I don’t know about you, but I tend to fish a fair bit yet because of life and how it works I usually go fishing, do my thing, and then head back home to get on with other stuff. My wife and girls have gone to the Isle of Wight to stay with my in-laws for a while and do various sailing courses so I’m home alone and my mate Steve has come to stay. Together with Mark we are running around and fishing this glorious part of the world pretty hard - kinda like we might do over in Ireland save for the fact that I am at home and having to water the greenhouse for my wife while she’s away etc!
And apart from one complete punt that Steve and I took on Sunday evening that involved a lot of walking and scrambling because we wanted to check out somewhere new for some potential future fishing, we have caught bass at every single spot we have been to so far. No great size yet - I had one that might have been 5.5lbs off the top the other evening on the bigger Patchinko - but this charging around Cornwall and getting to fish it pretty hard is about as much fun as fishing gets if you ask me. We’ve got huge tides that on their own create an interesting set of problems, but it’s a blast to get Steve down here and then for Mark and I to make the calls on where to go.
I really, really enjoy that thinking about tides and conditions and options and then coming up with a plan, and when that plan works it really gives me a buzz. We were consulting various weather forecasts and then Magic Seaweed to try and work out if the wind direction and predicted swells were going to be spot on for us to head for the north coast. We think it’s all looking pretty good and our first glimpse of the location and it’s looking spot on - and then my day is made when at about 7am yesterday morning Steve (who has never fished this mark before) casts out a 6’’ DoLive Stick into some delightfully fizzed up, almost ridiculously clear water and catches a bass. First cast, fish landed, result! I was jumping for joy and it wasn’t even me who caught the fish.
We have had a fair bunch of bass off the top at different marks, and it’s interesting how the three of us are all increasingly warming to the rather deadly new Xorus Patchinko 125. Holy cow it flies if you don’t try and lash it and keep things nice and smooth. We had a situation on Saturday (Mark was at work at the Art of Fishing) when Steve landed four bass in a row I think it was and I didn’t get a touch. We had a run of current and there was a little bit of sea on, and Steve was fishing with the Patchinko 125 whereas I had the regular one on. I had landed plenty of bass on it the evening before but for the moment couldn’t buy a swirl, so I changed over to the smaller Patchinko 125 - bang, bass on straight away. Did that slightly smaller profile just appeal to them more?
Anyway, we’re at it again today so I’ll report back when I can. I didn’t grow up with all this fishing and coastline around me and every single day I live somewhere as beautiful as this I pinch myself. It’s the middle of August, it’s prime summer holiday season, but if you know where to go then for the most part you can be away from any crowds and it’s just a blast.
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