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Posted 05:03, 7 May 2012
- If we had these conditions back home then I would not be out bass fishing, make no mistake, but obviously when you go on a fishing trip away you are going to try and maximise your time and fish almost regardless of the weather. Sitting in your digs, drinking coffee and having a lure-off ain’t going to catch you anything. Sure, you try to be clever and pick and choose locations via any number of processes – logic, local mates, experience, instinct and sometimes just pot luck, but the thing about Ireland is that there always seems to be a chance of a decent fish or two if you put the effort in.
- First thing on Sunday morning and there was a frost on my car. The sea went glassy calm and we all nailed a few small bass on a shallow mark where the lures of choice tend to be dictated by the relative lack of depth to the water. If you walk around you can cover a fair bit of ground, and at one point Cian and I found ourselves on a rock with a number of bass moving around in front of us. As you know though, a glassed-off sea and bright light makes these fish very hard to catch, but I got smacked on an IMA Komomo II fished really slowly so that it swims literally just beneath the surface and rolls incredibly seductively. I felt a double-hit and then saw the bass swirl behind the lure, but neither Cian or I could get the fish to commit. Frustrating ? You bet, but seeing bass moving around will never cease to get me going however cagey they might be feeling. A little bit of choice language was “offered” to the sky though !!
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- Ever since I first had a play with the one of these new IMA Hound 125F Glide lures earlier this year I have been almost waiting for the right place to give it a proper hammering. You all know as well I do that there is no substitute for confidence, and as much as the insane distances this lure casts (it does, take it from me, it ain’t normal how well this lure flies – the guys fishing with me out here were almost giggling when I clipped it on and blasted it out yesterday afternoon) put it up there as a potentially really useful lure to carry for certain locations and conditions, the simple fact is that I needed to catch on the IMA Hound 125F Glide and thus prove to myself that the action turns bass on – you know it will, but you still need to get fish on it.
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- I grant you that distance is not remotely everything in bass fishing, of course it isn’t, but I am not personally aware of a “regular” minnow-type hard lure that casts as far as this lure. It just flies, and I love the fact that it’s only 125mm long and weighs a mere 20g, meaning that I now have an almost stupidly long-range medium depth minnow in a size that I really like that bites into any kind of sea and does not need me to use a longer or more powerful rod just to get it out there. This 6lb bass that I caught on it has now given me a real problem, because with what the lure can do I now can’t leave it out my lure box for certain locations, and with the problem I have for shiny bass lures I am soon going to need a whole rucksack devoted just to carrying them around in – and that’s before I have even packed the camera gear. The fishing might be on the tough side at the moment out here, but Ireland just does not let you down if you work it hard.
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Posted 08:32, 16 April 2012
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- The Angling Trust has launched a new campaign called “Just Take 5” that is a move to encourage us anglers to spend a few extra minutes picking up litter when we are out fishing. This has to be a good thing and I hope that an initiative like this makes more anglers feel that extra bit of responsibility for “our” fantastic coastline that so many of us almost take for granted. We all despise litter and it’s the least we can do to take a look around us and pick up bits and pieces of litter that other people leave behind. As to that very small percentage of anglers who leave fishing related litter behind themselves – don’t even get me started on that one………..
- There is a very interesting article about the fishing tackle market in Japan in this month’s Tackle Trade World. A few years ago I had little or no idea as to how big recreational fishing was in Japan, indeed it is very easy as an angler to forget that there may well be millions of other anglers around the world who actually fish in similar ways to you – or just as likely fish in completely different ways which might well be worth learning about. The article says that Japan as a country has a population just below 130 million people, and that there are somewhere between 12-20 million anglers. Think about 12-20 million anglers as a percentage of the total population and then you might begin to understand just how huge fishing is in Japan. The total value of angling to Japan’s economy is said to be worth around $6 billion. Saltwater lure fishing is rated the most popular fishing discipline with 22% of anglers (but then 15% of anglers are quoted as doing saltwater jigging – and to me jigging is lure fishing. So does it actually mean that 37% of anglers participate in some kind of saltwater lure fishing ? Holy cow…….), but I do find it “interesting” that in an article such as this that saltwater lure fishing for their various (sea) bass species does not even get a mention alongside the rock and squid fishing etc. I put this down to the simple fact that language differences are just so huge that certain details are getting lost in translation so to speak. Tackle Trade World is a trade magazine, but you can very easily click here and read the online version of it for free. Well worth it I reckon.
