For many years it was bait fishing in saltwater that totally consumed me, when I used to catch a few bass by mistake and think little of it to be honest. How many of you here are in a similar boat to me now, whereby chucking all manner of lures out for these spiky marvels totally consumes our fishing lives? I was thinking about the Ned rig and Ned rig alternatives blog post that I put up on Friday and a part of me wonders if perhaps taking this kind of approach is perhaps a step too far…………….

And then I think how on earth could it be a step too far? I absolutely love how you can take a simple metal lure that may have been designed before you were born and sling it into a bit of surf and still catch bass - but then I also love how you could take what I talked about on Friday and see if that might fit into your bass fishing somehow. At the end of the day, who knows what might end up producing more or bigger fish for you unless you give some different techniques a go?

Some anglers love to try new stuff, whether that be a desire to keep looking for different locations to fish or sometimes discarding what you know might catch you a bunch of fish in order to take a bit of a gamble and see if something different might work - and so on. Fishing fits us all in, but with this lure fishing thing and how many ways in which lure fishing can actually be done, perhaps it’s not until you’re right in the middle of it that the scope of what is possible becomes properly apparent. Chuck cheaper metals for evermore and you’re doing absolutely nothing wrong because fishing works for us all on many different levels, but does your brain bounce with what’s around the next corner or what if something else went and produced a few fish?

Which in my mind always brings me back to the one burning question - how much more have we got to learn about lure fishing for bass? Where are we at now and where might we be in another few years? You will notice that I am not talking about whether we are going to actually have enough bigger bass to viably target because that’s a whole different subject about which many of us can get very emotional. Nope, I am interested here in how lure fishing moves forward, or if indeed it really needs to.

How many of you reading this now go regularly lure fishing for bass at night when you never used to? Okay, so I am the writer and not the reader here, but I am in that boat myself, and a lot of it is down to a few forward-thinking bass anglers who were kind enough to share what they were doing with the rest of the fishing world as such - which of course then keeps the circle of sharing information and moving fishing forward going. Whether you choose to saddle up and join that circle is up to the individual angler. Some anglers and indeed people are more inquisitive and hungry to learn than others, and that I guess is simply human nature and how we are made and shaped.

So I come back to a wonderfully simple and accessible way to catch bass - slinging what can be cheap lumps of metal into a decent bit of surf. But because I am the way I am, I can’t help but wonder what I might do differently, and it goes way beyond the simple trying to catch more and/or bigger fish for me. As sure as night follows day, I need to try something different. I believe that it’s vital to keep on learning and looking and trying and not being afraid of failing if that bit of failure better helps to shape what you do and how you do it. When you’re catching bass on metals or nailing them on white senkos at night and so on, what else might work? Could you take the ideas behind how the Ned rig is fished and then adapt bigger lures and jig heads to catch bass in the surf for example? I don’t know, but damn I’m going to enjoy finding out, and if I blank and/or I can’t get it to work for me, who cares? What is there to stop us trying new things in our fishing if you take away that fear of failure and not worrying about numbers and/or size of fish all the time?

I’ve been working for Sea Angler magazine on a freelance basis for many years now, and I love it. In my role as a freelancer who specialises in bass fishing words and photos it is mostly up to me to come up with my own content because I guess that I am trusted to be current and up to date, but of course I don’t dictate where the magazine goes and for sure there have been times when an idea of mine goes down like the proverbial lead balloon! Writing about and photographing fishing is what drives me.

Something kinda blew up online a while back in the way that social media sometimes gets its knickers in a complete twist. It was connected to a feature of mine and the anglers concerned simply would not have it that I don’t get to dictate to Sea Angler’s editor what photos of mine they should be using - I obviously provide a selection for each feature and the powers that be design the feature from them - and that an editor or indeed designer is entirely free to grab some library shots for my feature that weren’t shot by me. It matters not what actually happened, rather that I am a freelancer and the editor is the person who shapes and runs their magazine, and quite right I might add.

So I choose to doff my cap to Sea Angler magazine for trusting in me and running with a feature about angler safety, which let’s face it isn’t exactly a big, sexy thing to be putting in a magazine. Granted, baiting up with peeler crab or fishing for flounder articles may not be big, sexy subjects either, but the magazine is called Sea Angler and those kinds of articles are a fundamental part of sea fishing which are entirely natural to cover. I would argue that the subject of wearing a lifejacket for your shore fishing has not really been a part of sea fishing before. I am doing what I can to try and help change this, but from a magazine point of view, an article all about angler safety is a bit of a leap if you ask me, and it’s a leap that gets my total respect.

Thank you Sea Angler for helping to keep this increased safety ball rolling. I write my features but of course they are subject to editing and I obviously don’t get approval like some Hollywood celebrity might get editorial approval over one of those glossy Hello features - so I am doubly pleased that my opening paragraph to this safety article in this month’s edition of Sea Angler stayed essentially the same as I originally wrote. You will see where I am coming from when you read the article. This lifejacket and increased angler safety thing I hope has got a long and effective road to run and it doesn’t half help when such an established and well respected fishing magazine like Sea Angler gets on the bandwagon and works with one of their freelancers like this. Thank you.

I put my stunning little and still as smooth as it was on day one Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG spinning reel (second review here, 250g loaded with line) onto my ridiculously lovely Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod (review here, Shimano Japan quotes a weight of 132g) and I am now holding what I happen to think is the most amazing lure fishing rod and reel combination I have ever used - and it weighs a total of 382g, which is essentially nothing. I can fish with this rod and reel until the cows come home and it’s so unlike thrashing my old beachcasters around that I still smile when I think about how gloriously different various kinds of fishing can be…………..

I go lure fishing with a rod and reel combination like this and I think wow, isn’t it amazing how light it is. Most of the lure rods and reels we might fish with these days are incredibly light. I look at spinning reels especially and with each generation of particular ones I wonder if it’s possible to make them lighter again - which seems to be the goal of the big companies such as Shimano and Daiwa especially. There’s a new version of the (not cheap!) Shimano Vanquish coming out soon which if the figures above are to be believed is a fair bit lighter again than my awesome little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG. I obviously don’t need one of these new Vanquish reels but even if I don’t understand a single word of the Shimano Japan video below, the weak part of me me lusts after one, and a part of that desire I can assure you is down to how light it’s meant to be.

But why? Why do we obsess about ever lighter rods and reels? Can lighter be stronger and does lighter always make a rod and reel combination feel a little bit better again when we are fishing with it? I know what I am like in that I will ooh and aah when I pick up a really light spinning reel and turn the handle. I put that reel on a modern 9’ or 9’6’’ lure rod and within ten minutes of fishing with it I am most likely purring and convincing myself that lighter is the way forward…………….

But then because I like playing with fishing tackle and largely because of my falling in love with the Penn Slammer III 3500 (review here) and 4500 spinning reels especially (the 4500 has the same body size as the 3500 if that helps, but it has a larger spool and therefore balearm), the inquisitive side of me has been interested to take those same wand-like lure rods that so many of fish with - and strap the heavier reel to them to see if I still think lighter is always better.

The Penn Slammer III 3500 weighs 403g loaded with line, so whilst its size - essentially the same as a Shimano 4000 spinning reel - makes it unfair to compare it to my little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG spinning reel, the Slammer III 3500 is still at least 100g heavier than any Shimano 4000 size spinning reels I own or have used in the last few years. Make no mistake that this weight difference is noticeable when you put the Slammer on a lure rod, and especially if you have are so used to fishing with a more “regular” spinning reel. Then that little voice in my head says remember what you said to yourself last time Henry, lighter is better………….

One thing I am not going to do here is get into the whole rod and reel “balance” thing, because where a lure rod balances on my finger I have to say means squat to me. It’s down to how a rod and reel feels when I am actually fishing with it that means everything to me. I take my uber-light outfit out and I am purring away like a mountain lion (okay, perhaps not, but you get my drift), but then I go out fishing again with a heavier spinning reel like the Slammer strapped to my lure rod and initially there was an element of doubt - until I fished like this, and as with the uber-light outfit, give me ten minutes or so of fishing with the heavier spinning reel and it feels just as right as the lighter one. I remember last summer I think it was when I first put the Slammer on my almost ridiculously light Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod, and by rights this combination should not work because such a light rod surely demands an uber-light spinning reel. Ten minutes of fishing with the Slammer III 3500 on this rod which I am sure would have the bods at Shimano Japan tearing their hair out and this US/Japan combination feels outstanding though. And so on.

