Henry Gilbey's World of Fishing Blog

Showing posts for February 2010 - Show all posts

• Hooked Live, Ireland - what a fantastic show

  Posted 06:15, 28 February 2010

  • We had the first day of the Hooked Live show here in Dublin yesterday, and it's a truly excellent event - some great stands, plenty of gear for sale (including lots of bass stuff), and just a really good feel about the whole thing. But as always with shows like this, for me the greatest thrill is getting to meet lots and lots of fishermen. It's the greatest sport in the world, and coming to a show in my most favourite country on earth is just awesome. Talking fishing is as cool as it always is. Not that we anglers like talking about fishing or anything like that !!
  • Much as we hear about how good the Irish sea fishing can be, I still think there is a huge amount of fishing over here that people are doing and we are not hearing about (plus any number of fishing locations that have never been fished). Although you might think that this is because the Irish lads do not want us to hear about it, from my experience this is very rarely the case. A more open and friendly bunch of anglers you would be hard pressed to find anywhere. But I do have a theory as to why we don't hear about some of the fishing, and it goes like this :
  • A lot of the Irish sea anglers simply don't know how good their shore fishing actually is - but when it's compared to shore fishing elsewhere that is. Think about it. What we do day in day out is our "norm". Our regular fishing is what we do, and if you have not done much fishing elsewhere, firstly you don't have anything to compare your "norm" to, and secondly you are going to accept that your "norm" is just how it is. So a lot of these Irish anglers who are fishing away just would never think to shout from the rooftops about how awesome their fishing is because they quite naturally assume that fishing is like that everywhere. So you can imagine the guys talking to me about their catches, and wondering if I am alright as my eyes start rolling in my head and my jaw begins to slowly hit the floor. Sometimes I actually stop the guys in mid-flow and ask them if they know how good their fishing is.....
  • OK, so I got talking to a lot of different fishermen yesterday from all over Ireland - as in the UK, the interest in going lure fishing for bass is just exploding, but at times I literally start shaking when some of the guys come out with the sheer numbers and quality of bass they taking at times. Nowhere fishes well all the time, the sea is far too fickle as we know, but there are pockets of good anglers over here who are sometimes catching bass on a level that can be hard to comprehend. Honestly, I have heard lots and lots before, but there are a lot more bass anglers over here doing really well than I had previously imagined, and from a wide range of locations across Ireland. And there are various locations that keep on cropping up in conversation over and over again. Believe me, I never need much of an excuse to come and explore more of this awesome country........
  • If we stay on the bass fishing for the moment, the guys from IrishBass.org are here to keep on drumming up support to try and protect this fantastic Irish bass fishery - please do all you can to help these people fight for one of Europe's great fisheries. See here and here for details. It does not bear thinking about that such a valuable recreational fishery could be potentially so badly harmed.
  • I got to speak to various Irish anglers yesterday about such things like big numbers of huge stingrays, serious numbers of large hungry mullet, thornback rays, pollack, wrasse, tope, hounds, you name it, these guys have it. The shore fishing for properly big stingrays in very shallow water seriously floats my boat in a major way - I have caught plenty of stingers in Angola and the Florida Keys, but it would be a huge kick to catch and photograph them in European waters. That's another photo trip on the To Do list. Plus the sea trout fishing off the shore on lures and flies - it's a major form of fishing over here, and I have yet to see a sea trout taken off the shore. Put that on the list as well. Perhaps it's best to just give in now to my urges and just move over here for good.
  • But the one tough thing about this show was having to watch the England v Ireland Six Nations rugby match in the bar yesterday afternoon - judging from the levels of cheering, I am pretty sure I was the only English bloke watching the match. We came so close, but as I thought we might, when it came to the crunch, England capitulated. The noise levels at that last Irish try was immense, and when the final whistle went I hung my head in my hands and wished it all could have been so different. Today is the last day of the show and then I am flying back home tonight. Next weekend it's the big bass fishing over in Nantes, France, and I am seriously looking forward to that one.

