heavier and very, very manly Penn Slammer III 3500 - for some reason it’s very easy to get quickly used to a different weight of spinning reel on this rod.

It’s a “finesse-style more powerful lure rod” if there can be such a thing. You can go up to the 45g mark, but to me that means I am having to hold back a bit and to be honest for the kind of fishing I want this rod for, a 40g lure is plenty enough for me. I have absolutely full-blooded 40g metals on this rod with no hassle at all. For sure it’s a casting machine and it makes me smile with how easy it is to get at all that power, but there’s so much subtlety and feel in the blank when you need some finesse and precision but with such an effortless ability to fish heavier lures and/or heavier conditions. How the hell Tailwalk have made a 10’6’’ lure rod feel so completely unlike a slightly unwieldy longer rod is beyond me, but this outstanding Tailwalk EGinn 106M-R 10'6'' Max 45g lure rod has filled a gap for me. Wow.

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.

I’m not even going to try and justify the endless innuendos either in the title to this blog post or contained within, but yes, I am a 45 year old grown up (?), and no, I can’t do much about the fact that me wanting to talk about how we hold our fishing rods might sound fantastically puerile to non-anglers especially. What, me, playing around with the English language? Never!

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I reckon from day one of picking up a fishing rod with a spinning reel on it I have held it in the same way - and for me that’s what I think is called a split-grip. When I am holding a fishing rod for either casting or retrieving lures, I would have two fingers either side of the reel stem, and I would hazard a guess that this is how most anglers around the world hold a fishing rod that has a spinning reel attached to it. It feels natural, it gives you a good grip, and it obviously works just fine.

But do you ever play around with it (tee hee)? I bet like me you pick up your fishing rod as naturally as you’d tie your shoelaces (note that I am maturely not pointing out the other, perhaps more obvious male reference here), as in it’s so natural to us that we don’t even think about it - we just do it. For nearly forty years I’d have picked up a fishing rod/spinning reel combination and my two sausage fingers would move to either side of that reel stem. I wasn’t looking to change this, indeed to be perfectly honest I had never thought about how I hold my rod because I’d been doing it for so long and it just worked.

Then a few years ago when I was in Cape Cod with Matt the Fiiish lure designer, I was photographing him casting Crazy Sandeels one morning on the Cape Cod Canal and I noticed how he would cast with a split-grip (above) and then change over to a different grip for the retrieve (below) - he would move his hand so that it sat on the foregrip with the reel stem behind, as in no fingers either side of the reel stem at all. I bet an angler like Matt who has fished all his life doesn’t even know he is doing this it’s so natural to him, but when you stop and concentrate on anglers as I so often do with cameras in hand, you tend to notice these tiny details. It made no difference to how I fish myself, but I picked up on it.

And then we were in Ireland last June and I was photographing Carl with his new at the time Van Staal VR50 (boo, hoo, see here), and I noticed how his casting grip was with his little finger behind the reel stem (above), and then for the most part he would move his hand to sit completely in front of the reel stem for the retrieve (below). So we got to talking about it as one does - men, rods, grips, how you do it, different strokes etc. - and for no other reason than I wanted to try it to see how it felt, I started to give this way a go.

And now when I pick up a fishing rod/spinning reel combination I find that my little finger now sits behind the reel stem with the rest of my hand in front (below). I don’t change this grip save for the odd occasion when I might think about it and try my whole hand in front of the reel for the retrieve, but mostly it’s that little finger behind and without really meaning to it now feels as natural as the split-grip used to feel for me. It feels great to cast and retrieve like this and if I change back to a split-grip it feels a bit alien, although no doubt if I persisted in fishing like this again for a few sessions it would all feel normal again. So what does this all demonstrate? Nothing really, other than it is possible to shake things up a bit, does more of your hand/fingers on the actual rod blank promote more feel perhaps, and that it is also possible to write about how you hold your rod without any innuendos at all……………….

I think I first stumbled upon the FG knot on YouTube, and I can remember the first time I managed to tie it properly here at home - because from that instant this amazing braid to leader knot became an absolute no-brainer to me. I accept completely that here in the UK and Ireland we are not exactly fishing for species of fish that are going to test the gear we use to anywhere near the max, and of course a good quality say 20lb 8-strand braid is capable of landing seriously big fish when the terrain doesn’t reach out and break your heart - but my argument from day one with the FG knot has always been why not?

Why not make your connection from braid to leader as strong as you can? Why allow that connection to be a potential weak point in a setup that you might have spent serious cash on in the hope and belief that firstly you’re going to land the bulk of the fish you hook, and secondly that if and when a truly special fish comes along, you’re not fannying about giving said fish yards of line because you’re worried your leader knot isn’t going to hold or your rod might bend too much - which let me assure you it isn’t. In no way does the fact that I gave my biggest ever bass not a single inch of line make me a better angler than you, rather I had absolute faith in every part of my gear when I needed to put the gears on because of where I was. In my book I see absolute logic in the longer a fish fights for, the greater the chance of something going wrong.

For me it was pretty simple from day one with the FG knot - if I tie an Improved Albright from 20lb braid to a 20lb fluoro leader then I can break it in my hands without that much effort. If I try to break the same lines connected together via an FG knot in my hands then I end up with line cuts in my fingers from the braid which are always lovely when you get saltwater in them! The FG knot makes me realise how strong 20lb braid actually is - abrasion resistance and gnarly ground aside of course. Damn right this isn’t remotely scientific, but when was a line testing machine ever going to replicate actual fishing conditions either? I have heard people say that I should test my knots with weighing-scales etc., but really, what’s the point? I 100% trust the FG knot to secure my braid mainline to my fluoro leader. Nine times out of ten if I need to pull for a break the fluoro leader breaks on the knot to the lure clip, instead of on the leader knot as you get with something like the Improved Albright - and I might also add that I have got plenty of lures back where the hooks have bent out via an FG knot.

And still the easiest to understand video I have found for learning to tie the FG knot is the one above, albeit with the lighter braids we might use I will put thirty turns (fifteen complete crisscrosses) in before securing with a half-hitch, pulling the hell out of the knot to cinch it down, put two more half-hitches in around the leader/mainline, cut the leader nice and tight, put two half-hitches in around the braid mainline only now, and then put a 3-turn locking knot in there to finish it off. For sure you can cast this knot through your rod guides if needs be - and I have tried much longer leaders for bass fishing - but to be honest my fluoro leader is always of a shortish length whereby the FG knot is never actually inside my rod guides. If you can’t hold the braid in your teeth then you can put a small loop in the end and secure it either to you or try putting it around your reel handle, tension it up, and tie it like that.

Okay, so the FG knot takes longer to tie than say an Improved Albright or a Uni to Uni or whatever, but when my whole fishing thing as such is based around one hell of a thin and arguably fairly fragile connection between me and the fish I might hook, again I ask myself why not? Why not have that connection between my braid and my leader the strongest I can make it? By using the FG knot, in my head I have now completely removed any worries about my connection between my mainline and my leader - yes, I always use a leader, and yes, I experimented a bit last year with not using one and I just didn’t like it - and because I would always argue that fishing is so much about confidence, why not use what gives me complete confidence?

I wonder if more anglers are using a modern knot like this, or do lots of people still use what are older and unquestionably weaker knots on very modern fishing lines? Are some of the anglers who argue that a braid/leader combination is wrong simply unable to properly tie something like the FG knot? Ouch! Yep, bass are only bass, and GTs they are not and never will be, but we love and cherish ‘em, and from my own point of view I want to fill myself with confidence that I can remain connected to as many of them as I can and not donate yards of free line to them because I am worried about my leader knot and also actually putting a bend into my bit of modern carbon. Ouch again! Monday morning and nervously counting down until Saturday afternoon and the monster that is England v Ireland in the Six Nations…………..

I seriously like the 8-strand Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid, and I can still remember stumbling upon it in an online catalogue a few years ago, realising that that I had never seen or even heard of this braid before, then ordering a spool on Ebay from Poland I think it was to see what it might be like. Yes, I have a serious thing for Sufix lines, and it’s because try as I might I honestly can’t recall a single time when one of their monos, braids or fluorocarbons has ever given me cause for concern - and that is from many years of fishing with Sufix lines now.

But their Pro 8 is no more, or rather when current stocks run out that’s it ladies and gentlemen - say goodbye to one of the best braids I have fished with, regardless of price, indeed the fact that this outstanding 8-strand braid had always come in at under the £20 price point for a 150m spool is quite something if you ask me. Say hello instead to the replacement for this braid, the brand new Sufix X8. I have fished with this new 8-strand braid a lot now if that is any help, and like its predecessor I really, really, like it…………

Okay, so in truth I think that braids such as Sufix 832, Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8, Daiwa J-Braid (the one braid here I haven’t fished with now for a fair while) and the discontinued Sufix Pro 8 are that good they’d kinda do me for evermore, but fishing tackle companies are no different to other companies who make stuff and bring it to market - they need to reinvigorate their product lines to take advantage of new technologies and keep us the consumers buying their products. Product turnover, is that what it’s called in business terms? Whatever the case, Sufix X8 is their new “budget” 8-strand braid and with what seems to be an increasing number of UK anglers turning onto Sufix lines, some of you might end up buying and using this braid in due course - which I might add I would urge you to do.