As ever with all this stuff, I would urge you to fish with whatever feels right to you, and whilst I am lucky in that I most likely get to try more rod and reel combination than a lot of you here, one thing I am increasingly conscious of is that the lightest and/or smallest spinning reel doesn’t automatically feel the best on all lure rods. As an example, I think the Penn Slammer III 3500 fishes just fine on that stunning, “finesse style longer and more powerful” Tailwalk EGinn 106M-R 10'6'' Max 45g lure rod (review here), but for whatever reason I slightly prefer how a Shimano 4000 spinning reel feels on the rod when I am fishing with it - bearing in mind that I will go to the Slammer regardless when I think that my reel is going to ship a lot of saltwater over it. And then as a comparison to that, I have this very, very interesting Shimano Dialuna S96M 9’6’’ 8-45g lure rod here which is a foot shorter than the 10’6’’ Tailwalk EGinn, yet for whatever reason I happen to think the Dialuna feels better in my hands when it’s got the 100g+ or so extra of the Penn Slammer III 3500 spinning reel strapped to it. I need a lot more time with this rather stunning Shimano Dialuna rod and of course it also feels rather nice with a Shimano 4000 size spinning reel on it, but for whatever reason I currently like that bit of extra weight down the butt end. Which combination is right? Well that’s just it to me - there are no rights or wrongs here, just what works the best for you……..

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.

I have watched Free Solo twice now, and spoiler alert - Alex Honnold doesn’t fall to his death, indeed he succeeds in what is being referred to in some circles as the greatest ever sporting achievement ever. He climbed the 3000 foot “Free Rider” route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without any ropes or safety equipment, and whilst I know nothing about climbing, my understanding is that essentially everybody within this sport believed it was virtually impossible to free solo “El Cap”. But not this incredible human being Alex Honnold, and even knowing that he succeeds and does not fall to his death doesn’t make watching this beautifully shot and edited documentary any easier to watch. Last night I watched it for the second time and for the last twenty minutes or so I was still trying to climb inside myself because it’s such a hypnotically terrifying sequence………….

If you’ve got Sky, Free Solo is on the National Geographic channel and can be downloaded onto your box, or otherwise you can buy it and stream it on Amazon Prime. It’s also just come out on DVD and Blu-ray. I am all for buying fishing tackle until the cows come home, but I urge you to take the money you might spend on your next shiny hard lure and buy this documentary in whatever format works best for you - and then settle down to watch on a sofa or chair that you can crawl behind when it gets really tough to watch. I have never seen anything like Free Solo and it has really, really got to me.

What comes across to me so strongly is that Alex Honnold has no more of a death wish than you or I, but for whatever personal reasons that drive him as a human being, he seems to feel most alive when he is free soloing and right on that edge between life and death - and he can obviously control and overcome the kind of fear or terror that you or I would feel. I have borrowed this quote from an excellent Nat Geo article here - “Free soloing is when a climber is alone and uses no ropes or any other equipment that aids or protects him as he climbs, leaving no margin of error”. The first time I watched Free Solo the other day and I as good as held my breath for much of the film, and whilst the second time wasn’t much easier, I find it absolutely fascinating how what Alex Honnold does and how he is as a human being throws up so many complex issues and questions about life and living and pushing right to the edge.

What else could you do in life where you essentially have to be 100% perfect for the entire duration of you are doing, and what you have chosen to do places such outrageous physical and mental challenges upon you that performing 100% perfectly is about as hard and real as it gets? Absolutely no margin for error, where a single mistake means the end of your life, yet it’s where this remarkable human being feels most alive. Death is a single error away yet when you watch him free solo on El Cap, it looks to me - somebody who knows squat about climbing - as if Alex Honnold was born to be up there and defying what was previously thought possible. I have thought about it a lot and I happen to agree with those people who believe that Alex Honnold’s free solo of El Cap is the greatest ever human sporting achievement, and mainly because of that absolute lack of a margin for error - and I mean absolute. Anything goes wrong and you die. No ifs or buts or maybes, you have to be perfect, and I can’t think of another sport where not being 100% perfect guarantees your death.

And then you start to think about what the film crew went through to shoot this documentary. It’s talked about plenty in the film and I love how they cut to that poor cameraman on the ground who is shooting Alex Honnold on a long lens and having to look away because he can’t watch Alex going through the most difficult “pitches” where as you will see, he failed time and time again when on ropes and working out his best route. Not too many worries for these guys falling when roped off, but now take all ropes away and it suddenly becomes scary beyond belief. Where does that mental strength come from for Alex to free solo through those pitches where had has previously fallen (on ropes) before?

When you have watched the documentary, then go looking around on YouTube where there all manner of interviews etc. with Alex Honnold and the film makers. Making a film like this where they faced the very real possibility of having to watch their friend suddenly plummet to his death through their lenses was obviously a big part of the whole deal, and I find the whole thing absolutely staggering. The technical expertise involved in the film making, the cinematography, the narrative, the questions this film raises when you really stop and think about it, and of course the quietly determined and almost otherworldly Alex Honnold and what he does. The weather is a pile of poo and I urge you to trust in me here and watch Free Solo. Has a documentary film ever been more worthy of winning the Oscar?

The other day I went for a root around to see if I could find all my soft plastics that were rigged on various weedless hooks. Blame the awful weather and the worst dose of cabin fever I have ever known, but I thought it might be useful to check the hooks for rust and blunt points etc. Now I do use a lot more soft plastics than I ever used to, but holy cow I reckon I had to have had nearly thirty separate soft plastics pre-rigged on various weedless hooks - and that’s not counting Fiiish Black Minnows, Savage Gear Sandeels, and various other paddletails rigged on jig heads.

Is that normal? Haven’t got a clue and to be honest I have never really cared, but over the course of last season I guess I rigged up a lot of soft plastics! My pre-rigged collection consisted mainly of DoLive Sticks in a bunch of different colours (I hadn’t quite realised how many of the white ones I had rigged up!), white senkos, a couple of those Albie Snax, and then a few 4.5” OSP DoLive Shads and some MegaBass Spindle Worms rigged on belly-weighted weedless hooks. Obviously I don’t take that many lures out fishing with me at one go, but it kinda surprised me how things built up.

Anyway, so I checked hooks and then checked most of the soft plastics for damage (gotta love Mend-It or the rather good and more easily available Savage Gear “Fix-It” equivalent, takes a bit longer to dry, but works great) - and what struck me was that it was a lot of weedless hooks sitting in a lot of lures! Now I don’t know about you, but almost ever since I first started really getting into soft plastics that I’d rig weedless, the hitch-hiker way of rigging them made perfect sense from the moment I stumbled upon it. That little metal coil thing that is attached to a specialist shape of weedless hook and screws into the front of a soft lure is a complete no-brainer in my opinion - my soft plastics last far longer, they don’t tear off nearly so easily on a fish, and I think they are consistently easier to rig like this.

There are plenty of these hitch-hiker style weedless hooks out there now, but my out and out favourite for a good while now has been the Owner Twistlock weedless hooks (Gary Yamamoto spec) - I mainly use the 5/0 size with a 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick and then vary the size accordingly depending on what lure I am using. These hooks are not that cheap, but for me they work perfectly, and as I said, the hitch-hiker system of rigging makes so much sense. Note above how the shape of the Owner hook directly below the eye is slightly different to the regular weedless hook below that isn’t designed to be used with a hitch-hiker. Or so I thought…………………..

Damn it all makes perfect sense now, but when I first found this out on Friday I had one initial thought straight away - do all anglers who fish with soft plastics realise this and am I the only eejut who doesn’t? So I did what I often do and asked the question on my Facebook page - and it became very apparent very quickly that most anglers who kindly replied didn’t know this either.

If you use any weedless hooks that come with a hitch-hiker coil attached to them, you will notice that they are all of a similar design to the Owner Twistlock one that I happen to really like. The first time I stumbled upon rigging soft plastics like this was actually via the Mustad hook above - and they are a brilliant hook - but all the hooks which have hitch-hiker coils on them that I have come across over the last few years (unweighted and with belly-weights on) have that “sloping” design below the eye of the hook to allow for the hitch-hiker and how it works.

But have you ever seen those packets of hitch-hiker coils that you can buy? Are you in the same boat as me in that you wondered what the point of them was because they didn’t work with regular weedless hooks? I don’t know how much you read product descriptions, but aside from tracking down those particular Mustad weedless hooks and then buying packets of hitch-hikers to go with them (which I have done I might add, the exact name is “Mustad 91768BLN”, but I had to buy the hooks in the US when I was over there, or you can buy some sizes of them here in the UK with hitch-hikers already attached), the descriptions of how to use these hitch-hiker coils are at best vague. Think about the design of a regular weedless hook and then ask yourself how on earth a hitch-hiker is meant to clip in there like it does on a specialist hook that’s been designed to work with them. It doesn’t work.

But in fact it does, but I only found out on Friday when I was having a cup of coffee and “researching” some YouTube fishing videos and I stumbled upon the one above which I initially started watching because of how bloody difficult skip-casting was to learn when I have had to do it (not very well) abroad! And then at 3:34 in the video it gets to almost a throwaway, here’s how I rig my soft plastic bit of footage, and lo and bloody behold if the Ozzie angler isn’t rigging his lure on a hitch-hiker and onto a regular shaped weedless hook.