  Comments (6)

  Categories: Bass fishing, Fishing travel, Saltwater fishing

• Off to the new Hooked Live show in Dublin

  Posted 06:00, 26 February 2010

  • A while ago I was asked to come along to a brand new fishing show that they are launching in Ireland, and it’s this weekend. This morning I am flying over to Dublin from Exeter to do some stuff at the brand new Hooked Live show, and I can’t wait – any excuse to visit my favourite country on earth, and it’s always very cool to be able to talk fishing non-stop for a couple of days. Plus of course England are playing Ireland in the Six Nations Rugby at 4.00pm on Saturday !!!!! Now that should be interesting………
  • The Hooked Live show runs on Saturday and Sunday, so come along if you are anywhere near Dublin – I will be lurking around and about for the two days (apart from when the rugby’s on) doing some demonstrations and talks, so please attend some of these to make sure I have at least a couple of audience members !! I always have this worry that I will end up talking to myself. Kind of like I do anyway from time to time. There is a timetable here of the various talks and demonstrations.

  

   

  • Arguably the finest magazine on this earth runs an outstanding website (see here) that is just outstanding to spend some time looking through – anybody with any interest in our world and some of the best photography out there should be reading National Geographic every month. I came across a part of the National Geographic website recently called “The Daily Dozen”, where people submit a photograph and then a photo editor at the magazine picks out twelve images and puts them up on the NG website – no payment or anything, but very cool to have anything at all to do with this publication and their website.
  • So I submitted a crashing wave/bass fishing shot from last weekend for a bit of fun, just to see if anything happened. And somehow it has been picked as you can see above (check this link here, look at February Week 4 in the little drop down menu and then scroll along to little old me) ………now that just about makes my week. It says that the odd shot from this “Daily Dozen” ends up being published in the actual magazine. Now I don’t for one second ever expect to come close to having a photo published in there, but if you don’t at least try then you will never know.
  • I hope to see some of you at the Hooked Live show over the weekend. Roll on the rugby. One thing is for sure – the game has to be more exciting than the drivel that was England v Italy a couple of weeks ago. OK, so we won, but if we play like that they the Irish are going to do us properly. Best go get my plane……

   

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  Categories: Photography

• Have a look at this soft plastics video

  Posted 06:00, 24 February 2010

  • Nick of Bass Lures first showed me a prototype of the new Sebile Magic Swimmer Soft back at the CLA Game Fair last year, and the lure struck me then as having really strong potential for our bass fishing. I have so much to learn about the art of fishing soft plastics in a more "technical way", but in the meantime you can click here and just go weak at the knees about what these new Magic Swimmer Soft lures can do. Sometimes it seems to me that a good lure can look almost more like a real fish than a real fish does if that makes sense............
  • What really interests me is the different way in which you can position  the belly weights and then fish these soft plastics, and I can already think of a number of specific locations where I want to try them. They are up on the Bass Lures site as "coming soon", so in due course I will get hold of some and give them a proper thrashing. Not that I have a problem or anything like that. I reckon they might work well for big wrasse as well when you position the hook within the actual lure and make it essentially weedless. I have always loved my wrasse fishing and I plan to try and smack a few on plastics later this year. Got some ideas for a few killer marks........

  

  • Here's another "not dodging the waves very well" photo from last Saturday morning - sometimes I actually have trouble holding the camera still because I am so stupidly excited by the light or the conditions that I am literally shaking with adrenaline. Or otherwise I don't breathe properly because I am so desperate to try and capture the moment in a way that can visually excite people that I forget to inhale and exhale one after the other. Daft I know, but I mean it when I say that good light and conditions for photography mean as much to me as smashing a few fish, and I get a huge kick when I can make my local patch look as impressive as some of the far-flung fishing destinations that I am lucky enough to go and shoot as part of my job.

  

  • I get a few emails asking me about camera gear, and while I use big, heavy and somewhat expensive professional Nikon gear for my work, these photos you see here were shot with one of their cheaper lenses. The pro Nikon lenses are simply awesome (and they take the abuse that I dish out to them), but they are an expensive luxury if photography does not earn you a living - I love their 70-200mm f2.8VR lens, but it is not something that I am about to want to carry around in my backpack when I am out bass fishing and photographing for example (too big and heavy). I use it for certain jobs only, but when I need to remain very mobile or I am travelling overseas and need to cut down on gear, I use Nikon's 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 AF-S VR lens. This thing is a complete steal - very light, very fast focusing, and if you keep it at 70-200mm then it is just off the scale sharp. I don't like it very much over about 200mm when it begins to really soften up, but shoot at say f5.6 to f8 and keep it at 200mm or below and you are going to get photos that just sing - if you are shooting with a decent technique that is. As a medium fast telephoto lens that does not break the bank or weigh you down, I just can't find fault with this thing. Sometimes you can find outstanding products that kind of jump across their price points if that makes sense. 

  Comments (6)

  Categories: Bass fishing, Fishing tackle, Photography

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