What the hell do you think I was referring to? It’s disgusting to even think that the title of this fine blog post is a crude and somewhat immature attempt at a form of appendage related humour. Me? Never! I am a middle aged man who prides himself on being less mature than his 12 and 14 year old girls if that is any help, but as intelligent and grownup my blog title may well be, I am in fact referring to soft and hard reel knobs. Tee hee…………

And I do like a good handle/knob on my spinning reels. I don’t know which company it was who started to introduce the EVA foam type knobs on their spinning reels, but from memory I reckon it would have been the old blue coloured Daiwa Luvias 3000 where I first got to fish with a spinning reel that didn’t have a harder rubber or plastic knob - and I loved it, indeed I still reckon that chunkier, rounder type of softer knob on the old Luvias was about as good as a reel handle gets.

But of course we fish with a certain spinning reel for a while and we get used to what type of knob it comes with. Some of you prefer something harder in your hands, and some prefer something softer (damn, damn, damn this is some subtle stuff), plus there’s a market for third-party reel components which I must admit I have never explored. Go looking around and you can find some weird and wonderful replacement knobs for a number of the more popular spinning reels.

One spinning reel knob I did really like from day one is the one you find on a Penn Clash 3000. I got the impression that it might be a bit of a marmite knob, but I seriously like it and how it feels when I’m fishing. It’s not as if we are needing to grasp onto our reel handles for dear life as a rampaging beast of a fish strips hundreds of yards of braid off and tries to reef us around a coral bommie, but when you’re lure fishing with a spinning reel you are of course holding onto the knob virtually all the time - so it’s nice to like your knob is it not?

Now you have most likely guessed from this blog that I have a serious thing for the awesome Penn Slammer III spinning reels, or at least the 3500 and 4500 versions that I know and have fished with a lot now. There is of course this Penn Spinfisher VI spinning reel competition running at the moment - hint hint, look here for all the details! - and I am really getting into these reels and also the knobs they have on them, but I can’t get away from how solid and incredibly confidence-inspiring the slightly more expensive Slammer III reels are.

Spot the big (gold) knob!

And I have never come across a spinning reel that comes with a couple of different knobs in the box like you find with these Slammers. I must admit that when I first lifted a brand new Penn Slammer III 3500 from its shiny black box, I did take one look at the big gold coloured knob which was on the reel and think no bloody way, it looks far too heavy and bulky and blingy for me - but it’s not. That gold coloured knob is in fact hollow and weighs virtually nothing. I took the reel out and fishing and in no time I am merrily gripping this hard, shony knob and cranking away like a demented dervish, to the point that I went and forgot that there was in fact another knob in the box that I hadn’t even tried yet.

Bearing in mind here that I have only seen the 3500 and 4500 size Slammer III reels so far and I have a feeling that the larger ones might have a round profile EVA knob in the box, but the spare EVA knob that comes with the two Slammers I know are in fact the same as you find on the Penn Clash spinning reels - and as I said I seriously like these handles or knobs or whatever I should be calling them. But I fished and fished with the gold coloured knobs and I really like them except perhaps when your hands are soaking wet and they become a little harder to grasp.

I then remembered about the EVA knobs that were sitting in my Slammer III 3500 and 4500 boxes, and the fact that I had not even tried these reels yet with alternative knobs on them. Now I am pretty frigging useless at DIY but even I managed to follow the simple instructions and change the knobs over on my reels - and I haven’t looked back. I’ll fish the Slammers either way if needs be, but for whatever reason that black EVA knob on these reels makes them feel even better again to me. Yep, it’s not as if these Shimano 4000 size Slammers have suddenly become smaller reels due to simply changing the knobs over, but for some reason I do think the EVA knobs on these chunky reels really work well. Do you prefer a hard or a softer knob? And may my two girls never see this blog post and how childish their dad really is…………….

Rather than me spend more time linking to my reviews of the various items of fishing tackle mentioned in this blog post, you can find them all here, linked to within the various tackle categories.