And the lightbulb goes off in my head, albeit with that caveat - surely I can’t be the only angler not to have realised that you can rig a soft plastic like this, as per above? Thankfully it seems not, but damn it’s so bloody simple I can’t for the life of me think why I never realised this before! It’s not as if I suddenly need to change my way of doing things with those Owner Twistlock hooks especially, but as ever I do like to have different options, and I happen to have a fair few regular weedless hooks here that I really like but have stopped bass fishing with because I couldn’t use a hitch-hiker on them to rig my soft plastics, or so I previously thought.

But I can now. I have blogged about the outstanding Lunker City Texposer weedless hook before (especially the 5/0 for my senkos etc.) and how they just never seem to show any signs of rust, and for years now I have loved those “Varivas Gran Hooking Master” weedless hooks, and especially the “Monster Class” ones (I can dream!). My go-to weedless hook for wrasse is this particular Varivas hook in the 1/0 to 3/0 sizes, but for bass I also really like the bigger 4/0, 5/0 and 6/0 (you can also get them in a whopping 10/0) - yet I stopped using them because I couldn’t rig my soft plastics on a hitch-hiker. Do you need to do it like this? Of course not, but I prefer to, I have got used to it, and I gave up making allowances for hooks that wouldn’t work how I wanted them to.

But they all do now, and yet again I say damn, how simple is this! You can go searching around for hitch-hiker coils, but I happen to prefer the Owner ones (actually called Owner CPS Centering Pin Spring) because of that centering pin as per above on the left and how easily it is to properly line a soft plastic up and screw it onto them. Now it’s all well and good that various Owner weedless hooks come with these particular hitch-hiker coils already attached, but I want to buy them separately now to use on regular weedless hooks - and you can, indeed I have done so in the past, but as is annoyingly typical with too many specialist items of fishing tackle like this, I can’t find them for sale in the UK. When I bought some to go with those specialist Mustad weedless hooks, I had to get the Owner hitch-hikers when I was in the US, along with the hooks. So I went looking on Friday once the lightbulb had gone off in my head and I found that the new Seadra brand from the excellent Veals Mail Order people had essentially “borrowed” the exact design - check here. Copying it may well be, but I far prefer this style of hitch-hiker clip and I’d far rather buy small and cheap items of fishing tackle like this directly from the UK.

Anyway, so there you go. I am positive that this blog post isn’t going to change your life, but if my Facebook post is anything to go by then I reckon at least a bunch of you won’t have realised all this - and I bet you’ve got numerous weedless hooks sitting around that you can now use a hitch-hiker coil on and get more life from your soft plastics. If watching that video on Friday was a bit of a lightbulb moment, it was when I took my dog out for a walk not long with my brain absolutely racing away that I had another flash of lightning in my head moment with some further ideas which I will talk about on Wednesday…………………

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.

And of course - through gritted teeth - it’s a huge well done to Wales on the Grand Slam and their utter demolition of Ireland, and I don’t quite know what to think or say yet about the England Scotland match! What the hell was that?!

Following on from Monday’s blog post and as I alluded to at the end of it, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that revolves around these hitch-hiker coils and regular weedless hooks. My thoughts today might or might not work for you, indeed you might well not carry many soft plastics anyway and you’re just fine rigging a few of them on various hooks and then carrying them like that. It’s not as if I need to change what I am doing with rigging the various soft plastics that I will fish mostly rigged weedless and weightless - and those Owner Twistlock hooks are still bloody brilliant - but it did get me thinking when I found what had to be around thirty soft plastics sitting on what was obviously the same number of weedless hooks……………..

I have also heard a fair few anglers over the years saying that they prefer tying a loop knot directly to their soft plastic because they believe that the lack of a lure clip gives them the most natural movement possible on the lure - a lot of fly anglers would argue this way of doing things all day long. I have tried it but I don’t do it, and there’s one simple reason why not - I don’t want to have to cut my leader and retie my loop knot every single time I want to change lures. I feel perfectly confident using the outstanding Breakaway Mini Link lure clip anyway, but what if there was a way of changing soft lures without having to cut and retie that loop knot, and then quite possibly your leader as well in due course because it’s getting shorter and shorter?

Well there is a way, and my apologies if as per Monday’s blog post you are all already using this method and I’m the mug for highlighting it here - but I haven’t seen this talked about before as ever all I am hoping is that my ramblings and bolts of lightning might help a few of you out whilst at the same time helping me clear my head out a bit!

So as per Monday’s blog post I have now worked out that those little hitch-hiker coil things can actually be used with regular weedless hooks, and I can now get hold of what to me is the perfect kind of (Owner type) hitch-hiker here in the UK - these new Seadra ones here. I also have a bunch of regular weedless hooks here at home that I can use for the system I am about to describe. Because this “system” for me is going to be based mostly around soft plastics like the 6’’ long OSP DoLive Stick in various colours, the 4.5” OSP DoLive Shad, and then white senkos and so on., I can go back to some particular hooks that I really like, and in a size 5/0 they are a great fit for these sizes of lures - the Varivas Gran Hooking Master “Monster Class” weedless hook here, or the Lunker City Texposer one here. And of course there are loads of different weedless hooks out there.

What I don’t really want to end up with again is a growing number of different soft plastics with a growing number of weedless hooks in them - and via this lightbulb moment, now I don’t need to. I can buy packets of those Seadra hitch-hiker coils (ten in a packet), screw them into the various soft plastics I’ll use for rigging weedless and weightless, either loop knot onto or use my lure clip to secure to whatever weedless hook floats my boat the most (as per the above paragraph), and then when you want to change your soft plastic you simply remove the hook from the body of the lure, slide the lure which is attached via the hitch-hiker off the hook, slide a different lure onto the hook, and put the hook through the body as per usual with a weedless hook.

That’s it really. Nice and simple and to me it makes a lot of sense. I accept completely that you may well prefer to carry your soft plastics pre-rigged on whatever weedless hook you prefer, or you might be happy to use the one hook anyway and rig accordingly each time you want to change it. It matters not really, but I kinda like the idea of the one weedless hook and then a bunch of different soft plastics into which I have screwed those Seadra hitch-hiker coils or whichever ones you like using. Obviously I’d be carrying some spare hooks in case I snagged up and had to break off, and for smaller soft plastics such as the 4.5” OSP DoLive Stick or whatever you like to use, I’d clip or tie on a smaller weedless hook and go from there with the smaller soft plastics I was carrying. And then because I am using that brilliant little Breakaway Mini Link lure clip, when I want to change from a soft plastic over to a hard lure, I just unclip the soft plastic on the one weedless hook, put it back in my lure box, and clip on whatever hard lure I am turning to. And so on. Simple, and I like simple when I am out there fishing.

I tend to have a lot of ideas about fishing stuff bouncing around my brain (really?!), but I only got to this “modular system” as such when I learnt last Friday that you could actually use hitch-hiker coils on regular weedless hooks. The “rigging them all up on weedless hooks beforehand” way I have been doings things has been working just fine in the past, and there is every chance that you are far more controlled than me and don’t have a whole heap of soft plastics sitting on a whole heap of weedless hooks. If there is one thing I do like in fishing though it’s having options, and I also do like to try new stuff and see if it might end up working a bit better than what I was doing before. I love those Owner Twistlock hooks but I am going to give my “modular system” I have been talking about here a good go and see how it goes.

The remaining question has to be what about soft plastics that I might rig with a belly-weighted weedless hook (such as the MegaBass Spindle Worm or when there’s a bit of bounce on and I need a bit of weight on a DoLive or a senko), because you can’t slide the eye of a Seadra hitch-hiker over a belly-weight. At the end of the day I don’t have many soft plastics rigged like this so I can simply keep using the pre-rigged ones I have and clip them on or off as required, but I do have some ideas on how I could apply the modular sort of approach to the belly-weight thing though………………...

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.

The first ever Nantes fishing show I went to will forever stick in my head for a bunch of different reasons, and one of the stand-outs for me was seeing how many different lure rods there were that seemed to be so close together in lengths and casting weights - and I got myself in a frightful pickle when confusion began to reign in my brain about what lure rod was meant for hard lures and what rod was meant for soft plastics, and so on………….

But it just doesn’t matter at all, or at least I don’t reckon it does. I came to realise this over time when I was starting to play with more and more lure rods within let’s say the “classic” or most useful, roughly 7-35g range. I don’t understand a single word of Japanese, but from many YouTube videos and whatever translated blurb I can find on various websites, I get the impression that soft plastics aren’t a big thing for their (sea) bass fishing, so via this I must assume that a lot of these Japanese designed or made lure rods we fish with are essentially designed for fishing a lot of hard lures.