I have been fishing mainly with the “Hot Yellow” 23lb/0.165mm/PE#1.0 Sufix X8, but I have also fished a fair bit with the 17lb/0.148mm/PE#0.8 - there is also a “Stealth Green” colour available. From the catalogue I can see that there are all the breaking strains or PE numbers we would expect to see (screenshot of the most applicable breaking strains for us above), and on 150m and 300m spools - the UK RRP of a 150m spool of Sufix X8 is £17.49 and for a 300m spool it’s £29.49. And oh how I would love it if one day a line company sold 300m spools with a little black mark on the braid at 150m.

What I deliberately did was to fish with this line for a while and see what I thought and what differences if any I could find to their Performance Pro 8 braid, and then I would go back to my Sufix contact to ask about the actual/technical differences between the two braids - would what I might find tie in with what was actually going on?

So many of these modern braids are so damn good these days and for the most part they refuse to let me down that it’s getting hard to find many meaningful differences. Sufix 832 for example is the “tough as hell but a little bit thicker and rougher feeling” 8-strand that I can tell is a different kind of braid to say the slightly thinner Daiwa J-Braid or the Sufix Pro 8, and this brand new Sufix X8 is very much in the “as smooth and thin as you like” family of 8-strands. We are only human beings and perhaps we tell ourselves things we almost want to hear, but from the off this new Sufix X8 feels a little bit smoother and rounder again than the brilliant Pro 8, and it’s a dream to cast and fish with - but then so are the other sub-£20 braids.

I have tried my best to be clinical, but at the end of the day I can only feel the braid in my fingers and then come to various conclusions when I am out fishing with it. This Sufix X8 behaves immaculately, it’s as strong as hell when I tie it to my fluoro leader via the FG knot, it seriously seems like it’s whispering through the guides when you blast lures out there, and even if I am only imagining this slight increase in performance, at the end of the day I am more than happy fishing with this new Sufix X8 over their Pro 8 which is of course discontinued. One thing I can’t help but notice is that this Sufix X8 is retaining its colour a bit better than the Pro 8 - all braids lose some of their colour over time, but this X8 is clinging on really well (will it hold its colour as well as that Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 does?).

So after fishing with this rather lovely X8 for a while now I went back to my Mr.Sufix contact in Italy to ask what the differences actually are between the two braids. Please bear in mind here that I can’t prove any of what he has told me but that I see no reason for him to feed me a pack of lies, not with how much information he has shared with me in the past. Mr.Sufix as such told me this, and it’s a direct quote from his email: “In brief, X8 is a substantial upgrading of the Pro8. We could do it because we have received from Toyobo Nippon Dyneema the availability of few new carrier thin sizes. This allowed us to make all X8 sizes with 8 carriers of the same size. This makes the line rounder but also smoother, without the small bumps you feel when you do a 4+4. The diameters are also more accurate than before. The strength is same, because dyneema quality is same. Line is softer because we have used a Japanese style coloring with a thinner layer. So the line is soft and silky smooth. Finally, yes, also the coloring should be more stable. We are making big progress there. And please consider that you can already say that ALL Sufix braided lines are colored with water-base pigments. We don’t use any longer any solvent that can pollute our environment!”

Now before I go giving myself a pat on the back for being a braided line guru which lets face it I obviously am not, I was rather pleased to get these details which kinda backed up my thoughts on this new Sufix X8 from getting out fishing with it. And yes, as I said earlier, I can’t ignore me almost wanting to find something a bit different with a brand new product - I have an older iPhone SE for example that works fine and you might have a much newer iPhone that Apple have obviously marketed as being a whole heap better, but is it really, and so on (let’s not go there with lure fishing rods though, because with my weaknesses any attempt at logic flies right out of the window!). All I know is that I am already liking this new Sufix X8 easily as much as their Pro 8 which in reality makes me breathe a sigh of relief that Sufix still have a truly outstanding, silky-smooth 8-strand braid that comes in at well under the £20 mark for a 150m spool (and I will report back in time). I am unashamedly a fan of Sufix fishing lines and in fishing terms this means a lot to me - another very, very good 8-strand braid that comes in at under the £20 mark for a 150m spool. Outstanding. Their UK catalogue is here if that is any help.

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.

I wondered why Marc Cowling went a bit quiet last winter, and this book is the reason. I think it’s fair to say that Marc is now a well known bass fishing guide who is based in the glorious part of the UK that is south Devon - you can find/book Marc as a guide here at his South Devon Bass Guide website - and let me assure you that he knows his bass fishing big time. For some daft reason he kindly asked me to write the foreword to his book and I thought it might explain things pretty well if I quoted myself below:

“I don’t want to embarrass Marc here, but I knew from the first time we sat down together and started talking all things fishing that I was talking with an utterly obsessed angler who shared my lifelong passion for this thing we do, and also saw beyond just catching fish. For sure we go fishing because we it’s on our blood and we can’t not go, but for some of us catching fish is merely one part of a tapestry that will never be completed. Fishing either consumes you or it doesn’t. I know it consumes Marc just as it consumes me, and that is why I am honoured to write this foreword. You are going to learn a hell of a lot from this book, and I urge you to note that watching and helping people fish via the guiding process is another whole string to one’s bow. Nothing quite trains the fishing brain like doing your best to help other anglers catch fish, indeed not actually fishing yourself is absolutely fascinating - and for sure you then take those ideas and thoughts with you when you next go fishing yourself. This in turn keeps that cycle of information and learning going. Take all that you read here, bring it into your own fishing, and then keep moving forward. Enjoy that there are no hard and fast rules in fishing, but I can guarantee that there will be things in this book which are going to get you buzzing. Fishing is passion, and passion is life.”

There are a lot of good anglers out there who know a load more than I ever will, but putting this knowledge down on paper in a way that is easy to understand and very accessible is a skill in its own right. Marc is not only a very good angler and now guide, but he also has this ability to think deeply about what he does and importantly as well what he sees when he is out fishing and guiding - and then he has the ability to put that information down on paper to create this hugely impressive lure fishing book.

So let me ask you a question - how much would you spend on a single fishing lure, and would that lure give you a wealth of information about how to go about catching bass on lures? If you read Marc’s book and don’t learn a whole heap about lure fishing for bass then I’d say one of two things - either you know it all and are therefore an expert already, or else you can’t read. Seriously, I like to think I am okay at fishing and I am very happy to accept that I have lots to learn and that there are plenty of better anglers out there than me, but I’ve been doing it a while and I’ve got a fair bit of experience I suppose - holy cow though when I read The Lure of the Bass by Marc Cowling I am left kinda gobsmacked by how much he knows and analyses, and how much what Marc has written teaches me, and perhaps more importantly, gets me thinking about my own fishing and how I might mix things up. I love writing about fishing, but I honestly don’t think I have Marc’s ability to break the actual fishing down into such detail.

This book is not really “lose yourself within it in front of the fire sort of read” along the lines of that rather lovely “The Song of the Solitary Bass Fisher” by James “Leakyboots” Batty (review here). Nope, Marc’s book is more of a £16.99 bundle of serious knowledge and thought and analysis that is very easy to digest but also sits there to be thought about at length with regards to how you go about your own bass fishing. And rather than me try to break down what’s in this outstanding book, I have stolen some stuff off Marc’s blog which I urge you to keep an eye on as well:

“The Lure of The Bass’ is a reference book, including my own theories and overall approach to catching these sublime predators from the shore and on lures, interspersed with anecdotes and short stories. I have listened to my clients and collated the many questions I receive and tried to answer them. Questions such as:

How to find marks?

How to choose the right lure for the terrain and sea conditions

How to retrieve the lures correctly

The art of watercraft

Furthermore, I have broken down the chapters (below) so that the contents of the book gradually build on, or expand, on each facet related to this wonderful way if catching one the UK’s premier sporting sea fish.

Chapter 1 – The Equipment Required

How to minimise your expenditure and maximise your time in relation to purchasing the right lure rod (I break down the components separately including the length, weight, power, action, etc) and the reel (line capacity, size, retrieve ratio) for you, in addition to the clothing required, mainline/leader and the miscellaneous items (lure clips etc.).

Chapter 2 – An Introduction to Lures

How to ensure that each lure type you purchase completes a specific job for you in relation the shape, size, colour and movement and what it potentially represents in regards to the prey bass feed upon. The lure types are broken down into shallow, medium and deep diving floating minnows, weedless soft plastics, surface lures, paddle tails and sinking/suspending lures.

Chapter 3 – Movement and Behaviour

Understanding how bass traverse the coastline and how to identify potential patrolling routes and positioning points is vital to your chances of success. Plus, how do you take advantage of the fearsome, opportunistic and predatory instincts of a bass.

Chapter 4 – Finding Specific Bass Marks

What constitutes as a potential bass mark or likely venue – how do you ‘read’ the ground when the tide has retreated or when you’re looking at an image on Google Earth or a photograph.

Chapter 5 – Determining When

Once you own the appropriate equipment and lures, understand the overall behaviour of bass and you’re confident about the marks you have discovered, how do you go about ascertaining if they are even present? This chapter offers a suggestion as to which naturally occurring elements to record (tidal range, state of tide, water clarity, etc.) and how to collate them so that you can identify patterns in activity from your results. I offer a very detailed insight into my personal diary entries, the conclusions I have come to make and my overall experiences and the quantified catch rate within certain parameters. Ultimately, if you are armed with as much information as possible about deciding where and when to fish you will be increasing the odds significantly in your favour.

Chapter 6 – Utilising Lures Effectively

Deciding which lure to use over another when faced with the multitude of sea and weather conditions you’re likely to face is something my clients (more than anything) want to learn. Moreover, you can be in the right place at the right time, but that lure still needs to look and act like something bass are looking for via the angler retrieving or ‘working it’ in the correct manner. This chapter tells you ‘how’ to use lures effectively alongside capitalising on, and exploiting the elements to your advantage in pursuit if these wild and wily creatures.