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 think this is the most incredibly impressive gestures towards anglers that I have heard about for a while now. We have already got the RNLI trying to do all they can to ensure that us anglers (who let’s be honest tend to mistakenly think we know more about the sea and its dangers than other people) can go about our fishing as safely as possible, and now we’ve also got a place in North Cornwall where you can drop into and hire a lifejacket. If there was ever a more complete no-brainer then I am not aware of it……………

And it’s an ever interesting parallel for me and the emails and messages I often get from anglers, indeed I had one just a couple of days ago from a guy who will be on holiday around the Trevose Head area with his family in August and was asking me for a bit of fishing help. What is my first thought these days? Has this person ever experienced shore fishing in areas where you are more than likely to have proper swells? I got back to him and tried to help a bit with some general areas and thoughts, and I also urged him to buy and wear a lifejacket. I can’t make him though and I probably came across as some kind of health and safety fanatic when I am so not - but now there’s the simple and cheap option to hire a fully serviced lifejacket. You could even simply hire one to see what it feels like to wear one for your shore fishing before actually buying one for yourself. All the details are below:

RNLI offers lifejacket hire in North Cornwall

“The RNLI has teamed up with a local business to offer a new lifejacket hire service for anglers. This partnership is part of an exciting new trial that aims to encourage anglers to wear this essential piece of lifesaving equipment that could make the difference between life and death. The service will operate out of Rock Marine Services based in Rock, North Cornwall, with anglers now able to hire a lifejacket for just £5 a day.

The pilot scheme has been implemented by RNLI Area Lifesaving Manager Tom Mansell and Community Safety Officer David Webster. The pair were touched by the tragic death of brothers Charles and Robert Allen, who drowned while rock angling at Treyarnon Bay, Cornwall in 2017.

Tom said: ‘Research has proved that wearing a lifejacket can increase your chances of survival by up to four times when you’re immersed in cold water. After the tragic loss of Charles and Robert, I was determined that we do more to encourage anglers to wear well-fitted, well-maintained lifejackets that could ultimately save their lives.

‘Our aim is to make wearing a lifejacket as accessible as possible by providing a lifejacket hire scheme. We want to remove any barriers, or perceived barriers, to wearing one. For example, an angler who only fishes once a year might be put off investing in a £100 lifejacket because it would sit in the garage for 12 months. Hiring a lifejacket is a cost-effective alternative.

‘It could be an option for an angler who has remembered their means of calling for help but forgotten their lifejacket, or the angler who has heard all the information about wearing one, but is yet to be convinced. The scheme gives anglers the chance to try out wearing a lifejacket before purchasing one.’

The scheme is a trial but if proved successful is likely to be rolled out across other parts of the south west. John Crowdie of Rock Marine Services and Deputy Launching Authority said: “Rock Marine Services is really proud to be partnering with the RNLI at the forefront of this initiative. The number of fatalities of anglers who could have had a chance if only they were wearing a lifejacket is too high. Rather than these tragic incidents we want to hear stories of those people whose lives were saved because they were wearing a lifejacket. For Rock Marine to play our part in making the choice to wear a lifejacket that much easier, is a very exciting step forward.”

For more information on how to choose a lifejacket visit www.rnli.org/safety/lifejackets

I don’t know how your own local fishing is going at the moment, but here in south east Cornwall it’s been bloody hard work on the bass front for a while now. We had what I think was a pretty early start to the season as such, and then the bass fishing kicked off pretty damn well with some nice fish coming in, only to drop off the edge of a cliff the last few weeks…………….

And if there is one thing that this sudden dropoff proves to me yet again is that we are then left guessing as to why the bass don’t seem to be around in any numbers at the moment. For sure it fascinates me how every single year is different in various ways to the previous year, but around here we have gone from what I would class as some pretty good bass fishing to seriously struggling - and I don’t know why. For sure I can guess, but this sudden drop in bass activity doesn’t half ram it home to me that this fishing thing we do is us (ignorant?) human beings trying but often failing to get one over on the natural world.

