A new estuary based bass fishing video from Ultimate Fishing dropped into my YouTube feed a few days ago, and while I don’t think that the overall filming and editing quality is quite up to their usual standards - lots of focus hunting! - I think the subject matters are fascinating. Big respect as always to this amazing French fishing tackle company………….

Have a watch of it and there are many snippets of useful information to take away. Whether you apply any of them to your own fishing is up to you and the type of bass fishing you either do or plan to do, or how open you are to trying different things. There is one sequence in the video for example that has really got me wracking my brain to think of any similar types of ground or specific areas I might know of already which might “behave” in a similar way with how the bass can move and feed. Not exactly great for my sleeping patterns with the brain bouncing away, but I’d rather be thinking about stuff I might be able to at try than not.

Jump to around 11:30 in this new (English speaking) Ultimate Fishing video “Estuary Bass Fishing Masterclass” above and you will see the two anglers start to talk about the whole leader strength, length and diameter thing. If you don’t use leaders for whatever reasons then this won’t interest you, but I do use leaders and I am very open to the French estuary bass wizard Nicolas Cadiou’s reasons and thoughts. Which let’s face it is honed over a lot more finesse style estuary based bass fishing than I have ever done, so why on earth would I not take note of what an obviously very astute and intelligent bass angler does and is willing to talk about?

There is no point in me trying to summarise what the lads talk about in the French video when you can simply watch it yourself, so why not have a look and really concentrate on the information that is so generously handed out. Anglers who get me thinking about my own fishing get a big thank you and loads of respect from my end. It’s so easy to dismiss stuff because something works just fine for you already, but how about trying something new or different to see if you can do better than “just fine”?

Then take a look at around 16:15 in the fishing video above which I posted and talked about last week. The thinking behind a much longer fluoro leader than I would have ever thought about using is different again, and once more it isn’t something which I had ever really thought about. As I said the other day, I understand the thinking behind slightly larger guides on a lure rod to allow for a leader knot to pass through during the cast - gotta be the FG knot all the way for me - and somewhere in the video above I am sure I remember Tom saying that longer leaders don’t work with his beloved HTO N70 lure rods and their tiny tip section guides especially. Such good rods which are obviously not remotely affected by leader length if you use the normal sort of say 3’ long leader which most bass anglers I know of use - me included - but I am perfectly open to giving the longer and lighter leaders ago for the increasing amount of estuary bass fishing I find myself doing.

Will it make a difference? I don’t know, but I do know that I will never know until I give it a go. By all means disagree with me for any number of reasons, but if you happen to be trying creature baits these days for example, why did you not dismiss that “fad” out of hand because what you were previously doing has been working just fine? This is the whole crux of fishing to me - the thrill of learning and understanding and trying new stuff. I have been looking around at some of the most cost effective leader material and I remembered that I always got on really well with the Varivas Hard Top fluorocarbon which comes on 80m spools for less than a tenner. I have just bought a spool of the 10lb/0.26mm from Veals Mail Order and I also got 10% off as well. Here’s to cheaper longer leaders!

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A lot of the links on this website which are highlighted in blue are affiliate links to Veals Mail Order, so please bear that in mind if you are looking for something to buy and it bothers you that by going through me I might earn a small commission from the sale. I have to try and justify at least a small bit of the time I spend on this blog, but the inherent Brit in me is always going to slightly struggle with the whole affiliate links thing. Whatever the case, you all have a lovely Easter weekend and I hope the forecasted storm doesn’t do too much naughty stuff up in Scotland.

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So it was great to see this video below from the “Fishy Tom” YouTube channel pop up in my feed the other day. Big respect firstly to whoever has made the effort to film and put this good looking fishing video together (I think it might be Tom Bagnall of Christchurch Angling Centre), and secondly to the anglers for catching some cracking bass in the middle of winter - and allowing cameras to film them doing so! It’s partly why I have done so little with my own YouTube channel, the fact that I can’t successfully hide where I am fishing and I (selfishly?) really value bass fishing which is as quiet and tucked away as possible. Plus to be honest I am a bit of a dinosaur and I far prefer shooting photographs over trying to film stuff.