Chapter 7 – Bass on Lures in Darkness

How to identify the marks, which lures to choose and how to use them, in addition to how state of tide, tidal range and light levels can affect your results. Again, I offer a unique insight into my own catches and that of my guided clients within an approach that has been a total game-changer.

Chapter 8 – Conservation and Safety

Why bass are under so much commercial pressure, their life cycle and the ways in which we, as recreational sea anglers, can play our part. Furthermore, how to stay as safe as possible whilst out on the coastline and the risks and dangers associated with the sea, including the use of Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) and life jackets.”

I really like how this book is very much not a preachy kind of gospel that says there is only one way to go about catching bass on lures - to which I have always said balls, and because I know and respect Marc, I know that he genuinely feels the same way. Big respect Marc, holy cow “The Lure of the Bass” is one hell of an accomplishment and I urge you to buy a copy if you have an interest in catching more bass on lures - which you can do so right here. For less than the price of many hard lures you are getting something which will help you catch a lot more bass.

And of course I can’t leave you for the weekend without expressing my hope that Ireland might choke in Dublin on Saturday afternoon and by some miracle we might actually find our best team before the World Cup later this year. I am very worried that a positive result (from an England point of view) to both those points might be as likely as seeing a leprechaun in the flesh, but I am led to believe that multiple pints of the black stuff down in Kerry especially often results in leprechaun sightings, so miracles might actually be possible. I honestly can’t take the level of abuse that will no doubt be dealt out to me if we don’t come away with a win on Saturday, so please, please, please England let’s turn the Irish over……………..

I would ask forgiveness for not yapping about fishing on a gloomy Monday morning in early February, but to be honest all fishing related thoughts can go jump for the moment with what happened on Saturday afternoon over in Dublin - or did I fall asleep and dream of such an epic result in the 2019 Six Nations? Ninety seconds in and I held my breath for England’s first try, and I don’t think I dared breathe again until the final whistle and a result that always seemed possible with that much talent in the English squad, but as is the lot of being an English rugby supporter, one if often left wondering if and when it all might click into place…………….

Which holy frigging cow did it do so on Saturday. I have read a hell of a lot now about the match and the buildup, and I do also listen to three different rugby podcasts and I am really looking forward to their analysis this week, but what the hell has that Ozzie windup merchant Eddie Jones done to finally get his squad to come together like that and produce eighty minutes of rugby which looked like it essentially terrified the number two side in the world into moments of panic the like of which we just don’t expect to see from such a quality outfit as Ireland. I think Johnny Sexton is almost beyond special as a fly half, but I can’t remember seeing so little influence from him over a game, and to me that is a huge credit especially to the English back row which let’s remember was being flogged as a serious problem a year or so ago.

Did it really happen? Did we really play an almost perfect storm for eighty minutes at such a level of intensity that as per a link to a newspaper article down in New Zealand that my brother sent me: “England's Six Nations win turns the world upside down”. Damn right this win does just that, but as ever as an English rugby supporter I must temper my growing excitement with that nagging worry that it could be a flash in the pan and next weekend we go back to a gnawing worry that all the talent in the world might truly come together only once every few years. I choose to dream though, to hope that England rugby really has found its style and substance and grizzliness, that we do now have a few proper leaders who can find a coherent way through those periods of pressure when the lungs are fit to burst and the opposition is going through the phases and controlling the ball, and that this World Cup year is really going to be as exciting as Saturdays’ immense result is promising. Wow. Roll on Sunday afternoon and the French at Twickenham……….

This only applies if you do actually use a fluoro or mono leader on the end of your braid, but most lure anglers I come across do use one - so do you keep the same bit of leader on regardless of where you are fishing, or do you make the extra effort to change it because of the location and thus the terrain and how you might benefit from upping things a bit to deal with extra abrasion issues and so on? With a subject like this I will always think of the anglers I know from all over the place and how they tend to go about their fishing, then I think of how I tend to go about things, and so on like that…….

The fly guys tend to have leaders sorted!

I have never for one second thought that fluorocarbon is actually invisible underwater, but I am sure that most of you at sometime have wondered what the bass especially might actually be picking up on, and then whether they are actually put off by a leader and/or how thick can that leader be before it goes and puts fish off from hitting your lure. I would hazard a guess that the average strength of leader used for UK and Irish bass fishing would be 20lbs (and of course diameters of fluoros vary wildly), much as I’d guess the average braid mainline strength would be 20lbs. I reckon my own default leader is 20lbs or generally 0.40mm diameter and less, and because I have convinced myself that this is a little thick for clear and calmer water when I might be fishing something like a DoLive Stick, then I’ll tend to drop to say a 15lb or perhaps a bit less again - but do I need to? More to come on this with an interesting example from last year out in Kerry.

But what is your “average bass fishing”? It depends very much on where you either live and do your fishing or where you might travel to, but I’d argue that a lure angler fishing a quiet estuary often has slightly different tackle needs to an angler who is fishing big, bouncy conditions over rough as hell ground say on the north coast of Cornwall etc. And yes, this blog post is inspired by a chat I had with a friend the other day who is a very good angler indeed and who fishes a lot of hectic ground often with paddletails, and of course his mainline and leader is open to far more abuse than the angler fishing a quiet estuary or an open beach where the nearest sharp rock edge might be five miles away.

Is a 20lb or sub-0.40mm diameter leader enough for fishing diving hard and soft lures into seriously gnarly ground? Note that I am not remotely bothered by the actual size of the fish here because we’re all using gear that would land fish far bigger over clean ground than any bass we might ever see, but now put huge boulders and sharp rocks and a raging bit of sea into the mix and it’s like a whole different ball game with the abuse your gear is going through - and now that little bit of clear leader on the end of my scary-thin mainline doesn’t really feel very robust to me. Would I use the same bit of leader I used for my “regular” bass fishing as I used for say the rough and tumble that some locations can be?

In reality no I wouldn’t, but of course it requires either tying on new leaders or having a spare spool or even a few different setups ready to go depending on where you are heading off to. My default as I said is probably a 20lb fluoro leader - and even then all fluoro leaders and/or mainlines are definitely not the same for any number of reasons - but really, is that 20lb leader remotely man enough to act essentially as a rubbing leader when it’s spending a lot of time moving through some properly hectic ground? It might well be on a lot of “regular” marks, but surely we are basing our fishing on wanting to be in with the best possible shout at landing that fish of a lifetime if and when it might come along - and this I think requires that I make the extra effort to change my leaders and indeed setup and overall approach a bit more to reflect where I am fishing. Would a 30lb or even 40lb leader really put bass off in fizzed up green water? Would that stronger and of course thicker leader land me a few more fish through the course of a season? Would I really lose out much at all if I upped my braid mainline (diameter) on specific marks as well? Only one way to find out…………...

Of course I understand why a lot of anglers want to buy lures as cheaply as possible, and these days it’s not exactly hard to go online or even into some tackle shops and buy direct anc cheaper copies of most of the popular and effective killer lures that tend to come out of Japan and have a good history of catching bass. Not everybody has or wants to spend what is often close to the £20 mark on a hard lure that they could of course lose to a snag on their very first cast with it, and so on. Are these ripoffs as good as the originals? I am not the person to ask.

From a purely ethical point of view I struggle with the whole lure copying thing. Say you’re a tackle company that spends time and money on designing, testing, and bringing to market an original item of fishing tackle, only for another company to then make what to my eyes tend to look like lesser quality copies of your lure and sell them at a much lower price because of the cheaper materials, lack of R&D costs, and most likely some scary-cheap labour costs as well - pretty tough to take eh? I know how much time, effort and money went into what you now see as the Fiiish Black Minnow for example. To me it’s a highly original concept that over time has been copied in various different ways and I think it’s just plain wrong. Take the price out of the equation here, because time and money has been poured into an original concept and design and it’s just plain wrong when stuff like this is ripped off. But copies exist and we like what we perceive to be a bargain.

And no means am I trying to justify my own actions here. A few years ago I couldn’t find any IMA Salt Skimmers for love nor money and I stumbled upon what looked like the same lure but for far less money. I bought a couple because I had to see what they were like, I took them down to my local estuary to check that they cast and fished okay, and when I got back home I threw them in the bin and vowed never again - these particular Skimmer copies cast like a banana into a very mild breeze whereas the originals fly like a little missile (when you can get hold of them of course!). I tried and failed and I have always stuck to original lures.

My beloved IMA Hound 125F Glide

Now I seriously like the IMA Hound 125F Glide hard lure, and I have done from the first time I got hold of one and found out how well it casts and how amazingly it gripped into some properly lively seas. The Hound Glide hasn’t got a magical kind of action that turns the bass on regardless, but they have caught plenty of bass for me over the years, I have seen our clients over in Ireland nail a lot of bass on them during the day and also at night, and as a 125mm long hard lure I don’t really want to be without it.

A while back I was perusing the IMA Japan website as one does - I call it “vital research for work purposes” - and I noticed that the Hound family of lures were no longer listed on there. My heart rate immediately increased in a sense of panic as via a bit of digging around it became clear that for whatever reason, the killer IMA lure company had decided to stop making all the Hound lures (Glide, Sonic, Fang etc.). Now you could of course say that there are a bunch of similar lures doing similar things, and as regards the actual action of the Hound Glide in the water I’d say yes - but I still haven’t come across a regular, medium sort of depth, diving, minnow-type hard lure around this 125mm size that casts and grips in as well as a Hound Glide. I was so excited when the bigger 140mm long Hound Glide was launched a few years ago, but it doesn’t cast anything like as well as the smaller 125 that I love so much.