Yet I find many of them to be amazing with soft plastics - and of course the term soft plastics implies a lot more to me these days than it did only a few years ago. I read that so and so rod is designed to fish say 12-14cm minnows (diving hard lures) but I find so and so rod to be really good for soft plastics - and so on and so on until I could end up tying myself in knots all over again! I have watched various Shimano Japan YouTube videos on what I happen to think is just about the most amazing lure fishing rod I have ever come across - the Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod (review here) - but I can’t recall seeing a single soft plastic being fished on it in those videos. If I could design a lure fishing rod to fish with the bulk of the soft plastics I find myself using the most though, then I’d take this Shimano rod because to me it’s essentially perfect. So does it matter that when this rod was designed, the way I so often end up fishing with it may well not have even entered their design process? Not at all, and that’s my point here.

It simply doesn’t matters, or at least that’s what I think. For sure an item of fishing tackle like a rod or a reel has been designed with a certain kind of fishing in mind, but as an example I bet you any money that the USA based St.Croix fishing rod company never in a million years foresaw a bunch of their steelhead blanks ending up in the hands of some European (sea) bass anglers. Gear fishing as they often call it for steelhead (i.e. not fly fishing for these awesome fish) bears little relation to banging a Patchinko out for our bass, but somehow some bass anglers stumbled upon these blanks and liked them for their bass fishing. I bet you there are crossover stories like this all over the place to do with fishing gear. Hell, those breathable waders and wading boots you wear and most likely go through on a fairly regular basis were categorically not designed for the sort of saltwater based use we put them through - and so on.

So if I got confused at that first Nantes show in particular - and I always hold on to this feeling of confusion so that I remember what it’s like when you’re getting into a different kind of fishing - then I believe it’s only fair to assume that a lot of other anglers are confused about what lure or spinning rod is meant for what. It simply doesn’t matter what one angler reckons is better suited to fishing certain kinds of lures - and I include me here of course - because if the rod feels right to you and you are enjoying fishing with it and catching fish on it, then it’s the right rod for you and how you fish. Soft, fast, through, poker, whatever sort of balance, whatever the price, if you like using it then I would suggest it’s the right rod for you whatever anybody else says……………..

I wouldn’t usually do this and please note that there are no affiliate links in this blog post, but I like the IMA Hound 125F Glide lure that much I thought it might prove useful to let you know that the JDM Fishing Tackle lot over in Ireland have somehow sourced a bunch of them. A while back I blogged about various copies of this killer lure because of IMA Japan choosing to discontinue it, and whilst I don’t agree with JDM Fishing Tackle saying “This is a lure everybody thought was discontinued, but it's not” - my understanding still is that IMA aren’t making the Hound Glide any more - I take my hat off to these canny Irish lure junkies for finding a load more of these lures………………..

So there you go - brief and to the point. I am also very interested in the Shimano Japan bass rods and reels especially that the JDM Fishing Tackle lot list on their newly revamped website. They very kindly got me access to the outstanding Shimano Dialuna S90L 9' 5-25g lure rod (review here), and judging by how good that rod is and also how interesting the more powerful 9’6’’ 8-45g version is that I have here, I have a feeling that the extensive Shimano Japan range of new Dialuna S lure rods could be just about perfect for how we go about our lure fishing - and this JDM Fishing Tackle lot are listing a good range of these rods right here.

I get asked a fair amount about what chest waders to buy for lure fishing, and for years now my answer has been to go for the Vision Ikon breathable chest waders. I also really like the Vision Ikon breathable waist waders for a certain amount of my fishing - and check this blog post here about how much better they are if you end up in the water and in trouble - plus I am going to wear these non-breathable but not that expensive and seem to be tough as hell Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders as much as possible when I’m not walking a long way etc. (fully explained in this blog post here).

Now if money were no object I’d buy the top of the range Simms breathable waders purely because they are cut so well and they do feel that bit better to wear when you’re moving and fishing - but, and this comes from personal experience of two pairs of Simms high-end waders, I don’t think by spending a whack load more money that you are getting a longer lasting pair of breathable waders at all, not for the type of fishing I do anyway. Nope, it’s the Vision Ikon waist or chest waders for me, indeed a pair of the Vision Ikon chest waders lasted me a good bit longer than both my pairs of Simms.

This might seem a pretty obvious thing to say, but with all the waders I have mentioned above, when you have got them on you know you’re wearing a pair of waders. The Vass ones feel heavier to pick up but are surprisingly light to actually wear, waist waders are easier again to wear, but a pair of chest waders are what they are - I can’t do without them and of course I’d love it if they lasted forever, and when you’re in them you know about it. It’s not a big deal at all when you’re as used to wearing them as I suppose I am, but what if you could get a pair of chest or waist waders that were still very lightweight and waterproof (kinda handy!) yet were made of a stretchy kind of material that sort of moved with you that bit more as you yourself move around?

And this is why I am so interested in these black Scierra X-Stretch breathable waders - because they do feel different or a bit “freer” to wear and move around in. I used a pair of the Scierra X-Stretch waist waders for a while early last year and for a while they were fantastic - very breathable, so comfortable to wear (a bit of a tighter, less voluminous fit than regular waders, the material does literally stretch to allow for this), but over time I started to get slightly wet feet. I have had this happen on another brand of waders in the past and it’s because some companies for some reason put thinner neoprene socks on the bottom of their waders and I think the neoprene literally compresses too much over a lot of use and water starts to trickle in. I was gutted to see it happen on those Scierra X-Stretch waist waders because I was really starting to like them, but now I see that regular/thicker neoprene socks have been introduced on these waders. Nice one!

It’s a big thanks to the kind people I know at Scierra for getting me access to these waders, and they do so on the understanding that I can only ever be completely honest about what might happen when I use this stuff. I have got a pair of the Scierra X-Stretch breathable chest waders here and they do feel very comfortable to wear, and I am also hoping to get hold of a pair of the boot-footed Scierra X-Stretch waist waders as per above. I am then going to use these X-Stretch waders whenever I would wear lightweight waders, and then I’ll turn to those Team Vass 700 Edition Chest Waders when I am say night fishing and not walking far. I am lucky to be able to get hold of this sort of gear for testing and evaluating, but if there is one thing I always try to do, it’s to be realistic and use the stuff exactly as I would anything else (I have used the Vision Ikon waders for years now and I know all about how good they are). I can’t tell you yet whether these stretchy waders are the real deal yet, but what I can get across to you is how easy they are to wear in the way that they wear more like a regular bit of clothing rather than a pair of waders. I will report back in due course and I’d also love to hear from any of you here who have had any real fishing experience with these Scierra X-Stretch waders. Stretch away? Stretchtastic? Stretch with me? Sorry………..

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.

Facebook seems to work in many different ways, indeed in some respects it scares the life out of me how many people seem to believe everything that is put in front of them on there, but I really enjoy engaging with other anglers and I do like to ask about fishing related stuff I don’t know about - because more often than not there’s some kind angler out there who feeds back with a really good suggestion…………..

“Silent” or rattling surface lures is a dilemma that frequently fries my brain, and it’s something that I am no closer to deciding upon! On the one hand I think that I favour a surface lure with a rattle, but then when I think about it, it’s quite possibly only because the surface lures I feel most confident in happen to make a rattling kind of sound. If the Xorus Patchinko II or 125, IMA Salt Skimmer or say the Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lures happened to be silent - although silent is relative when you’ve got the trebles and split rings jangling around - but they still caught bass for me like they tend to do then I’d most likely be saying that I favoured a silent surface lure without extra components inside which cause the “clack, clack” kind of sound when you work them. And so on of course.

I don’t know if you do Facebook, but if you do and you are connected to either the Samson Lures page or Grant Woodgate (the bloke behind Samson Lures), then I am sure your jaw hit the floor repeatedly during February I think it was when Grant kept putting up photos of some huge bass he was catching on his own Samson Fishing lures down in Portugal. Of course I was wishing him every success whilst also choking on my morning coffee at how big these bass were and how pants the weather and time of year was here at home, but one thing has obviously struck me about these Samson Fishing lures - and that’s that they don’t have any internal noise making components. Judging by the size of those bass that Grant was catching on his own lures in some serious seas, it strikes me that these magnificent fish were able to home in on his lures in all that turbulence just fine. Hell, it also strikes me that bass are perfectly able to detect a simple sub-surface bit of metal in all the turbulence that is surf fishing. Check out the bass towards the end of the video above!

But there is still that little bastard on my shoulder telling me that a “clackety clack” surface lure is the way to go sometimes, and whilst I have a lot of playing around to do with these various Samson Fishing lures, there is one of them in particular that really interests me for calmer to medium conditions as is suggested on their website. The 25g Samson Lures “Mini Candle” absolutely frigging flies (way further than a Patchinko II), and whilst as per above you can walk the dog with it rather nicely, on a slower “pop” sort of retrieve, the front of the lure spits little splashes of water out. Which is nice.