- I am getting more and more feedback and questions about going wrasse fishing with soft plastics – a new short series of mine has just started in this month’s Sea Angler magazine (check here), but I have also put up a photo essay on my website that is called “A very basic guide to wrasse fishing with soft plastic lures” (see here). Yes, it’s simple in the extreme, but I firmly believe that at its core, wrassing on plastics is also a very simple thing to do – and I hope that some of you might find this short photo essay to be of some use in getting you started in this awesome fishing. Sea Angler though is the place where I can go into details far more. All feedback/constructive criticism is as usual most welcome.
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Posted 06:21, 21 November 2011
- I have been to Ireland a few times before around this time of year – catch it right and it can be awesome (see here for example), but get beaten up by the weather and it’s like anywhere when conditions are against you. Tough. I am lucky though in that I have some really good friends over there who know their stuff big time, and with recent reports of some simply outstanding cod fishing I am feeling pretty confident that whatever we get I might see some good fishing. Bass are of course first on the list, but I am more than open to doing what is required to get in amongst some fish. And to be perfectly honest, anytime I can get to head over to Ireland is just about perfect in my book. Have you by any chance guessed by now that I am sort of head over heels in love with the place ?
- I am taking over a fair bit of “new to me” lure fishing gear to play around with and see what I think of it - some MegaBass lure rods for starters, plus a MegaBass spinning reel. As much as I concur wholeheartedly with the way that the French guys fish for their bass, I am also starting to really wake up to more and more of the fishing tackle coming out of Japan. French rods are French rods, but as far as I can tell the Japanese tend to do things a bit differently, and it strikes me that so much of their gear can work so well for many of the ways in which we lure fish here in the UK and Ireland. I have had a quick few chucks with some of these MegaBass rods and they are feeling a little bit serious to say the least, and especially the particular one I picked up at the T&G show and immediately wished I hadn’t !! Why I do this to myself I don’t know – what happens if I go and fall for one of them big time and then have to go through the pain of packaging them up and sending them back ?
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- I have also managed to get hold of one of the brand new Daiwa Caldia Mag Seal spinning reels for the trip – the 2500 size is the one I have here, and it’s loaded up with the awesome bright green 20lb Daiwa Tournament 8-Braid. I have been using this stuff for long enough now to conclude that it’s one hell of a braid (why the bright green seems to me to be the best of the bunch I don’t know, but the stuff is strong as hell if you use decent knots). I have been hearing bits and pieces for a while now about these brand new Daiwa Caldia reels with this Mag Seal thing, indeed it strikes me that Daiwa have for some reason decided to really up the stakes with this new spinning reel and include a lot of stuff in there that for a while was only available in the really high-end stuff like the Certate. I have also filled up a reel with a spool of that brand new Berkley Nanofil “Uni-Filament” line, in the 6.934kg breaking strain, or to you and I, roughly 15lb. We shall see how it performs…….
- I am getting my “usual” 2.30pm StenaLine ferry this afternoon from Fishguard to Rosslare, indeed I reckon I could almost do the drive blindfolded these days. I will be staying in Tramore – close to the Absolute Fishing tackle shop which I will be doing my best to exercise great self-control upon entering. Bad people to sell all that nice looking gear which they know people like me have little hope of resisting. As well as all this different lure gear, I am also travelling of course with the bass bait gear and even a proper beachcaster and multiplier for a go on the cod they are smashing over there. I can’t remember the last time I tried to properly wind a beachcaster up, but at least my efforts should prove amusing to the people I am going to be fishing with. As usual I will do all I can to keep the blog going.
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- Check out the cover above for the new issue of the consistently outstanding Australian magazine “Fishing Wild”. I can’t tell you how worth it is getting your hands on this publication. The fact that the editor is still publishing some of my work and has not worked out yet that I am nothing more than a self-taught fishing junkie photographer and writer is pretty remarkable !! I have got a big feature in this issue on that scary-good fly fishing for tigerfish in Tanzania that I went and photographed last year. Whatever fishing you are in to, just get hold of this magazine here and indulge your brain and your passion. Anyway, best go pack the car and head up to Fishguard.
