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Posted 08:26, 30 November 2009
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- I liked the IMA Komomo SF-125 the moment I laid eyes on it, and it works as good as it looks if that makes sense - as a result, the moment I heard about the new IMA Komomo II you can see above, I had to get hold of one (these guys here do an increasingly large range of IMA lures). Conditions have hardly been hugely favourable for chucking lures recently, but I really wanted to see if the new lure swam as I thought it might. It never hurts to start "banking" a lure's action in your head before heading off on a fishing trip. I went out and played with a few lures in fact, but this new Komomo II just got me going from the off. This lure has an action that I really believe is going to do serious damage on the bass.......
- Much as I am learning all the time about bass fishing, and specifically sinking hard lures have been on my radar recently (especially the awesome Duo Tide Minnow, see a recent blog post here), there are still lots of times when we are going to turn to the reliable, ultra-shallow minnow-type lures that enable us to fish really shallow and snaggy ground so effectively. That is where the Komomo SF-125 has done well for me, with it's kind of loose, wiggling/side to side action.
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- This new IMA Komomo II has one of the most insane actions I have seen on this kind of ultra shallow-diving hard bass lures - I guess you could describe it as having a more intense action than the SF-125, a kind of mesmerising, fast, very intense snake/wiggle. How do you like that for a description of a lure action ? Not bad eh !! But you need to see this thing to get your head around what it does, and it swims really, really shallow, indeed the packet says down to 20cm. I have heard a little bit about making the lure break the surface from time to time to turn fish on even more, but I guess my greater understanding of this one will come via time spent fishing with it.
- So how would you go about fishing a lure like this ? My hunch is that you are going to need relatively calm conditions to fish the IMA Komomo II properly, for I could see that a pronounced chop on the water drove it to the surface and killed the action. But this comes as no surprise, for a lure that is designed to swim this shallow is of course going to be increasingly buffeted by rougher conditions on the surface. Remember, specific lures for specific jobs. Give me calm to a slight chop and I reckon this Komomo II is going to slay bass big time. That action over shallow ground is going to drive them nuts, but I also reckon the intense silhouette brought about by the lure's action will also work well over deeper terrain as well. We all know that bass will happily come up from depth to hit a lure near or on the surface.
- Give me some proper time with this new lure and I will be able to tell you a whole lot more, but personally I think that you can simply crank it a medium to medium-fast pace and it will work well. It's action is one that bass fall for big time. I like lures that I know are going to work if I simply crank them. Yes, there is loads of talk out there about always imparting action to sub-surface hard lures, but on the flip side, I also believe that one can suddenly forget that good old cranking can and does work very well for bass (the Tackle House Feed Shallow is a great example of this). Some lures just "sing" when you wind them. I did play around with twitching this Komomo II a bit, but I found that jerking the rod tip continuously knocked it off its stride and made it flop onto the surface - bear in mind this is a lure that is specifically designed to swim just below the surface, so you would expect this to happen. But it does respond to fishing it very slowly as well, with the odd twitch on the rod tip, let the lure float to the surface, turn the handle a few times, twitch again kind of thing. It's fun playing around with lures !! And so much of it is about confidence - and even before I take this new IMA Komomo II out and use it for real, just the action alone gives me huge amounts of confidence. If we get the right conditions in Ireland later in the week, it's going on......
- I went to see the US symphonic black metal band Abigail Williams on Saturday night at the White Rabbit in Plymouth, and it was very good overall. The support bands didn't do it for me, but Abigail Williams were very good. It always interests me to see how a band that radiates such an intense feeling on their album can translate it live. It's a good venue, nice and small so you get some decent atmosphere, and overall the sound was good. I am going to the White Rabbit tonight to see another gig - Swallow the Sun is the headlining act, but I really want to see Insomnium, the second support band. Their latest album "Across the Dark" is without doubt one of the best metal releases of the year. Check here and bow down in worship. The amount of good metal coming out of Finland is just incredible.The fact that bands like this are coming to Plymouth is very cool.
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Posted 09:48, 27 November 2009
- Next Saturday I am heading back over to Ireland for five days of fishing and photography - there is no getting away from the fact that we are gambling with the weather and conditions at this time of year, but I am prepared to take these sort of risks when the rewards can sometimes be fantastic. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And if the weather conspires against us banging bass out on the lures, then we will tuck away and fish bait, or otherwise go and fish for cod.
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- I went over to south east Ireland at around the same time last year, and this is what I mean by nothing ventured, nothing gained - Tom on the left landed this incredibly well conditioned 11lb bass on his first ever cast in the Emerald Isle. You can go fishing anywhere on this earth and get messed up with the weather, so in truth I don't see it as much of a gamble to be heading over in winter. If only more bass anglers actually began to realise that the biggest bass tend to come out of Irish inshore waters during the colder months. Just ask south east locals like Patrick and Cian about the numbers of big fish they have taken from say October onwards, or ask Kevin over in Kerry about the bait fishing after Christmas and into late spring. Winter fishing for big bass is still some kind of unknown thing, so you could do worse than to contact Patrick Gallagher and ask about some guided winter fishing. Check here to get hold of him.
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- What amazed me last winter when I was over there for a few days was how brutally cold it was - we had northerly winds for four straight days, and although we had to wear a hell of a lot of clothing to be able to fish properly, it was perfect for me and my cameras. Plus we nailed plenty of bass as well. I am notoriously wary of long-range forecasts, as indeed I think we all are these days, but the weather guys do say that the winds are going to swing around from these relentless south and south westerly gales and that it's going to get much colder. We shall see what happens........I can't wait to get back over there, my most favourite place on this earth.