This video above is centred around a specific soft plastic lure which I know very little about - the MegaBass Dark Sleeper, as per the photo below. I own one and I have had a bit of a play with it in the past, but I don’t pretend to remotely understand what are obviously various intricacies of the Dark Sleeper which an obviously bloody good angler called Darren Pease explains in this fascinating video. I know the other lad in the video because he has fished with us in Ireland a few times, and he tells me that they have had some fantastic bass fishing on these Dark Sleepers right through winter. There are various factors which he is convinced are worth implementing…………

Which leads me to a second video from the same Fishy Tom channel. This one below was made before the video above, but I think it’s worth watching the visual podcast style video afterwards because it helps explain a lot of their thinking in the actual fishing video. It will all make sense if you watch both videos, and if at least something contained within these two videos doesn’t get your brain bouncing then you are a very different species to me. Ever wonder for example why many of those red Tenryu rods have slightly bigger guides? Big respect lads.

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Perhaps I have just got used to the tackle companies tightening their belts and not putting spare spools in the boxes, but I used to really like it when they did. The days of getting a spare spool were before I had ever fished with a Penn or Abu spinning reel so I don’t know if those two specific tackle companies would provide a spare spool in the box, but I can’t recall any Shimano or Daiwa spinning reels I would have fished with back then NOT having a spare spool in the box when you opened it up.

Do we need a spare spool though? I am guessing that some anglers would put the spare spool aside and never use it, but I distinctly remember filling those spare spools up with the same sort of braid I was fishing with at the time and then storing the spool in my rucksack - for a just in case. I have always had this slight fear that carrying only the one rod and spinning reel could potentially render a fishing session useless if you got unlucky and got one of those humdingers of a wind knot which properly did for you. With a spare spool I could just change them over and get back to fishing.

I don’t recall this ever actually happening when I was carrying a spare spool filled up with braid, but I always liked the fact that I had a spare spool ready to go. For me it’s a bit like barbed versus barbless hooks - I know I am going to be in the middle of THE best bass fishing session of my life and because I am so overexcited I am going to end up with a 6/0 weedless hook in my hand or face or somewhere on my body. Because I crush all my barbs when lure fishing I should be able to get the hook out and carry on fishing. It’s going to hurt, but I will be able to carry on with the best bass fishing session of my life. I have always had the feeling that with the one rod and reel, a wind knot from hell might one day ruin an awesome session for me.

But we don’t get a spare spool in the box these days, unless you happen to be buying particular spinning reels which do come with a spare spool and I don’t know or use these reels. I really like some of the Penn spinning reels, but I know the smaller 2500 sizes especially of the Spinfisher, Slammer IV and Authority can be somewhat “twitchy” with line management if you don’t do things right - underfill (so important), potentially have to adjust the washers to get a flat line lay, don’t use really light/thin braid etc. Bloody good reels I might add, but I have fished with the 2500 and 3500 Slammers and the Authorities enough to know the quirks and adjust for them because I like and need what the reels can do for me.

When you buy a spinning reel these days, do you also buy a spare spool and carry it with you? I don’t, indeed I haven’t really thought much about it until my mate was expressing his dismay the other day, but it does seem that so many things these days are suffering from a dose of shrinkflation……………

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And then I went for a walk with Storm just after 6am this morning and I got caught in a mixture of hail and rain in these howling NW winds. My hands froze, my eyes started streaming, and it felt just like winter all over again! Nobody could ever accuse our weather of being boring, and it always seems to be that first proper glimpse of spring in March which gives us hope but then cruelly takes it away with a change in the weather. The world seems to be in a particularly mad state of flux at the moment, and I for one have never felt so determined to love life and enjoy the (simpler?) stuff we do which doesn’t seem to cost more money literally every time you leave the house. Go fishing more basically!

What I wanted to tell you this morning is that there are three new colours of the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 and Sandeel V2 Weedless lures which have just hit the market - Mackerel, Blue Sandeel and Clear Sandeel. I knew about these new colours but I wasn’t sure when they were going to be available to buy. I saw them on Veals Mail Order this morning when I was on their website which to be honest I shouldn’t be with my lure related issues. In these three new colours there are the two main sizes of Sandeel V2 - 12cm/22g total weight and 14cm/33g total weight - and also the two main sizes of the Sandeel V2 Weedless - 11.5cm/22g total weight and 13cm/33g total weight.

For my own, mostly shore based bass lure fishing I use the weedless versions by far the most. This is largely down to the fact that I am often using a mixture of straight swimming the lure(s) and also bumping them along the bottom which is often seriously rough ground. I know that some anglers reckon on connecting with a few less fish when using weedless hooks, but I can’t personally say that I have ever seen a difference and I don’t worry for a single second. The regular Sandeel V2 is your classic sort of “whack it out and wind it in or fish it on the drop” sort of ready to fish soft plastic lure, whereas the weedless version with its rather clever jig head design is the most versatile version for a lot of my shore based fishing. Anyway, three new colours are available, and in case you were wondering, I wasn’t asked by any grownups if I could put this post up. It simply doesn’t work like that…………….