So that little bastard on my shoulder starts asking me what this Mini Candle lure might be like with a rattle, but I am not about to start trying to drill into the lure, not with my lack of DIY skills, and at the end of the day I still don’t really know whether silent or rattle makes the blindest bit of difference. I asked on my Facebook page and somebody kindly suggested that you could in fact shrink-tube a rattle onto the hook, and whilst from memory I think I had been on about adding rattles to weedless hooks instead of the actual lures for bumping the bottom, if your treble hook is big enough then you can actually add a rattle to it like this, as per above.

Is it going to work? I’m not sure yet, but it does at least rattle. The joys of cabin fever eh? Somebody did quite rightly say that a typical glass rattle would most likely shatter very quickly when used like this, so I went onto Ebay and found these cheap as chips plastic lure rattles here (I bought the size #3). I then bought some 5mm shrink tube here, and I managed to successfully remove the treble from the split ring, put a bit of shrink tube over the shank, insert a plastic rattle, and then pour boiling water from the kettle over it to shrink it down - all I might add without ending up in A&E or costing myself a fortune in household repair bills. The Samson Lures Mini Candle seems to fly just as well like this so I guess that time will tell whether my amazing DIY rattle-adding is going to make any difference at all! You all have a good weekend and I hope you are getting some of this truly stunning weather as well. Spring is sprung and I am hearing more and more reports of bass being caught on lures from UK shores. Bring it frigging on………………..

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.

It fascinates me how each year seems to be slightly different as regards the timings of when bass seem to start properly showing up and reports begin appearing of anglers in different areas catching bass on lures from the shore. To those grizzled veterans of bass fishing and also if we take out that early run of bass that those lucky sods in the Channel Islands seem to get every winter into spring, can you remember hearing so many reports of bass coming to lures this early?

Or is it also a case of more anglers targeting bass on lures these days, AND are these anglers throwing the old rule books out of the proverbial window and deciding that if you aren’t out there having a go then you’ll never actually know? I saw some reports of some stunning looking wrasse fishing on lures from the weekend for example, but now go back through the fishing press and I wonder if anybody ever recommended going out and deliberately targeting wrasse at this time of year - and on lures? I love it. Bass fishing has in no way been a lifelong thing for me so I guess that by virtue of where I live I accept it as perfectly normal that if the conditions behave then we can sometimes get some our best bass fishing in November and December - my heart still bleeds for December 2018 that we essentially lost to the weather - but I have had a lot of questions and correspondence over the years from anglers wondering if they should carry on trying to catch bass after say late September.

And I wonder if this translates to earlier in the year as well. I am aware of shore anglers around here who base when they really start going on reports of good numbers of bass turning up on the Eddystone Reef for example, but for me I firstly don’t know much about bass fishing out there save for those stories I used to read about how good it could be, and secondly I am noticing reports of shore caught bass from an increasing amount of areas already. I have had a few unsuccessful short trips that to be honest have been more along the lines of playing around to see what the water is doing on certain spots for later in the year, but April for me is when I really start buzzing again - and I can’t bloody wait.

I don’t study historical weather patterns, but I do know from my huss fishing days especially and how late winter into very early spring would often see it switch on that we’d always seem to get a week plus of east winds come in and kill the huss fishing stone dead just as it was getting going. I can’t remember an early spring time when we didn’t get this bit of weather come in - as indeed we have had down here for a while now and it’s been utterly glorious - but this next set of spring tides coming up and a bit of a shift in the weather patterns and I wonder what might happen on the bass fishing front. I love how it’s such an inexact science and how we are clutching at straws of knowledge about the natural world which thankfully we will never fully understand, but there is one thing I do know - you’ve got zero chance if you don’t get out there and have a go. See you out there……….

I’ve been waiting to see the smallest 2500 size of Penn Spinfisher VI for a while now, because whilst the larger 3500 and 4500 sizes that I blogged about a while back are going to get plenty of use this season, I do tend to find myself fishing with a spinning reel around a Shimano 3000 size a bit more than anything else - and I am really pleased to see that this baby of the Penn Spinfisher VI range is essentially the same size as a Shimano 3000. Please note that whilst I am putting some affiliate links in here, in no way am I reviewing this new Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 reel yet (call it a preview!). I am talking about it because I am genuinely excited to fish with this thing, and I will report back in due course with how it’s getting on.

If you read this blog then you will know that I have serious issues with shiny fishing tackle, but there is a side of me that really enjoys it when I find an item of fishing tackle that is not high-end and it ends up floating my boat in a big way - as per say the 9’ 7-35g HTO Nebula lure rod (review here) which is still as much lure rod as I can find for the dosh, the amount of spinning reel for the money the Penn Slammer III 3500 is (review here), and then how we can fish with seriously good braids these days for prices that only a few years ago would have been classed as “budget” - and so on and so on.

So with how awesome the Penn Slammer III spinning reels are, and how impressive the larger 3500 and 4500 sizes of Penn Spinfisher VI reels have been so far (preview here), I’ve got high hopes for this little 2500 version. A Penn spinning reel in the 3500 size tends to be around the same size as a Shimano 4000, and as much as I do lure fish with a reel around this size, I blame the ridiculously special Shimano Exsence Infinity S906M/RF 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod for me starting to fish with a smaller reel than I previously would have on certain 9’6’’ rods which are so light and responsive they seem to feel that bit better in my hands when paired with a smaller reel (I put the sublime Tailwalk EGinn 96ML-R 9'6'' Max 35g lure rod in this category as well, review here). I have used the heavier Penn Slammer III 3500 reel (403g loaded with line) on both these incredible lure rods and after a while all feels surprisingly good, but I can’t get away from how perfect my beloved little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG spinning reel feels on both those rods.

Hence me being so interested to see firstly how big (or small) this Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 reel was, and secondly whether it would sit nicely on those two rods I mentioned above - which it does, indeed it’s perversely satisfying to stick a “budget” spinning reel on the decidedly “non-budget” Shimano rod especially, plus have it feel like such a good combination. Okay, so at 317g when loaded with line this baby Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 is a bit heavier than my Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG (250g loaded with line), but as per usual it seems that these figures are kinda meaningless when you take the gear out fishing. And yes, I took this new Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 out fishing early yesterday morning and landed my first and not very big bass of the season on a white senko while it was still dark - yippee! It’s not as if the reel was under any stress at all with the size of the bass I caught, but it was interesting to fish with the Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 for the first time when it was dark, because a few casts into the session and bearing in mind I can’t really see the reel, the Penn felt about as good as any spinning reel I can recall fishing with.

Sufix 832 braid, because it’s awesome

So could just north of £100 for the Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 end up being a serious bargain? Time will tell, but first impressions are very, very positive. It’s just the right size for the rods I wanted to use it on, it feels incredibly solid, it’s lovely and smooth albeit a little “tighter” on the retrieve than a typical Shimano or Daiwa, the drag feels great but to be honest I’m not really bothered for our bass fishing (it’s much easier to pull line off on the lightest setting, unlike on the Penn Slammer III which again bothers me not one bit with how I fish), the line lay is good although I had to add one of the supplied thin washers to even it out (instructions and extra washers are in the box), I like how out of the factory there’s plenty of that really good blue Penn Precision Reel Grease where it needs to be (the only reel grease I use these days, if it’s good enough for Penn reels then it’s good enough for me), and one session in with the handle and it feels just right.

And because this is not actually my reel - some kind people at Pure Fishing sent it to me for a play - I can do exactly what I want with it and worry not one bit. I am going to be realistic and look after it as I would my own spinning reels - hosed down with freshwater after use and oiled/greased as required (loving that easy to apply Penn Precision Reel Oil as well, using it in all my spinning reels now), but I am going to enjoy testing out how well sealed this Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 actually is by not being remotely worried to use my lure rod as a wading stick when required, and if “by mistake” the reel takes various dunkings when out fishing, then so what? I am genuinely excited to properly fish and fish with this Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 and see if it might be as good as the specs suggest. I am still gutted that I could not get that waterproof Van Staal VR50 to work properly for me, and whilst this Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 is not 100% waterproof (it’s IPX5 sealed, but as per the video below at timecode 13:40, the bloke reckons it’s just as well sealed as the IPX6 Penn Slammer III), I could in fact buy three of these Penn Spinfisher VI 2500 spinning reels for what I paid for that Van Staal VR50. I’ll report back in due course……..

You can find full details on all the fishing tackle I use or have used here, together with all the relevant links to my numerous blog reviews.

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.

Holy cow do I love the front cover on this month’s Sea Angler magazine, and whilst I have been more than proud of the numerous covers I have had over the years, to be honest I can’t recall a better looking, “look at me” front cover as you will find on this new edition - with huge credit firstly to the supremely talented artist and bass fishing junkie David Miller (check here, you will recognise his work), and then the powers that be at Sea Angler towers for going with this cover.

