We so badly need to have stuff to look forward to - is anybody here feeling as excited about bass fishing this year as I am?

I haven’t given up and if I get anything like the right sort of conditions I’m going to be out there giving it a go for a February or indeed March bass on lures, but is anybody here feeling literally sick with excitement about the year ahead from a fishing point of view? I don’t know when I will next see my folks or brothers or cousins etc., I don’t know when I will be able to get back over to Ireland, I don’t know when I will next see the inside of an airport and get to feel that sense of anticipation at seeing a new part of the world, and I don’t know when my girls will be back at school where they so need to be - and so on and so on. We are living with a scary amount of uncertainty at the moment, but for many of us fishing is a constant, and if we are allowed to go out fishing then that is one thing which I can look forward to, and holy frigging cow I’m itching for it…………..

It’s always around this time of year when my fishing brain goes into serious overdrive. I have been living here in south east Cornwall for about ten years now, and whilst I like to think I know a little bit about my local bass fishing, in reality I have been thinking about so many little areas and locations and so on that I don’t know and I am itching to try. There’s a particular dog walk that we love to do as a family, and in all the time we have been living here we have yet to see anybody else walking in the same area. In some respects it continues to amaze me just how unadventurous or uninterested in what’s around the next bend so many people are, but from a walking and fishing point of view I guess that benefits those of us who do like to get out and about - and I have suddenly started looking at this particular dog walk with a bass fishing set of eyes. And I’m excited. It’s some similar looking ground to an area I started fishing last year and had a few nice bass out of, and I can’t wait to have a go and see what might happen. Surely one of the thrills of fishing is about trying different things instead of doing what you know over and over again?

And then I continue to think about the estuary fishing here in Devon and Cornwall, and I still feel like I am on day one with it. I love my open coast bass fishing, of course I do, but the two biggest UK bass I have caught both came from estuaries. The size of fish really isn’t remotely everything for me, but it’s interesting at least, and it’s the learning process behind the estuary fishing combined with the potential size of bass which fascinates me. Banging a metal out into a raging bit of early morning surf might catch you the same species of fish as deftly flicking a soft plastic out to the edge of some bladderwrack way up some estuary, but that is exactly why this bass fishing thing so many of us do obsesses me like it does. Yes it’s the same species of fish, but when you got into all this did you have any idea that there could be so much variety contained within chasing the one species? I sure as hell didn’t, and because I like mixing things up I love that I am forced to keep on learning about fishing every single day of my life.

And of course the depths of winter reduces my fishing tackle brain to an absolute quagmire of ruination. There is so much I want to tell you about some of the Savage Gear bass fishing tackle we have been working on and fishing with and which are coming out in April and then June I believe. I make no apologies for my fascination with bass lure fishing tackle, but damn it’s hard not to shout about certain stuff. I have got a few very specific items of fishing tackle here which I so badly want to divulge because I know how well they work and the options they give me - not just Savage Gear stuff I might add - but I have to respect what needs to be done and only tell you about certain stuff when I get the green light. There is one very specific thing that is going to get such a frigging hammering this year that it’ll be asking me for a holiday, and if it comes through unscathed then I think it could well be the answer to a lot of my fishing based prayers.

Now I might well be working with Savage Gear, and although I have been fishing extensively with certain items which will all make sense soon, there is still so much stuff in their numerous catalogues which I know nothing about. Believe it or not there isn’t some serious grownup who reaches out to little people like me and says you must try this and this etc. Nope, a lot of the fishing tackle I find out about and then try for myself comes about from various anglers reaching out and telling me about so and so bit of fishing tackle which is working for them. Take the lure above which is a Savage Gear 3D Needle Jig in the 40g size, and to which I have secured a 3/0 single hook. I am pretty sure I’d have at least seen this in the catalogue but most likely turned the page because the word “jig” is there and I am not really after jigs - but then because fishing information moves around in so many ways these days, a really interesting north Cornwall based angler reached out to me to tell me that he has been doing really well in the surf on these 3D Needle Jigs in the 40g, fished like you might a Surf Seeker - whack it out and wind it in, but of course the profile and subtle action is very different with such a narrow-profile lure like this. They bloody fly, they catch bass in the surf, and they give me another option - which in turn churns around my brain at this time of year especially. You all have a good weekend, Groundhog Day reigns supreme, please stay safe, roll on 2021 bass fishing unless you live in the Channel Islands and have been getting some good fishing like you lucky people tend to get at this time of year…………………..

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