I love the co-guiding work I do over in Kerry with John Quinlan, and not fishing while you’re guiding was never going to be a problem for me. Most of the more exotic trips I have been on for part of my work have revolved around me taking photographs and not actually fishing myself, so I am perfectly used to watching people fish and catch fish - and actually being a part of the process and helping people do so is one hell of a buzz. But I am an angler first and foremost, and the tug is the drug as they say………..
So as per my blog post from Friday when I had just got back from Ireland, I did manage to keep my eyes open, and in the early hours of Saturday morning I was standing on a rock and about to have my first cast in a couple of weeks. Of course I’d been thinking about it and to be perfectly honest the being there and doing it was more than enough. Nice and calm and very dark, most other people are tucked up in bed or out on the town, wow is this night lure fishing something special and it increasingly floats my boat. Can you recall when you first started actively night fishing with lures and does it continue to amaze you just how normal a part of your fishing armoury it has become? With apologies to those of you who have been night lure fishing since before you were born of course!
Anyway, out into the darkness goes my white DoLive Stick and I start that constant, medium speed sort of retrieve. A part of me is obviously hoping that a bass hits me on the first cast, but it doesn’t happen like that - nope, it takes about ten casts and then tap, tap, bang and a fish is on. That feeling of elation washes through me like a drug - albeit drugs were never my thing - and the fact that the bass might have been a couple of pounds doesn’t matter one single bit. I am back fishing. This is what I do. I have been doing it since the age of seven and I love it more than ever. Does it get any better?
Have any of you ever caught a mullet fair and square in the mouth on a surface lure? I had a few small bass yesterday evening on this Whiplash Factory Spittin’ Wire surface lure which I am seriously starting to fall in love with (thank you kind Spanish angler for putting me onto this thing!), but one of the takes was a “regular” sort of bass hit which in fact turned out to be a mullet that was hooked in the mouth and not foul hooked and had obviously taken my surface lure as you’d expect a bass to. I have never had this and I am wondering if any of you have had this happen? For sure I have foul hooked the odd mullet on lures over the years, but a mullet taking a surface lure?