Okay, so there might be a little bit of bias due to the bass fishing nature of the front cover, but I can’t recall literally wanting to dive into the front cover of a fishing magazine like I do with this month’s Sea Angler. Are those bass eyeing up a lure for example? Are they on the hunt? Are they talking to me? Could a fish look any better than how David Miller has painted them here, save for being lucky enough to see a bunch of them underwater and in their natural environment? I have only met David a couple of times but I believe he does indeed spend a good bit of time under the water to study how various fish move and interact. Have a look around his website and drool!

And make sure to buy the new Sea Angler magazine - not only to be able to keep that front cover forever, but also because it’s loaded with a heap of bass fishing articles and trips and tricks. You all have a good weekend and I hope you might find a few earlyish bass if you manage to get out and about………...

If my first bass of the 2019 season scraped 2lbs the other day I’d have been surprised, but damn right I’ll take it with all the confidence one single fish brings and how the urge to get out there again and again takes hold after a grim couple of months when being honest I’d quite happily be somewhere else than the UK. But with what happened when Mark and I went out fishing early Friday morning and now that the bass fishing season for us is officially on? Bass fishing is it for me and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than Cornwall or Ireland until at least the middle of January next year…………….

So Mark’s first bass of the season weighed 7lb 5oz, and yes, I weighed it on scales and didn’t measure it. I nearly forgot that I had scales in my rucksack but these days I also need to scrabble around for a pair of glasses because my eyesight at the ripe old age of 46 isn’t what it was in my thirties. I am determined to keep carrying a small set of digital scales and a lightweight weigh-sling for those times when weighing a fish is worth it and/or of interest. I sure as hell ain’t going to weigh many bass though, because it’s a faff to do it properly (wet weigh-sling etc.) - as indeed one should - but when your mate hooks, lands, plus breaks his rod on his first bass of the season like that, a proper weight was the least I could do for Mark!

He had another around 6lbs, I landed one that might have nudged 5lbs, and Mark also had a fish of that sort of size as well. We both had a few more hard hits as well. My biggest buzz of the session was twofold - watching Mark hook and land that cracker of an early April bass, and I hooked into a bass that for a few seconds just didn’t budge, before shaking its head and the lure came out. I know it’s always the biggest fish that are lost and so on, but I also know how much pressure I put on hooked bass compared to other anglers I see.

Now if there is one thing I will always do when fishing with mates is to offer them a helping hand landing their fish if I am nearby. I see a hell of a lot of anglers not helping their mates land fish because I guess they want to keep fishing, but that’s not the way I’m wired and when you’re fishing together with a friend or friends, surely you are all in it together? Anyway, Mark hooked his first bass of the season pretty soon after we’d started fishing in the most sublime conditions you could ever hope to see (I do love it when the forecast is actually spot on), and straight away I asked him if he wanted a hand landing it - but he declined. To be honest we both initially thought it was a small fish because Mark just started off by winding it in without any undue hassle, hence him not needing a helping hand to land it.

Then the fish woke up and we got a glimpse of his bass at the edge of the rocks, but by then Mark had moved away from me to an area of the rocks where he’d be able to “beach” the bass on a wave. I was watching the whole time quite simply because I was so bloody happy to have seen my friend hook his first bass of the season - I know how much fishing means to him. Anyway, Mark will be the first person to admit to this, but he properly cocked up the landing of that 7lb 5oz bass by high-sticking (to the side) his beloved Tailwalk EGinn 9’6’’ Max35g rod (review here), and sure as night follows day the rod broke. The rod was to the side and went beyond the vertical if that makes sense, the tip was bent right around, the bass wasn’t high and dry, it very suddenly moved back down the rocks as the wave receded, and the only thing that could have happened when a rod is (wrongly) bent like that happened - it snapped. Ouch! The bass did get landed, and to his credit almost the first thing Mark said was “angler error”. I’ve done it myself (check here, and holy cow was that exactly how not to land a bass!), and sure as shit loads of anglers have done the same thing and either not even realised they high-sticked a fragile bit of carbon, or otherwise they did realise but refused to fess up when trying to claim a new rod and instead “it just snapped when I was casting a light lure” or some similar pile of poo. We’re mainly blokes, and when do blokes ever make a mistake and then actually admit to it?

Anyway, so I happened to have two rod and reel setups with me. I rarely do this, but because I am starting to fish with and evaluate a new lure rod and I wanted to compare it to the outstanding, “finesse-style, more powerful” lure rod that is the stunning Tailwalk EGinn 10’6’’ Max45g (review here), I had decided to take the two setups with me on Friday morning. This new lure rod had the Penn Slammer III 3500 on it, and the Tailwalk had the increasingly impressive Penn Spinfisher VI 3500 on it. Mark is a very calm person and wasn’t remotely ranting and raving at his mistake, but it felt great to be able to turn around and say to him no bother, grab my other rod and get back at it - which he did, and he landed two more good bass before heading off to work. I stayed for a while longer but never got another sniff of a fish. Which was frustrating.

From a fishing tackle point of view it was very much a hard lure or bigger paddletail kind of session to deal with the conditions, and I was so pleased to hook and land my bass on a lure that I had bought over the winter (as one does!) and then finally got to use it in the kind of conditions I envisaged it for. I have talked about how well the discontinued IMA Hound 125F Glide (check here) casts and “grips” into bouncy conditions, but my new Shimano Exsence Silent Assassin 129F (129mm 22g) felt like it was casting even further again - and it caught me my bass in some pretty gnarly sea conditions. I am seriously getting into some of these Shimano Japan hard lures, and that big bass I mentioned earlier which didn’t stay connected was hooked and lost on the stunning little Shimano Exsence Responder 109F (109mm 15g) that I bought during the previous winter’s cabin fever period - and it’s still showing no signs of rust at all on the split rings or two treble hooks. This shallow-diver now lives in my lure box as much as the killer little IMA iBorn 98F.

Mark hooked and landed his first bass of the season on the smaller Tackle House Feed Shallow 105 which I must admit is a lure I simply haven’t given enough time to - he’s frigging deadly with both the 105 and 128 Feed Shallows though. His other two bass came on a hard lure that I have also done well on myself at this particular spot, the Apia Dover 99F (99mm, 15g). I know all about the big lures, big fish thing, but if I think back to the biggest bass I have seen or indeed caught myself over the last few years, I am pretty sure they all came on what I’d term smallish to regular sized hard and soft lures. Go with what works for you and isn’t lure fishing great how it is so versatile and all-consuming?

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.

The fishing gods eh, they never let you get too big for your boots, indeed a big part of my fishing philosophy has always been to ignore those anglers who do get too big for their boots and become that most dreaded thing in fishing - an “expert”. Anyway, after last Friday’s right call and subsequent success and also how relatively early it was to be seeing bass like that, I will admit to a little bit of overconfidence perhaps. Oh how is fishing so gloriously able to bring us mere mortals crashing back to earth with a good old fashioned smack in the chops - also known as a blank!

For sure it’s frustrating to catch nothing when your confidence levels are high and you fancy the tides and conditions to be pretty much spot on, but I do also feel that with my lure fishing I am always trying to invest in my future success - and if that future success requires a blank which in fact ends up teaching me plenty more about various locations and when they might or might not fish well, sometimes then I would suggest we learn more from not catching than we do when we catch a heap of fish. For sure that would have been rather nice, but I did come away from yesterday’s session having formulated some potentially crucial thoughts and ideas about the locations and how best to target them in the future.

I know that I’m a bit slow to the party here, but yesterday was the first time I ever cast the 42g/6’’ Savage Gear Sandeel - holy cow it gets out there! I do often carry various jig head and body variations of this lure if where I’m going calls for a lure like this (and it’s thanks to a certain north Cornwall angler who really switched me onto these lures), but for whatever reason I have never owned the 42g/6’’ version that comes in the combo pack thing - one rigged lure plus a spare body. A lot of the time I am not bass fishing with a lure rod that’s rated to cast a 42g lure, but because of where I was yesterday, and with the conditions we faced, I had stepped up a gear to this new, more powerful Shimano Dialuna S96M 9'6" 8-45g lure rod which is fast becoming my go-to lure rod when things get a bit more serious (review to come) - paired with the incredible Penn Slammer III 3500 it’s about as sweet a “next step up” rod and reel combination as I can recall using. Damn that 42g Savage Gear Sandeel and indeed the killer 25g Offshore Head/120mm body Fiiish Black Minnow go out like missiles on this rod, but then I can turn around and (deftly?) fish a 6’’ DoLive Stick into a nearby gully just as easily on this outfit.. A big fat blankety blank it may well have been, but hell I covered some water!, and I honestly came away having clarified so much in my head with things that I am looking forward to putting into practise in the future……..