So my understanding is that my beloved IMA Hound 125F Hound Glide is no more. For sure I’ve got other hard lures which I like as much for different reasons, but I don’t want to be without a Hound Glide after I have gone through the ones I have here at home. I had a look online online to see if there were any direct copies of this lure out there, and I was honestly shocked at just how widely this one lure has been copied. A friend then emailed me and told me to have a look at the HTO Search, a hard lure which, let’s be honest, is at least a “tribute” to the IMA Hound 125F Glide! So I did, and there are three colours of the lure as per above which I think are pretty nice. The lure is not expensive at all.

HTO Search rigged with a couple of these VMC barbless trebles

You can tell straight away that the treble hooks on the HTO Search are not exactly of the finest quality, so the first thing I did was to bin all the trebles and split rings on the lure and rearm it with a couple of size 4 VMC 7554B BN Barbless treble hooks (I don’t want or need three trebles on a lure of this size). I think these VMC barbless trebles are outstanding, it’s worth trying to track them down, and VMC here in the UK are listing them in their catalogue so you can hassle your tackle shop to stock them. When you shake this HTO Search lure next to your ear and compare the sound to an original Hound Glide, there is indeed a difference in the sound which I am taking as a difference in the internal weight transfer system and how it works. I am assuming here that the Hound Glide with it’s slightly deeper sound from what seems to be bigger balls inside has the better weight transfer system, but then from a hell of a lot of use I obviously know how well the Hound Glide casts.

This HTO Search “tribute” casts really well though, and I have had it grip into a lively sea with no hassle at all. I can’t tell you if it will catch bass as well as the original Hound Glide, but because the original is no more and I so want a hard lure like it, I’m going to give this HTO Search a go. I have seen a few of those huge Chinese lure catalogues over the years that are mostly filled with pages and pages of direct ripoffs, so I am guessing that a lot of these Hound Glide copies are coming out of the same factories but with different packaging and colours and so on. If you go looking there are plenty of Hound Glide “tributes” out there, but the HTO Search seems to be readily available here in the UK and the price is not exactly expensive albeit I’d always bin the trebles and split rings and start the rigging process again with components that I trust.

But then I came across another Hound Glide “tribute” the other day on an Ebay site over in Holland I believe. I bought a couple of metals from the page earlier last year, so I went through my emails, found the page again, and went online to see if by any chance they did any Hound Glide copies that might be worth a look at. Rather interesting to say the least and I got hold of some to try………….

The “PAYO PERCA 125 Floating Jerkbait Fishing Minnow lure SeaBass” (above) from this Ebay site seems to be the same lure as the HTO Search to me - same hooks which I would bin, but a few different colours and a similar price. Casts well.

The above is where it gets more interesting for me though - the slightly more expensive “PAYO PERCA 125 Mac Tune Floating Jerkbait Fishing Minnow lure SeaBass” (above). Ever so slightly heavier than the above “tribute”, but you can hear a slightly deeper sound from within the lure when you rattle it. My understanding is that there are proper, bigger tungsten balls inside, plus the lure is also armed with proper Owner/Cultiva ST46 treble hooks which I believe are the same trebles as we find on nearly all the original hard lures we might buy from the recognised lure companies. Now I’ve only had a quick go down on my local estuary with this lure, but into a pretty strong breeze it absolutely flies. I know it’s easily going as far as an original Hound Glide and I am really looking forward to seeing if this “tribute” really could be an almost like for like replacement for when the few and very cherished Hound Glides that I have here at home are no more.

I also got what is meant to be a shallower swimming version of a Hound Glide from this site, the “PAYO PERCA 125F SHALLOW Mac Cast Floating Jerkbait Fishing lure SeaBass” (above), and I’m interested to see if this thing casts as well and does indeed swim a little shallower. There is also a baby “PAYO PERCA 98F Mac Cast Floating Jerkbait Fishing Minnow lure SeaBass” (below) - it’s a slightly narrower profile version of the lovely little Hound 100F Sonic which is also no more. These three different “Mac Cast” or “Mac Tune” versions all comes rigged with proper Owner/Cultiva ST46 treble hooks.

So there you go. I don’t exactly feel great doing a blog post about lure copies, but IMA have stopped making a lure that I seriously like for my bass fishing and because there are “tributes” of these Hound Glides out there, I had to go and have a look and see if I could get what the Hound Glide gives me. I am most excited about this “PAYO PERCA 125 Mac Tune Floating Jerkbait Fishing Minnow lure SeaBass” because it sounds and feels most like a Hound Glide to me, and from admittedly only a few casts it seriously gets out there (I would so love it if there was a solid white one as well!). In reality I’d far rather IMA were still listing the entire Hound family of lures on their website, but I can only guess that they weren’t a very popular lure over in Japan and it therefore became financially unviable to keep making them.

And of course we English rugby supporters are crossing all fingers and hoping that the match on Sunday against France will prove that Ireland last weekend was not a one off and that those amazing intensity levels can be sustained through to the World Cup and beyond. If you don’t hear from me on Monday it’s because my dreams have again been dashed and I am weeping into my coffee…………………

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.

I’m going to be honest here - perhaps one time a year at the very most and when I am in the swing of fishing a lot because of the seasons and conditions, I ease myself into that first (tight) layer I always put on under my waders and for a split second I think yes, I actually am a high performance athlete. Then I catch a glimpse of myself in said tight clothing and I come crashing back to reality and realise that no, a walnut type of figure in tight compression gear does not qualify for athlete status! There have also been a fair few occasions when we have finished a long day of fishing over on the south coast of Ireland and my mate and I who tend to wear the same sort of gear under our waders are now sitting in a takeaway in Dungarvan, waiting for our food. We have taken our waders off and we’re sitting there in a pair of shorts with tight leggings on underneath, and to top it all off we are also wearing the classic combination that is Crocs and socks. To say we have had a lot of strange and sometimes sympathetic looks is an understatement…….

If you are remotely concerned with how you look when you get ready to go fishing then I urge you to stop reading right now, for this is categorically not a blog post about fishing fashion wear. But if you’re wearing clothes under your waders that for some reason drive you mad with how wet they get with sweat or how they just don’t perform properly for you in different temperatures, then do please read on. I have been wearing the same kind of “first layer to go on” clothing under my waders for nearly eight years now, and try as I sometimes have done, I can’t find anything I like more. Note that there are no photos with this blog post firstly because I don’t take photos of mates in tights, and secondly because I refuse to put up screenshots from the internet of models wearing this gear either!

I have been wearing lightweight breathable chest waders for my fishing and work for longer than anybody I know or am aware of, and this is only because I started working with a fly fishing mate many moons ago and what he was wearing for a lot of his own fishing very quickly made a huge amount of sense for my own fishing and photography. I very quickly worked out that wearing jeans or tracksuit bottoms or clothing like that under my waders was a waste of time - it might work for you, but I am not small, I walk a lot, I walk fast, and I sweat. I have worked with companies in the past who were being driven loopy with wader returns that were often turning out to be nothing more than anglers wearing the wrong kind of clothing under their “breathable” waders and then sweating a lot. Something like a pair of jeans of course holds onto that moisture for ages and these anglers then complained that their waders were leaking - when they weren’t.

So I had to find something to wear under my waders that definitely wasn’t cotton based and also wasn’t going to annoy me when my bass fishing might revolve around a lot of walking and scrambling and so on. I can’t for the life of me remember why or how I ended up looking into the sort of tight compression style clothing that a lot of athletes and so on might wear, but for whatever reason I ended up getting some tight leggings and compression-type tops that happened to be made by Under Armour - and I haven’t looked back since. Please note also that this nearly eight year period of time with this gear does include me occasionally trying something else but always coming back to my Under Armour gear which is just so much better for me to wear under my waders. This tight kind of technical clothing works so well for me that unless something utterly magical comes along I can’t see myself finding anything better.

My Under Armour “first layer to go on” under wader clothing is based around their very thin “Heat Gear” (for warmer weather), and their utterly amazing “Cold Gear” which as the name suggests is for colder weather or night fishing etc. To be fair you can most likely find similar compression style leggings out there to the Under Armour Cold Gear ones that are also nice and thin and easy to wear in warmer conditions especially, but because I wore Under Armour from the off and they work so well for me I haven’t gone looking for any other brand. I reckon my first two pairs of Under Armour Cold Gear compression leggings lasted about five years before they literally wore through, so I bought a couple more pairs which after nearly three years now look almost as good as new. I have the two pairs because I swap them around when they need to be washed, and yes, I know this kind of gear is designed for running especially and perhaps because I am not doing that they are lasting so long - but it’s hugely impressive in my eyes, and I wear them a hell of a lot in regular to warmer weather. I do also have a couple of Under Armour Cold Gear compression style long sleeve tops, but I don’t wear them that much as I tend to prefer one of those specialist long sleeve tropical style fishing tops from the likes of Columbia when it’s normal to warm, and then layer up on top of that if needs be.

It’s the Under Armour Cold Gear that to me is most impressive. For sure I can’t do without their Cold Gear stuff, but when it gets a bit colder or I am out night fishing and so on, I have two pairs of Under Armour Cold gear compression style leggings that I have had for nearly eight years now, plus a couple of Under Armour Cold Gear compression style long sleeve tops. These items of clothing are utterly brilliant - plenty warm enough for nearly all the colder weather or night lure fishing I might do, so comfortable and easy to move around in, and they don’t feel at all like you’re wearing a heavier pair of thermals. I wear the Cold Gear tops a lot more than I’d wear the Heat Gear ones, and then I simply add various layers on top if needs be. I don’t mean to be remotely personal here, but the trick with all these leggings is to go commando underneath. A friend of mine started off with this kind of gear and got some awful chafing! We spoke about it - and no, I categorically did not want to take a look - and I advised him to go commando. All was just fine after that. Sorry, I don’t want to put horrible mental images into your head!