This blog was never going to be an endless report on all my fishing activities, and I personally find it far more interesting to write about fish we or I might catch - or not catch - if there’s a connection back to specific techniques or lures or locations or problem solving and so on. Some anglers count the number of bass they land or enjoy measuring every single fish and putting them up on social media and so on, but that’s just not me and how I operate. We had some good bass fishing up until a few weeks ago but I was never going to report on it all because it just doesn’t interest me to do so. What does interest me now though is why we are now struggling so much.

So things have been weirdly quiet around here for a while, and whilst yes, I accept completely that bass stocks are a shadow of their former selves, I refuse to believe that the bass we were catching have all literally disappeared off the face of the earth. So what’s going on around here? A couple of weeks ago Mark and I were on the beach for a 4.30am start and conditions were perfect. As I went to wade out only to my knees I had sandeels darting away from me and I radioed to Mark further down the beach that this could well be a cracker of a session. Two hours later without a sniff of a fish and we conceded defeat! This time last year we were catching in that location on those sort of conditions and tides.

There’s a spot I know where I sometimes go night fishing for bass, and with the right tides and conditions I’d fancy my chances of catching at least a bass most sessions - but even this place has gone eerily quiet. We finally got some south and south west winds a while back and things fizzed up nicely, but still it was like a desert out there - why though? I should know more about the spawning habits of bass, but might that have something to do with it? Does a generally mild winter and then a strong early start to the bass fishing mean later spawning?

I wonder if there is a lot of food offshore and the bass are out there feeding on that? I hear a lot of second hand reports about how in some areas both inshore and offshore anglers are struggling to find bass at the moment, but this information is rarely first hand and obviously when you see anglers posting their catches on social media they are not exactly shouting about the blanks! You’d expect to see peaks and troughs throughout the season, but I can’t recall seeing a local trough quite like this at a time of year when we would usually expect to be in the middle of some pretty consistent fishing. Anybody know what’s going on out there, or are we all just clutching at straws with how little we do actually know about what is going on when the fishing goes so quiet?

When things pick up again then these recent struggles I am sure will fade away and be forgotten about, but as an angler who strives to learn and learn and learn, my brain starts to churn and I think about things such as the bass’ prey species and what might be going on with that side of things. How much do we really know about what bass feed on at different times of the year for example? Is my struggling at the moment also down to my lack of knowledge? Do we learn more when the fishing is tougher because perhaps we slightly take it for granted when the fishing is going well? Fishing to me is so much the eternal quest for answers to the many, many questions I have, and I cannot tell you how strangely reassuring it is to have it rammed home to me recently that I am just as far away from knowing it all as I ever was……………..

I don’t want to embarrass our clients who left us yesterday, but the four days we had with them were a huge amount of fun, and the experience yet again reinforces my long held belief that the majority of people who are into fishing are a blast to spend time with. As a guided fishing operation we are never going to promise loads of big bass or anything daft like that, but we do assure our people that we will work our butts off to try and find some fish whatever the conditions are and we are here to help as much as people want with techniques and advice. We will also spend a lot of time laughing and having a huge amount of fun…………

Which we did. We have had all sorts of conditions - including a fair amount of mucky water which seemed to follow us around - but we found bass for them all, we had a hell of a lot of fun bashing a bunch of wrasse one afternoon mainly on the killer 120mm Fiiish Black Minnows (okay, they are too expensive to “waste” on wrasse, but if you want to find out if there are any wrasse around then damn they work!), and in the last half hour of their last session with us on Saturday evening, one of the lads landed his best ever bass at somewhere over the 6lb mark, as per above. Holy cow it slammed the Hound Glide in a hell of a run of current, and the scrap was fantastic - it’s a hell of a buzz helping and watching good people catch fish in such a special part of the world as this, and especially when the light goes off as it did yesterday evening. I get to come to Kerry for some of my work and I still pinch myself.