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.

Please bear in mind here that I am not trying to tell you that adding eyes to soft plastics which don’t already have them is going to catch you any more fish, but then I go and look at my hard lure collection and they all have eyes on them already. Mackerel have eyes, sandeels have eyes, baby pollack have eyes, prawns have eyes. And so on. This adding eyes thing was just me looking around, thinking about things, and having a bit of a play more than anything else, but as with so much in fishing there surely has to be the what if factor here………..

And then I stumbled upon this video above on YouTube. Now I don’t know if the bloke in the video thought of this way of adding eyes himself or whether he has kindly made an easy to follow instructional video on an established method, but after trying to add some eyes to a 6’’ DoLive Stick with superglue and it not working properly at all, I came across this video, bought some sequins, and gave it a go. The results are below, and if I can do it with my lack of DIY skills then I’d suggest that there are ancient bacteria dwelling at the bottom of a primordial swamp which could do so as well. Hell, anything not to be putting superglue near my fingers and having to cut them apart with a knife - and that can’t just be me, surely?

As I said, adding eyes to something like a DoLive Stick or a senko or whatever might well make no difference at all to catch rates, but I thought that some of you here would find this at least vaguely interesting. If it’s any help, I bought some cheap as chips 6mm white/holo and 4mm black sequins on Ebay as per the bloke describes in the video. If nothing at all it’s a bit of a wind up with fishing mates when they see a DoLive Stick with eyes and ask me where the hell I got it from. You all have a good weekend.

From the consistently excellent SOS (Save Our Sea Bass) website, and yet again it beggars belief how mankind gets itself into a situation like this whereby legal action seems to be the only way to go to at least try and afford a degree of protection to bass: “In 2015, the MCRS (previously known as the Minimum Landing Size) for bass was increased to 42cm in 2015, as part of a package of measures to try to recover the bass stock from a stock crash. However, the minimum mesh size for fixed nets was not increased at the same time because:

The EU Commission did not want to be accused of micro-managing fisheries.

The EU Commission hoped that regional fishery managers would make appropriate laws to suit the needs of their particular fisheries.

Commercial fishermen said they could be trusted to increase mesh sizes without a change of law.

Since 2015, CIFCA was aware of the need for fishermen to change to nets with a larger mesh size, but did nothing, hoping the EU or Defra would change the law or that fishermen would change their nets of their own accord.

This inaction came home to roost in late 2018, when there were a number of incidents of commercial fishermen using fixed nets catching, landing and selling under-sized bass because their nets had too small a mesh size.

CIFCA called an extraordinary meeting in February 2019 to consider if it should introduce an emergency byelaw to stop this unsustainable fishing. CIFCA officers argued that there should not be an emergency byelaw because they felt there was a risk of a legal challenge on the grounds that the need to make the byelaw could reasonably have been foreseen (emergency byelaws can only be used where an event could not reasonably have been foreseen). We strongly disagreed with the CIFCA officers’ analysis for a number of reasons.

However, CIFCA Committee decided not to proceed with an emergency byelaw and CIFCA officers indicated that the matter might be dealt with as part of a general netting review (scheduled to complete in 2023). The matter was referred back to a Byelaw Sub- Committee for further consideration.

It is clear that unsustainable exploitation is taking place in CIFCA District. Undersized bass are being caught and killed by a minority of commercial fishermen using fixed nets with meshes that are too small for a 42cm MCRS. CIFCA has a legal responsibility under s.153 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2019 to “seek to ensure that the exploitation of sea fisheries resources is carried out in a sustainable way”.

We are concerned that CIFCA may have failed in its legal duty. We hope that the CIFCA Committee will propose a course of action to swiftly remedy this situation. Failing that, we will investigate taking legal action against CIFCA.

We urge all sea anglers, and especially those who fish in CIFCA District, to email CIFCA’s Committee telling them to introduce a byelaw urgently to protect undersized bass.”

Please, please take a few minutes to send this email, indeed SOS have made it easier than ever to do so - go to this link here, fill in the appropriate details, and hit that big “Send Email” button. Apathy is not an option. There are plenty more details about all this over on the Fish Legal website here, and note that “Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority has been threatened with judicial review following a decision not to introduce a new emergency byelaw which would have protected juvenile bass from commercial fishing nets”.

When will the sickness that is lure fishing and new lures ever stop? I have more than enough lures here to last me for a long time, and I also have lures that can do from literally nothing through to cooking me breakfast - but it is never enough, as many of you here will know all about. I love a high-end bit of the shiny stuff as much as the next addict, but I also love stumbling upon a cheap as chips lure that looks like it might do some serious harm. Today I’ve got one from each category to tell you about, and I am genuinely as excited about both of them………………..

I first saw the little Lurenzo Espetit surface lure on the always impressive Jigabite website - it’s a lure from the new Fishus brand, designed by a Spanish angler based around Barcelona, and it is truly a little work of art (9.5cm long, weighs 10.5g). The Lurefishingforbass people are now doing these surface lures as well, and whilst they are not cheap (around £18), they do feel very well made, and some of the available colours are stunning. On the right gear and in calmer conditions these little Lurenzo Espetit lures absolutely fly, indeed I was surprised at just how well they get out there.

I have ended up corresponding a bit with the Spanish lad who designed the Lurenzo Espetit - he made the lure for calmer conditions such as bays and estuaries (they do a lot of float-tubing where they are based), and I am starting to see plenty of photos of bass on these lures appearing on Facebook now. I really like the subtle rattling sound of the regular version, but there are also some colours available in silent. Check out the videos below to see how the lure’s designer recommends they be worked.

I have been out and tested the Lurenzo Espetit in calm to calmish conditions and to me it looks frigging awesome when you work it in a few slightly different ways. I seriously can’t wait to get this surface lure in front of some fish now. You know when you sometimes have bass slashing at a surface lure but they won’t quite commit? The designer said to me that a big part of this surface lure’s appeal is how it remains so upright and stable as you work it and then very suddenly stop it dead. Too many times I have seen big, splashy surface lures seem to literally put bass down in calmer conditions, so I do often carry smaller, subtler surface lures and get them out when things seem right - and if this Lurenzo Espetit doesn’t slay in the right conditions then I will be gobsmacked…………..

Then we come to a completely different and much cheaper surface lure that I came across when I dropped into the Art of Fishing tackle shop earlier this week. There’s some mighty fine looking stuff in there as always, but when Ben plucked this cheap as chips surface lure off the shelf, my heart skipped a few beats. You see all manner of pencil popper type surface lures over in the US where they use them a lot for striped bass, but it’s not easy to find these kinds of lures in a size or weight that would better suit the sort of lure rods we tend to use - but blow me down if the lure which Ben has magically placed in my sweaty mitts isn’t a 130mm long/31g pencil popper type surface lure, and it’s only £6.99 as well.

Now I love the Xorus Patchinko as much as the next angler, but I always keep my eyes and ears open for surface lures of similar dimensions that might cover as much water. I’d be happier if the regular Patchinko had a better finish to it for the price especially, but they work really well at the end of the day and I wouldn’t be without it for bouncier conditions especially. So how about a soon to be discontinued surface lure costing a measly £6.99 that sure looks like it could seriously get out there?

And it does, and big time as well. I was hoping that with the bulk of the weight of this “Swimy Pencil Popper 130” in the arse-end of the lure that it would cast well (blame the French for the “Swimy” and not “Swimmy” name!), but I have bought enough good looking surface lures over the years and been disappointed by how they do actually cast to know that looks mean nothing - you need to clip it on and whack it out. So I did just that, and it frigging flies. It feels and looks like it’s going out a bit further again than the Patchinko, but that is not a fact and of course the Patchinko has been proven over a number of years now.

This cheap as chips Swimy Pencil Popper 130 casts very well though (sounds like a couple of big ball bearings in the arse-end of the lure), and when you WTD with it I can see no reason at all why all that noise and splash won’t murder bass in the right conditions. For sure I am not about to chuck this Swimy surface lure out on a calm summer morning for example, but now give me a good run of current or some bouncy, windy conditions out on the coast (exactly when I’d turn to the Patchinko) and this thing’s going to get a damn good go. Distance isn’t remotely everything of course, but I do like the ability to cover a lot of water with a surface lure especially, and if I catch some nice bass on a surface lure that cost me £6.99 I am going to jump for proper joy!

Okay, so the first thing I did to this Swimy Pencil Popper 130 was remove all the hooks and split rings and bin them - I just don’t trust them and they look very flimsy to me. I also see no need at all for a split ring on the eye of the lure, nor three sets of trebles, so I put a couple of what I think are size 3 trebles onto the lure as per the photos (note that I am not complaining about the components on a lure that costs £6.99). I can’t see inside the lure and I have no idea how well it might be made, and the Lurenzo Espetit just oozes class whereas this Swimy one doesn’t really, but if for £6.99 I have managed to find a seriously long-casting surface lure for bouncier conditions that just might do a similar job to the Patchinko then I am going to be one happy bass angler.