I think back to those bait days of wearing heavy cotton thermals that would spend half the time falling down my legs and bugging the hell out of me, and I look at how easy and efficient this compression style gear is to wear. I know it was never designed for us anglers to wear under waders, but if you ask me it’s bloody perfect - I don’t know how this gear is so good at getting rid of a lot of sweat when wearing waders, but they do a really good job. For a comparison, I kept hearing that the lightest weight pair of Patagonia under wader leggings were really good in warm weather especially, so I took the £40 or so punt and bought a pair a few years ago - I wore them twice I think it was and they were consigned to my cupboard and are most likely still in there somewhere. The same with some lighter weight Simms under wader leggings I took a punt on. Both pairs of leggings were rubbish compared to how good the equivalent Under Armour leggings are for wearing under my waders - soaked with sweat after a good long walk and therefore really uncomfortable to wear.

When it gets really cold say for some of the November and December night sessions when you get back to your car and there’s already bit of frost, well then I turn to a Scierra Thermo Body Suit (Ebay link) which is absolutely brilliant. For my winter cod fishing in my bait days I used to wear the previous generation of this ¾ style (no arms, straps over your shoulder) fleece “body suit” thing when waders were called for, indeed I wore the thing that much that I went through the knees in the end. This Scierra Thermo Body Suit is so comfortable and easy to wear, and again, for my top half I layer up accordingly. I haven’t yet fished a winter night session where my legs felt remotely cold underneath a pair of waders when wearing it. And yes, you tough northerners would most likely be night fishing in a pair of shorts when us soft southerners are thinking about turning to something like this Scierra Thermo Body Suit.

I can’t give you the exact temperatures or weather conditions when I swap between the Under Armour Heat Gear or Cold Gear, and that’s mainly because I have been wearing the stuff for so long now that I just gauge what I think I am going to need and go from there. It’s all so light and easy to wear that even if you feel like you might have got it a bit wrong, it matters not. This modern compression style technical clothing just works so well for me in so many different fishing situations here in the UK and then over in Ireland, and many years ago I got over the fact that I look like a pickled walnut under my waders or a complete tit when I am wearing a pair of shorts over some leggings and wandering around in my obligatory Crocs and socks. The gear just works. Hell, imagine if I was able to write the same kind of blog post about a pair of breathable waders lasting for the same amount of time! Please note that there are no links on where to buy this Under Armour stuff because I think you’re best off going direct to the Under Armour UK website if you wanted to get anything.

And yes, I am officially getting very, very excited about the rugby and how we really do seem to be back at the top table. Le Crunch was effectively all over by half-time and now I can’t wait until we head to Cardiff in a couple of weeks for what promises to be one hell of a game. Do Wales stand a chance against us, or are we in danger of getting overconfident? Bring it on!

I still haven’t come across a regular sort of casting weight 9’ lure rod in the £100-150 price bracket that I feel can live with the outstanding HTO Nebula 9’ (2.7m) 7-35g (review here), but from the moment that rod arrived here for a bit of a thrashing I was wondering why the powers that be at HTO Towers didn’t also have a longer 9’6’’ rod in the range that still covered that essential 7-35g range. Well they do now, and as much as I am still hugely impressed by the 9’, a part of me thinks that this new HTO Nebula 9’6’’ (2.9m) 7-35g lure rod might well be a slightly better rod again. I will explain why………

The 9’ 7-35g Nebula is in my opinion a hell of a lot of lure rod for the money. It’s very, very fast and pretty stiff overall albeit it’s not too much rod because of that 7-35g rating and how well it can load if you get things right on the casting front. This new and slightly longer 9’6’’ version is still a pretty stiff sort of very fast lure fishing rod, but without a doubt that extra 6’’ length manages to smooth things out a bit - you can feel the whole rod bending that bit easier through your hands when you wind things up. It’s still very light with an amazingly thin, stiffish tip that really works for me and many ways in which I might lure fishing for bass within that 7-35g range, the handle is spot on (slightly longer than on the 9’), I seriously like the small Fuji guides used on these rods, and even if the prices have gone up slightly with what I guess are currency fluctuations and so on, I still think these Nebulas represent incredible value for money.

I had the prototype version of this 9’6’’ Nebula here for a while last year, and I thrashed the living daylights out of it before handing it over to a friend and telling him not to hold back for a single second with the rod. This lad hits a lure rod seriously hard! There’s no point me repeating myself with what I think this rod can and can’t do when essentially it can do exactly the same good stuff as the shorter 9’ version - here’s that review - but I do also think that with the extra bit of length, this 9’6’’ 7-35g Nebula also makes a really good surf lure rod for those times when you aren’t going to be chucking lures over the 35g mark. As with the 9’ Nebula, I have hit 35g metals on this 9’6’’ version as hard as I can hit a lure, and they just absolutely fly - the rod is not straining which of course suggests you could cast heavier lures, but I am choosing to stay within the recommended casting weights because I want a rod to be working efficiently rather than overload it and have to hold back or risk breaking it.

And it’s that stiffness in the tip on this 9’6’’ Nebula that I think makes it such a good style of surf lure rod. Obviously if you need to go hurling much heavier lures out there then this rod is not for you (have a look at the weapon that is the 10’ 15-56 Nebula, review to come, weapon!), but I like this particular Nebula for surf fishing because the tip isn’t flapping around in the breeze - and if there is one thing that bugs the hell out of me when chucking lures out into a decent bit of surf, it’s a rod tip that flaps around like a badly rigged spinnaker (with thanks to my two girls for that sailing analogy, for I know less than nothing about sailing stuff). When I am whacking and cranking metals especially, I want that metal to go out as far as I can get it and and then for the tip to sit nice and still on the retrieve - and this Nebula does just that. Together with everything else it can do for me I can’t really see how it’s possible to get more “proper” lure fishing rod for the money.

If you want something a little less stiff or “obvious”/lightning fast then drop a bit more cash on the outstanding and subtler Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’6’’ 10-30g (review here), but damn I do like this 9’6’’ 7-35g HTO Nebula. I can see this 9’6’’ Nebula working very well for a lot of anglers, and I also have the new 4-piece travel version of the 9’ 7-35g Nebula here for a bit of a thrashing - review to come in due course. So there you go - these rods are so accomplished I am honestly left wondering if and when we might see another range of lure rods around the same price that can live with the Nebula family………..

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.

As much as breathable waders aren’t exactly cheap and in an ideal world would last forever, I can’t live without them for my lure fishing. I know that they are designed for freshwater fly fishing and not for what so many of us now put them through, but try as I might I can’t find an alternative solution for longer walks especially. I don’t want to wet wade in our cold waters because for starters I hate having wet feet for hours on end, plus my fishing might involve a good bit of walking, scrambling and/or wading. Chest and indeed waist waders now are as much a part of my fishing as my rods, reels, lures and lines are…………..

And of course I have a few different lure rods and reels here. I don’t know if you do so yourself, but through the course of a bass fishing year I will find myself fishing all manner of different kinds of grounds and conditions - and as much as I am obsessed with the “one lure rod that can do it all”, in reality it just can’t, at least not with how I go about my (varied) bass fishing. So I change rod and reel outfits to reflect where I am fishing and what lures are required to tackle them.

So why don’t we do this more with our waders? I can of course wear breathables for as good as all my bass lure fishing, but with how much a decent pair of waders costs (plus whatever type of boots you might use) and how long we can realistically expect them to keep us dry if we don’t include falling over and ripping or puncturing them, does it make more sense to mix things up and try to literally save my breathables for those sessions where I am actually going to be walking a fair distance and therefore the lightweight and breathable properties of the waders are really handy? I don’t use the same lure rod for every single location I fish, so how about using different waders that reflect where you are fishing because I really want to get as much life out of my breathables as possible.

He is a very, very brave wader!

A friend got me thinking about this a couple of years ago. We were sitting around the house in Ireland drinking coffee and eating bowls of cereal while we waited for the right state of tide on the next mark, and as one does, we were yapping all things fishing and from memory this friend had two leaking pairs of breathable waders and he was chopping and changing between them to try and stay at least a bit dry! I obviously wasn’t giggling at his misfortune, but this friend then started talking about a lot of the night fishing especially that we do over in Ireland and how a lot of it doesn’t actually revolve around much of a walk at all - and if you are getting out of the car and trotting onto a beach to stand calf-deep in the water, do you actually need to be wearing a pair of breathable waders to do so?

Okay, so I still want what a pair of chest waders offers me for fishing like this, but could I kinda cheat the system and not wear my breathables and instead wear a much tougher and cheaper pair of waders for some of my fishing? I must admit to being sceptical about all this because putting on a pair of breathables and then lacing up a pair of boots is about as normal as unclipping a lure rod from the rod racks on my epic Berlingo, so I resisted, but on the next trip out to Ireland that year and my mate had a pair of those boot-foot Vass chest waders and ended up using them for what is turning out to be a fair bit of his lure fishing. He remained 100% dry which I think was a completely new experience for him.