- If you are still mourning the fact that Black Sabbath have not had the once mighty Ozzy Osbourne in their ranks for ages and ages now (hell, he was fired from the band when I was only six years old !!), then you seriously need to check out the new album from Sweden's quite frankly awesome Count Raven. These monsters of Sabbath-inspired doom/heavy metal are back with "Mammons War" and you can see what I am on about by listening to one of the tracks here. If this does not give all Sabbath fans something to smile about then turn me over in my grave and rip my headphones from my cold hands. I am not going to try and describe how classic this new album is. Anybody with any interest in classic heavy metal with strong doom influences should just buy this one as matter of honour.
- Much as I love living in Plymouth, there is no getting away from the fact that we don't exactly get a lot of decent metal bands down here playing gigs. But the next few days are a time to rejoice and sing praises to the one who resides "down there" - at the White Rabbit in Plymouth they have got the symphonic black metal band Abigail Williams on Saturday night (plus support), and on Monday night they have got the truly mighty Insomnium (plus support, Swallow the Sun are headlining). I will be there. Rock and roll.........
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Posted 08:40, 25 November 2009
- I am not one for banging the political (fishing) drum, but there are a lot of us here who spend the majority of our actual sport fishing lives obsessing about that wonderful species we know as the bass. OK, so the current weather is hardly allowing us to indulge that passion much at the moment, but nobody could deny that here in the UK and Europe, all that can be done to protect and look after these fish needs to be done. As I have said before, I do not believe that there can be any "perfect" angling body as such, but the more I learn about the organisation known as BASS (Bass Anglers' Sportfishing Society), the more I feel that grassroots anglers (like me) need to give these kinds of people more and more opportunity to try and make a difference.
- I hear all kinds of arguments for and against joining such an organisation as BASS, and I can understand many different points of view. But the simple fact is that a large proportion of our fish stocks are in real trouble (cod in the Bristol Channel anyone ?), and my own personal view is that sitting on the fence and burying our collective heads in the sand is going to get us nowhere. BASS is not a big organisation, but they pack an increasingly strong political punch. They know what they are doing, they are very well connected, and they are doing what they do because they are the same as us. In reality it is a small organisation run and populated by a bunch of bass freaks. Kind of like a lot of us here then. But what humbles me hugely, and quite frankly it also embarrasses me, is that there are people within BASS who are doing a scary amount of unpaid work to try and make a difference when it comes to the future of our bass stocks. You will hardly ever get to hear about these people, for they do not court publicity, and they go about their (unpaid) business in a way which quite frankly astounds me. I had a meeting with a couple of BASS guys last week.
- I wish from a personal point of view that I could say that I have been a member of BASS for many years now, but in reality I only joined up this summer at the CLA Game Fair. Like many anglers, I suppose I sat there for too long and thought that any kind of specialist organisation had to be some kind of closed shop to the regular angler (such as me). I am not a club kind of person, but we are at the stage now in the UK when I passionately believe that it does not matter what kind of person you are - the people who are doing all this work for us need to be given as much opportunity as possible to make a change. We can moan all we like about any organisations' rules and regulations, their forums, their competitions, their meetings, whatever you like, anglers can moan about it. We can all stand there and question why we should be spending a bit of money to join a club such as BASS, but these unpaid and unsung people need our help to keep doing what they are tirelessly doing already for the good of our future sport. It costs only £20 a year to be a member of BASS (check here for all the details), and before anybody moans about that, think about the cost of a modern hard plastic lure.The stronger an organisation such as BASS, the more seriously they are taken on the political stage. The stronger collectively that anglers can be, the more seriously they will be taken. Do you see the correlation ?
- I apologise for getting on my soapbox here, but anybody who spends a lot of time travelling around the world for their job and gets to see all kinds of fishing, all kinds of fishing related problems, and also all kinds of fishing related success stories is going to form an opinion on where our saltwater fishing in the UK is right now, and which way it is headed in the future. At the very least we should be giving the right people at least a sniff of a chance at making something happen. The days of getting a chance for free are long gone......
- The RISE fly fishing film event in Exeter on Monday night was fantastic, and I take my hat off to Nick from Gin Clear Media (see here) for making these films and also for having the guts to organise the UK's first fly fishing film festival. He promises to be back next year with his new film from Iceland, plus various others I am sure - at the end of the main films, we had a ten minute taster of some of the Iceland footage they have shot this summer and it was mind-blowing stuff. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a UK produced short fishing film showing next year ? Do what Nick did - get a video camera, get out there, and teach yourself how to do it. Never has there been a better or easier time to get your material out there into the public domain. I tell you, it gives me a few ideas on doing some proper bass related stuff................if the TV stations won't commission proper fishing shows, surely the only avenue left is to go and do it yourself.
- A bit of an update to my working in fishing post from the other day (see here) - I was really taken aback by the numbers of emails I got about this, and I can assure you that all of them have been forwarded on to the right people at the company that asked to see them. Thanks for sending them in to me. Please rest assured that I did not go through the emails or the CVs to check you guys out, for it is none of my business - I simply collected them together and forwarded them on. I have been told that they will be looked at properly from next week, and the company will contact those people they wish to speak to further. I want to wish those of you who applied the best of luck again, and I am so hoping that the open position gets filled by somebody who responded via this blog.