And please, by no means am I telling you that these lures are going to catch heaps of bass, because I just don’t know yet. I am going to give them a damn good go though, and I can’t help but enjoy how we’ve got two very different surface lures here at very different prices. My photos don’t do justice to the sublime colours on the little Lurenzo Espetit lures, and the Swimy Pencil Popper 130 is a bit of a bruiser that doesn’t know what subtle means. I fish all kinds of locations and conditions and here goes to seeing how these lures might work. You all have a good Easter weekend and I’ll see you back here soon………

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.

I absolutely love it - standing on a rock or a beach at night when most regular people have no idea that a bunch of fishing addicts are wandering our glorious coastline with bass on the brain. I have only been into this night lure fishing thing for a few years now, but ever since I started catching bass like this, heading out at night has felt as normal as any other kind of bass fishing I would do. I had a good couple of nights on the fish Sunday and Monday with those big tides and conditions that suggested the only time to be out chasing bass was when darkness came calling. By no means do I mean to suggest that I am some kind of guru at this night stuff, but when you see anglers posting up photos of flat calm seas and no bass caught, I always wonder what their fishing might have been like if they had been out at night instead…………..

It’s still that hit or jolt from a fish when you essentially remove our sense of sight that gets me every single time. Is it a fact that your other senses are heightened when you take one of them away? Perhaps it’s the single-minded concentration on nothing else but straight-retrieving my lure - no twitching, no pausing, no animation at all on the lure, so all your “feel” as such is concentrated on that connection between you and your lure. There is no amazing view to look at, no racing clouds or gannets diving, just you and your reel handle which you turn and turn - and then you get hit. Holy cow I love it.

And because it’s the way I’m wired, I can’t stop thinking about fishing sessions and how different they can be from day to day, or night to night. On Sunday night I caught some bass on a lure that I guess I use the most for my night fishing - a 5’’ white senko rigged on a 6/0 weedless hook, and all I’m doing is as per the video above. Whack it out and wind it in, and on Sunday night I could feel the bass almost pulling at my lure - so I kept winding, trying to almost lead them on, and bang, they were mostly on. I didn’t catch anything of noteworthy size, but with what seems to be better numbers of bass around before the end of April I’ll gladly take it.

Monday night was different though, albeit the conditions were essentially the same with a very slightly smaller tide. From the off it felt like the bass were kinda “plucking” at my lure and then leaving it alone - I tried it, but it just didn’t feel like I could almost lead them on to my lure like the night before. I have had this happen a fair bit before early in the season especially, and whilst those bass have tended to be smaller fish, I still want to hook them just in case. Last year I resorted to putting a small single hook at the back of some of my soft plastics as per the video above, and it works really well - but I had forgotten to put any senkos or white DoLive Sticks that I have rigged like this in my lure box.

But I always carry at least a couple of needlefish for my night fishing, and whilst I don’t really like treble hooks at night especially, I’d rather catch than not catch. I am not about to pretend that I do anything different with these needlefish than I would a white senko - I whack them out and wind them straight in, mostly at a slower speed than I would a senko at night, but it’s still nothing more than whack and wind most of the time. I accept completely that there can be so much more to needlefish - and I urge you to search this blog for Keith White’s incredibly generous musings on these lures - but these lures work well for me like this. So on goes a needlefish and the first hit I got resulted in a hooked bass. I caught a good number of bass up to about the 4lb mark, and at least two of the fish were caught at a distance I simply could not put a white senko or DoLive Stick - perhaps how far a good needlefish can cast compared to say a senko is another advantage to them?

So you’ve got two sessions here with similar conditions and tides, yet the two nights felt very different with how the bass were hitting my lures. I obviously had to go out again last night, but I got nothing apart from a couple of gentle taps on my needlefish - conditions had changed a bit though, and where I was fishing just doesn’t seem to work well for me at night when there’s a decent bit of surge on the water. Or could the fish have been behaving differently again and I wasn’t doing things quite right? Whatever the case may be, damn it feels good to be out at night again and catching bass on such simple lures fished in such simple ways. Right time and place and all that of course, but does it get much better than that jolt of electricity you feel when a bass nails your lure in the pitch black?

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 mid-May I will have been married to my wife for twenty years, and we have been together since we were both 19 years old. In a lot of respects we have grown up together, and therefore she has known about and lived with my fishing obsession from day one. It’s what I do, and the only times me going fishing ever becomes an issue is either when I am horribly overtired and grumpy because I have been fishing too many strange night hours especially, or I try getting out of some prior engagement because the conditions are suddenly looking really good - how many times has my wife been asked “where’s Henry?”. To be fair though, work has and does take me away a fair bit. I come across far too many blokes who talk about asking permission to go fishing, or building up brownie points and other such crap, and I don’t understand how a relationship can work like this. Surely we all need our own interests as well as all the stuff we do together? I love my wife and two girls more than life itself, and they know me as a husband, a father, but also as an utterly obsessed angler…………..

Now I love spending as much time as possible with my wife and girls. We do loads together as a family, and with two girls who are into things like sailing, running and surfing, we do what many parents do a lot of - running children around to various events and training sessions and what have you. Yesterday evening was a good example - one girl heads off for running training and the other girl has a sailing race. All this plus obviously having to annoyingly work like everybody else cuts into available time to go fishing, but one thing lure fishing for bass and living close to the sea does give me is the chance to do a lot of shorter sessions at what I think are prime times. Not having to even think about live or frozen bait supplies means I can literally grab my rucksack and lure bag, lift a rod out of my rod rack, strap it to my epic Berlingo, and be off. Very early mornings, evenings, hell I work for myself so I can often nip out locally when things look good - and of course there’s night lure fishing these days.

Which I reckon has probably changed a lot of people’s bass fishing for the better, and in a bunch of different ways as well - if that is you can handle either the lack of sleep, or the messed up sleeping times. All those night hours when regular people are asleep, but us nutters can be out fishing and not impact on work or family time. I am far more of an early morning person than a stay up late at night person, but when it comes to fishing I can generally be whatever person is required to take advantage of the tides and conditions. My wife might not agree with me, but I reckon I am pretty good at handling a lot of messed up sleep. One thing I can never manage to do though is catch up on any sleep during the day, but that’s the way I’m wired (oh how I wish I could catnap like my dad can), and whilst I am loathe to admit it, perhaps my wife does sometimes have a point when she “raises the issue” that I am “occasionally” being grumpy and overtired. Hell, I’m a bloke, and when do we ever get it wrong?!

But how many times do you need to go fishing? How many fish is enough? Note the word need here, because for a lot of you reading this I am guessing you are very much like me - you need to go fishing. Obviously we want to go, but for a lot of anglers there’s this physical need to be out on a coastline or a river or a lake, trying to catch a few fish and beat nature at her own game which of course we all fail at a fair amount of the time. I didn’t grow up near the sea and I will never, ever take it for granted that since the age of nineteen I have lived very near the sea here in the south west, but yes, in many respects this has been my life for more than half my life now - and going out fishing is generally a very easy thing to do. Sometimes I go fishing a lot, and sometimes I don’t. The reasons vary, and sometimes it comes down to not completely having that buzz about going out fishing again and again - it comes and goes, and if I think about it then seasons and weather conditions most likely have a lot to do with it, but when you’re in that zone of wanting to get out there fishing as much as possible then I would argue that how much you need to actually go is kind of irrelevant. You just need to, end of. For sure I do my best to catch some fish, but I am not a numbers or mine is bigger than yours kind of angler. Nope, I just need to go fishing because it’s who I am.

Take earlier this week for example - I went three nights on the trot, and the only reason I didn’t go the fourth night in a row is because the weather blew up onshore and messed things up a bit. They weren’t particularly late or long sessions, but it’s not getting dark now until at least 9.30pm and I managed to fit these sessions in and catch a bunch of bass into the bargain - which kinda does it for me. My old record if you like was fourteen night sessions on the trot, and that included having to also go drop-netting for prawns and doing my peeler crab traps to get the bait (all at night). My wife (then girlfriend) had just moved down to Plymouth to live with me, but she had chosen to move down at just the wrong time of year and the late autumn ray and cod fishing was just kicking into gear. I remember literally passing out due to sheer exhaustion after those fourteen nights, but I caught a heap of fish and my girlfriend became my wife and she is still my best friend on earth and I love her to bits. I am an angler though. I can’t help it, but if you are like me then you will accept that it’s something inside us which we are powerless to control - we have to go fishing like a junkie might need their fix. Fishing is my drug I suppose. You all have a good weekend, and may you be as sweet-tempered as I always am after not nearly enough sleep!