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Looks interesting, but it wasn’t the main products so much as something contained within one of the samples which suddenly gave me such a big lightbulb moment. I have had a bunch of specific ideas for a while now, but I have been struggling to connect the dots as such. I know what I want to end up with, but because I am not very good at the technical side of design, I haven’t quite been able to work out how to make it all come together. I can kinda see the end product and what it can do for my fishing if that makes sense, but the technical stuff hasn’t come together yet in my head. Until yesterday morning’s lightbulb moment.

At one point yesterday morning a short video came through of a specific product in development. You know how we all do some things naturally and perhaps without thinking yet there might be something contained within those actions which comes across as unique to another person? So in this WhatsApp video there is a component within the product which jumped out at me like a classic jump-scare in a good horror film. A simple part of a potentially new product which suddenly gave me THE answer to what I have been thinking about and how to complete it. The Savage Gear product bloke will have had no idea that what he was showing me very suddenly crystallised a hell of a lot in my brain - he does now though! - but now I was sitting in my office, the lightbulb has gone off, and my brain is starting to race with further ideas.

Early yesterday morning I had not been planning to go for a run after my dog walk because I had a gym session in the afternoon. I know it sounds silly, but I am that addicted to what running does for me I was feeling really guilty that I hadn’t been for a run. But I literally had to go for a run around lunchtime yesterday because I needed to get out of the house and really think - and running is really good thinking time. So I took Storm for a walk then went for a run, and then later on I went to the gym and did my stuff and went to bed fairly early because I was physically pretty tired. I then woke up around 1am with my brain racing about product development, plus I was also wondering how our youngest girl was getting on with her flight from Australia to Thailand. I managed to get back to sleep after about an hour of tossing and turning, then I woke up at 4am with a start and went downstairs. With my brain still seriously bouncing away I might add.

Then my wife comes downstairs at about 6am. She is the love of my life and I am so glad I survived my heart attack and continue to be with her, but she doesn’t really do mornings. But I do! I went out for a dog walk just after 6am and then without realising I started to really offload when I got back. Not so much about the fishing side of things because my wife has no interest in it, rather I just needed to talk. Or rather, talk at someone! Stream of consciousness thing, try and clear my head. My poor wife looked at me like I was quite mad and asked me what the hell I was on about. I am pretty sure her going to work was also an escape from me and my offloading! I am a 53 year old father of two awesome girls and fishing related stuff can still make me literally hyperventilate with excitement and creative drive. Do I need help or are loads of you a bit like me?

And it’s that word “enjoyment” which I think is so important here. I have very little interest in being a bass fishing hero because I went and caught a particularly heavy or long bass. They say that greater wisdom comes with greater age or something like that, and one thing I do know is that I am simply not interested in any kind of toxic male fishing masculinity where the size or length of your fish defines you as a person or an angler. And yes, you can change one word in the previous sentence if you so please. Fishing is surely meant to all about enjoying yourself and enjoying other anglers getting a kick out of going fishing.

So we’ve got this one single species which I know a lot of us obsess about. Here I am, 20+ years into an obsessive journey, and this one species of fish is still giving me various opportunities to do different stuff and mix things up. For sure you could quite happily fish surface lures over a shallow bit of reef for evermore if that floats your boat enough, but it’s not enough for me. I didn’t know how fascinating the one species of saltwater fish could be when I started to fall for their spiky charms, and I could easily list you a bunch of different things I will be trying this year. Different locations, different types of locations, different lures, different techniques, you name it I am up for it.

I am very happy taking various gambles. Because if there is one thing I don’t mind doing is either blanking or not catching monster bass all the time which the internet experts do all the time anyway. Ouch again Henry! I might add that I don’t mind not doing particularly well if I feel that I am learning something new. That to me is the crux here. I can go fishing a fair bit because I work for myself and I am not bound by regular 9-5 hours or shift work etc., I live fairly close to a lot of varied fishing ground so it’s rarely a big mission to go and take that punt, and I really, really enjoy learning new fishing related stuff.