At least ankle-deep yet he strides purposefully like a mermaid

Now there is no getting away from how heavy these PVC waders feel when compared to a pair of breathables when you pick them up, but of course you’ve already got a pair of (wellington) boots secured to the bottom of the PVC ones. On that first trip when my mate started using these “Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders”, I have to admit to a little bit of jealousy when he so easily and seamlessly slipped in and out of them when needs be, and us blokes with our breathables were doing that familiar slight wrestle into them and then the boots - balancing on the one foot to try and not get the other one wet as you juggle one leg going into the waders and so on. You know the drill! My mate though rather smugly slipped his VASS PVC boot-foot waders on and off as smoothly as one might move straight to the lure section of a fishing tackle shop.

So I gave in, and you need to bear in mind that I have been wearing breathable chest waders now for more years than I care to remember and as much as they are a compromise, I seriously like what they do for me - but the simple fact is that I can actually do without them and essentially “save” them multiple sessions when those sessions for me don’t require much of a yomp. I am actually surprised now by how much a couple of mates who I often fish with in Ireland are now wearing their Vass PVC waders, in that it started off just on a few beaches where we really are hardly walking at all, and now they are wearing them for a few locations that do require at least a bit of a yomp.

I got hold of a pair of those Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders ( I really like the reinforced knees) and I started to wear them for some of my night fishing especially around me here at home when we aren’t needing to yomp far. I am never going to lose that “crumbs these feel heavy” feeling when I pick a pair of these waders up to (so easily) slip them on, but when I have them on and I am fishing in them to be perfectly honest they feel just fine as long I don’t need to be moving around like a ninja. I really like how they are not an expensive pair of chest waders at all when compared to a decent pair of breathables plus wading boots - around £200+ for a pair of my go-to Vision Ikons (without wading boots) compared to under £100 for a pair of boot-footed (wellington boot fixed to the waders) pair of Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders, plus of course the Vass PVC ones are a far heavier material and without doubt a hell of a lot tougher than a pair of breathables.

My mate did buy a pair of the studded Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders to start off with, but over time he had a stud or two end up creating a hole in the boots via more and more walking over rocks that he did in them - was he just unlucky? He then bought a pair of the non-studded Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders and it’s been hunky dory ever since, and that includes using them over rocks a fair bit of the time and the grip seems pretty good on them. If you were to use them on a sandy beach then of course a pair of wellies on the bottom of a pair of waders is just fine as regards the grip, and of course you have now completely removed the annoying factor of your wading boots filling up with sand and small stones.

Now to be fair I tend to default to my breathables as much as possible and especially when I am either going to be out fishing for longer periods and/or I need to walk and scramble a lot, but I am going to make a real effort this year to save my breathables as much as I can and wear these Vass PVC waders more and more. The more I think about adapting my wader setup to where I am fishing just like I would my rod and reel, the more sense it makes to try and save my breathables when I don’t actually need to be using them and therefore in theory prolong their working. My breathables are currently working just fine and I still can’t find any that I like and trust more than the Vision Ikon ones, but how many of you have a pair of breathable and have at least one little pinprick that lets a bit of water in if you are needing to wade and fish?

One thing I will not be doing is using a pair of PVC waders in rough conditions from the rocks, not with how Ben struggled so badly in the RNLI testing tank as per above. Chest waders as a whole are not exactly an ideal thing to be wearing if you end up in the water anyway, but with a lifejacket on I feel a lot more confident in a pair of waders that has a stockingfoot and not a fixed pair of wellie boots on them. And as per this blog post here, without a doubt I have found it a lot easier in the water with a lifejacket on when wearing a pair of waist waders. I am going to use these Vass PVC waders when I can though from beaches and perhaps shallow reefs as and when I think I can get away with them, and then adapt from there.

I have a hell of a lot more wearing and testing of various waders to do before I can come to any sort of conclusions, but as an example I also have a cheap pair of the Vass-Tex 600 Waist Waders to see if they might be useful for some of my (not walking very far) fishing as well. Then I get to thinking if one could possibly strap a pair of PVC waders to the top of a rucksack for those times when you need to walk a good distance, wear a pair of trainers and my sexy as hell under-wader wear for the actual walk (see here), and when I get to my fishing spot I could stuff the trainers into my waterproof rucksack and slip seductively into the PVC waders. What do you do? Are you by any chance doing similar thinking with your waders and trying to tailor them a bit more to your actual needs and of course trying to stay dry? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. You all have a good weekend.

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.

If there is one thing I don’t really like to do or indeed feel qualified to do, it’s to try and compare lure fishing rods rather than simply review them, but of course I get asked about it a lot - what do I think of one rod over another rod and so on. I have fished with enough lure rods to know exactly what I personally do and don’t like, and because I do these reviews on my own time I will naturally err towards fishing gear I at least have some desire to go fishing with. I was sent three lure rods the other day to have a look at for example and they are so much not my thing at all that I asked the kind company to please have them picked up because I had zero desire to take them out fishing with me. I feel bad, but these gear reviews are obviously based around me fishing with what I review, and my fishing time is too precious to waste using something I actively don’t want to fish with. Why don’t I tend to write bad rod reviews especially? There’s your answer……….

Anyway, back to the title of the blog post - let’s take three “regular casting weight” 9’6’’ lure rods that I know and have fished with a lot, and let’s see if we can dial down into why I think their UK shop prices are different. I happen to think that these three rods represent about as much 9’6’’ lure rod for their respective prices that I have personally come across so far and it’s best if I talk about lure rods I have had recent experience with - the £149.99 HTO Nebula 9’6’’ (2.9m) 7-35g, the £199.99 Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’6'' 10-30g, and then the £279.99 Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g. Three currently available here in the UK 9’6’’ rods that I think deal very effectively with a lot of the lure fishing for bass that we might do here in the UK and Ireland, at three different prices - why?

The handle on the Tailwalk

First off has to be the guides and handle - I believe the three rods all have Fuji guides and handles, the Nebula I think has the cheaper Fuji alconite guides versus Fuji SIC guides on the Major Craft and the Tailwalk. I don’t know how much these differences actually translate to in price differences, but I’d hazard a guess it isn’t very much - we aren’t talking about a set of Fuji Toriztes here which are not cheap at all. Perhaps I am going about it the wrong way here then, because for me it’s down to how the rods feel and fish in the real world. All three rods are very light, and any of these three rods would do a hell of a lot of lure anglers more than proud.

So going on price only, is the Tailwalk essentially twice as good as the Nebula, and how does one actually measure if a fishing rod is twice as good as another one? The most obvious thing for me to say here is of course not, indeed how does one actually measure that, or in fishing terms, are you going to catch twice as many bass if you spend twice the amount of money on your fishing rod? You know the answer to that, and in terms of going fishing with the rods, I can’t sit here and tell you that the Tailwalk is twice as good as the Nebula, or the Major Craft is a third better again than the Nebula but only two thirds as good as the Tailwalk - and so on. Hell, if I carry on like this I am going to tie myself in knots! They are all good rods that I really enjoy fishing with………….

But they are all subtly different rods. I can’t argue with how much rod you are getting with the Nebula, but it’s a very “obvious” lure fishing rod that kinda reveals everything to you when you pick it up and waggle it. It’s lovely and light and I think for £150 that the fixtures and fittings on it are superb, but I waggle it a few times and I reckon I can tell exactly how the rod is going to actually fish - I then take it fishing and this is confirmed to me. What you feel is very much what you get, and you either like this lightning fast/very pokey kind of rod or you don’t. I do like it, and because of the blank design I am going to naturally adjust my casting style and drop lengths to better suit it - but then I would with any lure rod I fish with.

Spend another £50 and you can get the Major Craft, and whilst you’re never going to find three rods exactly the same unless the various companies have sourced the exact same blanks - it happens, make no mistake - this Major Craft to me is a bit of a step up in how it fishes. Now this might be down to how you personally like a lure rod to be, but to me there’s just more subtlety and smoothness to this Major Craft. The “instant like” in me can’t help but waggle the Nebula and be pretty amazed at how fast and pokey it is, but overall I do think the Major Craft is worth that £50 more. I feel that the increase in price is giving me a more nuanced rod that perhaps would grow with me a touch more as I started to fish different techniques with different kinds of lures - but then I’d take the Nebula over the Major Craft for surf based lure fishing because that slight lack of subtlety with a tip that doesn’t bounce around lends itself to banging metals out especially in my opinion.

Price of course plays a big part for most anglers when buying a fishing rod, and I think here that with these two rods offering so much for the money it is also going to come down to what sort of lure rod you prefer fishing with. As I said I happen to think the £50 more expensive Major Craft is giving me more of a lure rod to grow into and appreciate, but we’re talking about two really good fishing rods that if price wasn’t a consideration you’d go for purely depending on what suits you better. I don’t know enough about how these rods are actually built to comment on the different qualities of the carbons that are used, but on the other hand I reckon I am feeling that difference.

And then we come to the £279.99 Tailwalk which again isn’t going to catch me any more bass than the other two, and whilst wearing compression gear under your waders has been scientifically proven to make you more manly, fishing with more expensive lure fishing rods annoyingly hasn’t been yet. So what the hell does another £80 over the Major Craft or £130 more than the Nebula get you then? A bigger hole in the bank balance is the obvious one of course, but to me that jump up to the Tailwalk is actually the most noticeable to me here, and note again that it could be because of the three rods I have chosen which in turn I have done so because I have fished with them all a lot.