Now this wasn’t meant to be a blog post about lures, but bloody hell it’s frustrating when a hard lure which we turn to so often on our co-guiding trips because it works again and again in such a wide variety of conditions and locations has to the best of my knowledge been discontinued. I am assuming here that because IMA Japan no longer list any of the Hound family of hard lures on their website the IMA Hound 125F Glide is no longer being produced. From time to time it seems that a few shops manage to find current stock of these lures, but I keep hoping that IMA over in Japan will have sympathy on us UK and Irish anglers and make these killer lures again.

Nope, the Hound Glide isn’t doing anything unique in the water, but it’s just such a good lure to get our clients to clip on in a bunch of different situations - they cast a mile, they “grip” so well in all kinds of sea conditions, they also work very well in current, and they keep on producing bass, including the biggest bass I have ever seen from the shore, caught by one of our lads around this time last year - see here. I don’t feel comfortable with lure copies from an ethical point of view, but I refuse not to have at least one Hound Glide in my box when I go fishing myself or I am carrying a selection of lures for our clients, so with this particular lure I have no choice these days. By miles the best copy I have fished with is the Payo Perca 125 Mac Tune Floating Jerkbait, indeed the hooks and split rings I think are better than on the original, and then my second choice would be the HTO Canine, but make sure to bin the truly awful hooks and split rings and re-rig. The one hard lure which has been creeping up on me this year as a very effective alternative to the Hound Glide is the incredibly long-casting and well made Shimano Exsence Silent Assassin 129F (there is also a slightly heavier and longer-casting again Sinking version). These lures can be hard to get hold of at times, but the increasing number of Shimano Japan hard lures I have fished with now are worming their way into my lure box more and more with how well they cast, how well they are made, and how well they work for our bass.

Anyway, on here today are a bunch of photos that I shot with our first group out here in Kerry, and this morning are heading out with our next lot of anglers. It’s October and the weather forecast is a bit all over the place, but we have four days of moving around a number of different locations on the hunt for fish and it’s going to be a blast. Catch up soon…………..

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………..

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.

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…………

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………..

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………………..

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……..

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…………………

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………………...

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 have decided that overall I do prefer something soft in my hands

If you go shore fishing in north Cornwall you can now hire a lifejacket for the measly sum of £5 a day

RNLI offers lifejacket hire in North Cornwall

When your local fishing goes really quiet, do we actually have much of a clue why?

Had such a blast with our first group of anglers

What do you wear under your waders? Nearly eight years now with the same “first layer to go on” clothing and I still can’t find anything better

HTO Nebula 9’6’’ (2.9m) 7-35g lure rod review - £149.99 UK price

Should we be thinking about different kinds of waders for different locations, just like we might change our rod and reel depending on where we’re fishing?

Let’s take three 9’6’’ lure rods at £150, £200, and nearly £300 - is there much difference between them?

What are the main “families” of soft plastics you use for your bass fishing?

Well done Wales, lashings of humble pie being consumed

If you could design your perfect spinning reel for our lure fishing, what would you do?

Could the Ned rig and variations on it have certain applications for bass fishing? (cabin fever = bouncing brain syndrome)

What is there to stop us trying new things in our fishing if you take away the fear of failure and not worrying about numbers and/or size of fish all the time?

I take my hat off to Sea Angler magazine for publishing an article of mine about wearing lifejackets for lure fishing

How light does a spinning reel need to be, and is lighter always better?

Nothing to do with fishing, but I urge you to watch the ridiculously brilliant, Oscar winning documentary Free Solo

Does everybody already know about this rather handy hitch-hiker rigging method for soft plastics and therefore I’m a bit late to the party?

A way to carry a bunch of different soft plastics, but without having to rig them all on a bunch of weedless hooks - one hook to rule them all?

Is this lure rod designed for hard lures and is that lure rod meant for soft plastics? I couldn’t care less……….

Yippee! There are a bunch of original IMA Hound 125F Glide lures available in Europe again