Anyway, is the Tailwalk rod here worth more than the other two? It can only ever be my opinion, but I am nearly always finding that the more expensive lure rods take a little longer to fully open up to me because they so need to be fished with rather than simply waggled in a tackle shop - which I recognise is therefore a bit of a problem because that’s pretty easy for me to say when I get to actively fish with so many different lure rods and most of you don’t, plus of course we can waggle rods in shops yet the shop owner isn’t exactly going to let you go out on the rocks with it and make that rod second hand. Unless you know anglers who have got particular rods and let you use them, it’s not easy finding the right fishing rod, and I guess this is reflected in how many people are looking at the Fishing Tackle pages on this website.

With the Tailwalk here, to me it’s firstly how it feels like the rod isn’t remotely straining when you move through the different lure weights (casting a DoLive feels as good as casting a Patchinko etc.), and then how seamlessly the rod actually fishes them. Call it “tension” if you like, but the most expensive rod here sits in my hands with a feeling of balance and precision that to me is a slight step up over the other two, and when I twitch a DoLive or work a Patchinko across the top, the tip on the rod feels like a seamless part of a whole fishing rod - and my apologies if I am starting to get a bit flowery about a bit of carbon, but I can’t think of how else I can try to describe why I think there are these price differences here. I tend to fish a DoLive Stick so much that I can’t help but gauge a rod I’d fish with on how it casts a 15g soft plastic like this - it’s when I lay the rod back and move through the cast at say 75% power into a gentle breeze that I know when a lure rod is seriously speaking to me. All the rods here will fish a soft plastic like this all day long and do it so damn well into the bargain, but annoyingly perhaps it is the most expensive rod here that I think is transmitting the most to me. None of my feelings here are remotely fact, and when I read back through this blog post I am not sure at all that I have achieved what I set out to do, but I have tried to get the differences across as I see them as best I can. I’d more than happily take any of the three rods for my own fishing, but the question still remains - do the three rods all feel a bit different more because of the prices, or is it more because the rod designers are designing different feeling rods? I’ve tied myself in enough knots already and it’s only Monday morning…………

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.

I asked this question on Facebook the other day and I got some really interesting replies - rather than think just about what brands or models of soft plastics you use for your own bass fishing (if you actually fish with soft plastics), think about what these particular soft plastics are doing and how they fish. If you were to sit down and think about the soft plastics you might carry with you, how are they fishing for you and what do you look for most from soft plastics?

I am asking for no other reason than I am always interested in how this lure fishing for bass thing grows and develops and moves forward. If I looked at the two medium sized washable lure boxes that tend to come bass fishing with me these days and compared it to when I first started getting into this lure fishing thing, things are very different, and this difference is largely based around my fishing with soft plastics more and more. I have more hard and soft lures than big bass I am ever likely to catch, but I have thought about this lure thing and I reckon I have narrowed it down to three “families” different kinds of soft plastics and what they can do for me. I am trying not to make this blog post about specific lures as such, rather what the different “families” of soft plastics do for us. How about you?

Paddletails - first off has to be the paddletail or shad, indeed via my asking these questions on Facebook this type of soft plastic was without doubt the most popular. I compare my understanding on how many different ways a paddletail can actually be fished to how I used to fish one of those weighted Storm ones for pollack from the rocks and it amazes me how a soft plastic with a thumping sort of tail can be so versatile depending on how you rig it and how you choose to fish it. Top of the tree for me has been the Fiiish Black Minnow for a number of years now, and then I have gradually come around to the Savage Gear Sandeel as a straightforward and highly lethal “whack and crank” kind of jig head/paddletail combination - whereas the Black Minnow for me is a more versatile lure for a number of different reasons.

But it’s the shallow swimming style of paddletail that I find myself going back and forth on the most. I tend to go through phases of carrying a few usually narrower paddletails rigged mostly on belly-weighted weedless hooks - one year I find myself using this type of lure a lot, and then I kind of forget about it as something else takes over, but then say a mate catches a bunch of bass in front of you on this type of lure and you go rooting around at home to dig them out all over again! I haven’t really settled on my out and out favourite paddletail to fish like this, but I bet you I find myself erring towards the MegaBass Spindleworm and the OSP DoLive Shad this year - and then a mate smashes a heap of fish on something different and that vicious lure buying cycle starts all over again because you convince yourself that you can’t do without some for yourself. What, me? Never!

Soft plastic jerkbait/twitchbait - I am never sure quite what to call this “family” of soft plastics because depending on where you live and fish on this glorious earth they are usually called something different. “Twitchbait” makes the most sense to me, and I guess that after a paddletail, this is the type of soft plastic I will turn to the most. King of the hill in my lure box is the 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick because of how well it casts and smashes bass for me, but of course there are a whole heap of similar soft plastics out there and I would urge you to try different ones out for yourself. I have never yet come across a similar size twitchbait that casts as well as a 6’’ DoLive Stick, but that might not matter so much to you. I find these twitchbait lures really versatile for a lot more bass fishing than I could ever have envisaged, and especially when the ground is so rough and shallow that it makes little sense to go chucking your favourite £20 hard lure in there. Interestingly though these twitchbait style soft plastics were talked about the least on that Facebook post I got going, and this really surprised me - I wonder though if the lack of a thumping paddletail that you can feel on your rod is part of it? It wasn’t that many years ago that if I couldn’t feel some kind of action on the lure through my lure rod I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable, but the more I keep on learning about bass fishing, the more I feel confident that less is more a lot more than I thought……..

Straight sticks/senkos - I fished with a senko for bass way before I ever started on the DoLive, and it was and indeed still is the Wave Fishing 5’’ Bamboo Stick that I tend to turn to when I want a senko or straight stick style of soft plastic. Night lure fishing for bass has without doubt brought me back around to obsessing about a simple soft plastic lure that as far as I can tell is doing very little in the water which we can actually see, but because we aren’t fish and I feel confident we aren’t about to grow a set of gills and finally know it all, I’m just fine with this. Of course a senko can be fished in a number of different ways, but for the most part I am turning to them these days when I go night fishing. There are loads of different senkos out there and there are loads of anglers with far more experience of them than me, but I still haven’t found a version of the senko that I like more than the Wave Fishing 5’’ Bamboo Stick, and especially in white. Again it’s how they cast that I really like, but initially it was a mate who happened to came across them and started nailing bass on them - I then picked up on it and because I am always going to watch and listen and learn, I knew squat about these lures and it made most sense to me to at least start off using the same senko as he was - which happened to be the Wave Fishing 5’’ Bamboo Stick. Please go looking though, because there are so many other senkos out there.

So there you go - the three main “families” of soft plastics I find myself carrying for my bass fishing. There are affiliate links in here because I will always put them up these days when it is relevant (and a big thanks to those kind souls who buy some of your fishing tackle via them), but I would urge you to do our own research and experimenting to find out what might work the best for you. I have so much more to learn and I am always fascinated to better understand how different anglers fish with different lures. Facebook is merely a snapshot of course, and as I said earlier, initially it surprised me how much feedback I got about paddletails, and partly because if I sit down and really think about my own bass fishing, how far am I along the learning curve myself with this family of soft plastics alone?

And if you don’t hear from me on Monday morning it’s because I am crying into my coffee after a loss to Wales on Saturday - but in reality that just isn’t going to happen. No bloody way. We are heading to Wales for another convincing and hopefully crushing win in the Six Nations, and then the mighty England are going for a Grand Slam and a great big fat confidence boost before the World Cup later this year. See you Monday morning because I am feeling supremely confident that England have at last found the right squad with the right levels of skill and confidence to execute any number of different game plans whatever is thrown at them. You all have a good weekend and if you are Welsh and reading this, let’s catch up on Monday…………..

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Damn, damn, damn, I really thought that was it - no more false dawns, no more shattered dreams, no more having to hark back to the glory days of November 2003 and a team full of grizzled leaders who knew how to get the job done under the greatest pressure. The Six Nations 2019 and those first two England games were promising so much and I was dreaming all over again of the glories to come, but then the Sweet Chariot crossed the Severn bridge into Wales and the wheels came off………….

Hugely well done to Wales - you guys deserved the win and we have nothing to complain about. No dodgy refereeing decisions, we had plenty of our best players on the field, and if you ask me, England choked. To go from two such impressive kicking displays especially to what happened on Saturday smacks of not being able to properly cope with the situation, and of course Wales and that canny Kiwi Gatland were immense in how they just didn’t allow us to play the game we so obviously wanted to play. After the Ireland and France games I really thought that we were thinking clearly on our feet and managing the game plans with some really clever heads up rugby, but Saturday in Cardiff has shattered that illusion yet again. Where was our Plan B?

Is it back to square one for England? Please, please don’t let that be the case, but the mighty 2003 team simply had to win the Grand Slam in their World Cup year, and they did so. Our 2019 team obviously hasn’t done so, and whilst I genuinely believe that no team on earth could have lived with us when we played Ireland a few weeks ago, performing consistently under pressure is surely the key for this World Cup year especially - and once again we have so nearly summited the peak but failed just when it really mattered. Wales, you deserved that win completely, and please rest assured that I am typing this blog post this morning with a cup of coffee at my side plus a great big helping of humble pie. We were stuffed, end of. Christ alive it’s a hard one being an England rugby supporter……….

What do you want the most from your spinning reels? Do you want them to be as light as possible? Are you happy to give up a little bit of buttery smoothness in order to get a reel that’s more rugged and able to cope with the rigours of saltwater? Do you need a massive line capacity? How much do you ideally want to spend? And so on. I guess that I play with more spinning reels than many lure anglers, but if I could start from scratch, what would I do?

I’d start off with the Penn Slammer III (review here) - yes I know it’s a bit heavier than a Japanese equivalent, but because I am starting from scratch I’m going to take all that this reel can give me but I’d shave say 25% of the weight off. How though? I haven’t got a clue and in fact the bit of extra weight on the reel works really well on some lure rods, but because we seem to be almost conditioned to wanting the lightest spinning reels possible, let’s do it anyway - but I want to keep how strong it is. For sure it’s not quite as buttery smooth as when I turn my incredible Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG, but the Slammer just oozes ruggedness and I’ll take that all day long.

I can’t argue with how well the Penn Slammer III is resisting saltwater intrusion, so I want to keep all that good stuff in this new reel. I know that a Van Staal is in theory 100% sealed and I documented my experiences with their VR50 recently (check here and I didn’t have it long enough to properly long term test the 100% claim), but I haven’t personally fished with and seriously liked a spinning reel that could stand up to what I have put my Slammer through as regards drowning it and having it washed over by waves again and again for multiple surf sessions especially. I guess it has to fail on me someday, but for the price of it and with what I have done to it makes it incredible value for money in my opinion.

I really like the big gold coloured handle on the Slammer III, and although I also really liked the hard foam type Penn Clash handle which in fact is included in a Slammer box and it’s very easy to change them over, what I would really like is a hard foam handle in the roundish shape of the big gold one. I love the one on the discontinued Shimano Exsence C14+ 4000XGS (which as far as I could tell was essentially the same reel as the discontinued Sustain FG), so I am going to steal that handle for my perfect spinning reel.

I love that handle

Lots of anglers seem to obsess about the drags on their reels for bass fishing, but I don’t tend to. The drag on the Slammer is great - okay, the loosest setting on it is not exactly very loose which makes it a slight pain for easily pulling line off to thread braid through guides and so on, but it doesn’t really matter (open the balearm). As long as the drag on my perfect spinning reel lets line come off fine and doesn’t fall apart on me if it gets wet then that’s great.

I love that the Slammer III has no anti-reverse, so I’ll take that in my new spinning reel as well. I like a regular deep spool because I want to be able to control how much braid I put on my reel rather than a tackle company telling me what do by essentially saying here’s a shallow spool and you can’t put a load of heavier braid on for example. Use cheap mono backing and I simply don’t see what the problem is with regular spools - I want options instead of restrictions.

I haven’t had enough time yet with these very interesting new Penn Spinfisher VI reels, but without a doubt the Slammer is a little easier on the retrieve. I suspect the Spinfisher VI will loosen up a bit over time - and they are nice and smooth out of the box - but they are a little “tighter” on the retrieve and I’ll take that slightly easier turn of the handle on a Slammer for my new reel. I get that a perfect spinning reel could of course be something like a Shimano Stella, Vanquish or Exsence, or the Daiwa Exist or Certate and so on, but I want my perfect spinning reel to be retailing for under £200, and preferably around the £150 mark if at all possible. Don’t get me wrong here because I love a high-end spinning reel as much as the next tackle tart, but this amazing Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG aside, I haven’t yet come across a higher-end spinning reel that has stayed the course for as long as its price suggests it should - and bear in mind here that I am not fishing my little Twin Power in the same conditions as I have been doing so with my Slammer.

And then finally I would like my Slammer-like spinning reel to be available in a Penn 2500 size which I guess is around a Shimano 3000 size. I’ve got the Slammer III 3500 which is about the same as a Shimano 4000 spinning reel (have any of you made much sense out of the new Daiwa LT reel sizes yet?), but damn I’d love a Slammer III in a Penn 2500 size - and then I’d do everything to it that I have described above. I have no idea what Penn are working on in their R&D department, but here’s a great big pretty please for starters if you ever make a Slammer IV. And of course the Penn Spinfisher VI comes in a 2500 size that I haven’t seen yet, and when I have spent a lot more time with these reels I can report back with some further thoughts - but I haven’t yet fished with a spinning reel for bass that inspires as much confidence as a Slammer. It’s not perfect - but then is there a spinning reel out there that is? - and I do wonder what a Shimano or a Daiwa could do if they took a reel like the Slammer, “Japanesed” it, and then got it out there at the same kind of price. The line lay seems to be very good on the Slammer and all manner of lures fly out there, but I can’t fill it up quite as much as I can a Shimano or a Daiwa - which perhaps matters not, but it does imply to me that the Penn isn’t quite laying my braid down as well.

Hell, none of this blog post matters a jot at the end of the day, but it’s the end of February and a time of year when stuff like this bounces around my brain at 3.45am when I got up this morning because I couldn’t shut myself down and I’ve drunk so much coffee that I’m not quite seeing straight………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore 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.

In some ways I am ashamed at how little I know about freshwater lure fishing, but for many years now saltwater fishing has seriously been my thing and I guess we are what we are but that’s no excuse for not keeping eyes and ears firmly open. I am aware that lure fishing within freshwater fishing here in the UK seems to be growing rapidly, with those stunning perch being a very important species in all of this - and then a guy I know asked me the other day whether I had ever thought about using the Ned rig for any of my bass fishing……………

Excuse my ignorance I said, and I went and had a look on Google and YouTube and gave myself a quick crash course in the Ned rig and how freshwater anglers tend to fish it. My basic understanding is that it’s used primarily over in the US for their freshwater bass fishing especially, and then here in the UK primarily for perch. Do you know what the Ned rig is? Have a look at the video above. Very simple - which I like - and it seems to rely on specific soft plastics which are inherently buoyant (Z-Man especially) and therefore stand up essentially straight when rigged on a jig head. I would never go wrasse fishing without at least a few packets of certain Z-Man soft plastics (and especially these ones here) but for some reason I simply haven’t given them enough of a go for my bass fishing. I know they are trickier to rig and you can’t mix them with other soft plastics (store them in their original packets), but a few sessions in with them and if they work then those “issues” simply become a natural part of using them. I can attest to how they stand up to wrasse fishing that these Z-Man lures are almost ridiculously durable!

And tell me that the ideas behind it don’t at least get you thinking about something like this for a few specific bass fishing situations. You have to bear in mind that this blog post could partly be a serious case of cabin fever, but for example I’m thinking about those early morning sessions on a surf beach where only a gentle to medium wave is rolling in. We’ve had some fun around here on DoLive Sticks and light rods when conditions are like this, but I wonder how it might work to be able to essentially “hold” a soft plastic out there and very slowly shake it or work it along or just off the bottom? Sandeels are looking to bury themselves back in the sand as it gets light and I can almost visualise my Ned rig or variation on it looking like a sandeel or even a lugworm sitting tail-up on the bottom. Surely the gentle waves are going to work the lure almost on its own as well?

And so on. How about night fishing with this kind of approach? A terrified sandeel trying to burrow back into the sand before it gets munched by a bass? Look at the Z-Man Hula StickZ above and imagine that sitting bolt upright and “shaking” away - it’s designed to be rigged on the Z-Man Power Finesse Shroomz jig head as per below. The bulk of my night fishing is done when it’s calmish to very calm and I wonder if in certain places this Ned rig sort of approach might work? I think of those times when I’d bump something like a MegaBass XLayer down a run of current and I wonder if a soft plastic that properly stands up as it bounces might do even better?

I have had a good look at the Z-Man Ned rig offerings and I have put a bunch of links in this blog post to Lure Lounge, the UK people who import and distribute Z-Man from the USA into the UK (please note that these are not affiliate links but that matters not one bit and if they prove interesting or helpful then that’s cool). Now the one thing that strikes me straight away is that we are talking about what is a finesse style of lure fishing - the jig heads are not particularly big or heavy, and neither are the lures. I don’t see a problem for lighter bass lure rods and gentler conditions when a heavier approach is really not needed and I can’t help but wonder whether such a finesse way of lure fishing might prove useful in tough bass conditions (bright, calm etc.) - but what if you want to try bass fishing Ned rig style but you need more weight, bigger/stronger hooks, and larger lures for more regular conditions?

I went rooting around a box I have here because I knew I had bought some a couple of years ago - “Cheburashka” weights, or as per the Spro “Bottom Jig” ones above. I have had a couple of bass using these things to bump my senko “alternative to an XLayer” (rigged on a weedless hook) down a bit of current, but then I got to thinking about a bigger, saltwater alternative to a Ned rig. I rooted around the same box and dug out a packet of the Z-Man Grass KickerZ 5’’ paddletail, rigged the lure on a regular 5/0 weedless hook I think it is (the Z-Man lure needs that “kink” just behind the eye of the hook to sit on, because they do not work on a hitchhiker), and clipped it onto an 18g+ Cheburashka weight. I can see Spro ones up to 21g here, but you can find heavier ones if you go looking on Ebay - here for example.

Now I haven’t fished this combination above yet, but I did drop it into a bucket of water and the Z-Man Grass KickerZ sits bolt upright. My go-to lure for bumping paddletails along the bottom has been the killer Fiiish Black Minnow for a few years now and I trust it implicitly, but with it being cabin fever time I have got to wondering if having the ability to “hold” a decent sized soft plastic in some bouncier conditions or further out than one of those small Ned rig jig heads could reach might prove useful sometimes.

I am also wondering whether the Z-Man Big TRD as per the screenshot above and the video below could be a killer alternative to the XLayer and other such soft plastics - my next step is to see if I can get a rattle into the tail of this Z-Man Big TRD. To be honest I don’t know if or how any of this stuff might work for bass yet, but because this blog is the contents of my fishing head I thought it would be interesting to share my current thoughts with you - please leave me a comment if you have any thoughts or practical experience with this. You all have a good weekend and I’m off to swim a bunch of lures in my bath………………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore 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.