So I have various plans for this year, chief among them being my urge to see what I might be able to do with a creature bait type approach out on the open coast. I don’t mean fishing with crab imitation lures all the time when I am trying this, because part of this approach has to revolve around experimenting with the actual lures and how they present. Nope, what I mean is refining an estuary based approach to a slower and more deliberate way of lure fishing to see if I can get it to work in specific open coast situations when I would tend to more usually struggle - such as the early flood tide on a good few open coast marks for example. A time in the tide when I don’t tend to do that well unless there is a proper surf running.

How about you though? Any specific plans to try something different this year? I am currently torn between excitement at the bass fishing year ahead and what I think was the best Six Nations tournament I can remember. Let’s not cry about England and instead let’s celebrate the sheer unpredictability of such an awesome sport. And bass fishing.

Which is exactly what I did a couple of days ago on some very small tides. Because I wasn’t quite sure what sort of sea to expect I didn’t have a specific location in mind. I went to have a look at a general area to then make my mind up if the conditions looked favourable, taking into account that I prefer some spots on smaller tides and so on. I know it’s not even the middle of March and if “tradition” is anything at all to go by these days then I know it’s going to be tough. That hint of warmth and a bit of early spring sunshine always seduces me though, and if nothing else I can start to put a few different bits and pieces through their paces.

So we didn’t set the bass fishing world alight a couple of days ago, but I can’t recall seeing better conditions out on the open coast for a good while. I was hoping that the strong SW winds which had started to build the previous afternoon would result in bouncy but green water as it went back to NW, and it did. I don’t tend to like straight NW winds a huge amount, but they do tend to produce really good light for photography with the mix of sunshine and showers this wind direction brings in. Which we got. I also like how the smaller tides hold the water around all the features for longer on an ebb tide. As I kept saying to myself, if that had been September I’d have been literally wetting myself at how good everything looked.

I did get bumped by a bass which didn’t connect on what is so often my go-to for ground like this, the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletail on the 6/0 3g belly-weight weedless hook. I love the estuary based bass fishing, but I also need the open coast stuff and how different it feels to help keep the fires burning for these amazing fish. It’s such a different feel to fish with a paddletail on the open coast in bouncy conditions when you are casting and retrieving, but also very deliberately allowing all that sea movement to wash your lure around. I haven’t fished with the Penn Authority 2500 spinning reel for a while, and it’s a bloody machine. Sure you need to underfill it a bit and it’s heavier than an equivalent size Shimano spinning reel, but once I’m out fishing and not thinking about stuff which doesn’t make any difference when I am actually fishing anyway? It just doesn’t matter. Use what you like and what you can afford and whatever does the job for you. Surely it’s as simple as that?

Dave got slammed really hard by a bass when we made it around a specific corner with the slowly receding waters, but again the sodding fish didn’t connect and I could literally see steam coming out of his ears when I caught up to him! He was fishing with one his own Labrax Mafia Morsetto paddletails in the pink colour which he really likes on the open coast especially. We didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory, but we did get out and we found some signs of life.

I also got to wear a pair of the new Westin W8 breathable chest waders for the first time. I obviously need a lot more time with them, but my initial impressions are that they are noticeably easy to move around in - very well cut or shaped or whatever you would call it - and the material feels pretty tough and as breathable as a pair of BCWs are going to be. The gravel guards don’t do much good but I have a pair of standalone neoprene gravel guards here at home which I can use with these Westin W8 BCWs when I am out fishing and the waves are swirling sand and gravel around. Initial impressions - a very comfortable and easy to wear pair of BCWs which I hope will last a decent amount of time. Westin are doing a lot of really good gear, big respect to them. Roll on Saturday and an epic final day of what has been an incredible 2026 Six Nations, even if my hoped for Grand Slam decider tomorrow evening isn’t happening!

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I love seeing how a lot of good people share a lot of good fishing information in various ways, and I recognise that with my work I am so lucky because I get to meet and talk to a lot of different anglers from a lot of different areas who are fishing in a lot of different ways. Whether it’s home or abroad doesn’t really matter, because to me it’s the communication about all kinds of fishing which is so interesting. The first fish I ever caught was in Scotland when I was 7 years old - a little wild brown trout - but I have yet to cast a lure into Scottish saltwater on the hunt for bass.

So it was very cool getting to speak to so many Scottish anglers over the weekend. I consider it a big privilege to be asked to come along to the Glasgow Angling Centre’s Spring Open Weekend, and the fact that I met some people who had come specifically to speak to me blows me away. Thank you so much. I would like to give a big shout out to a couple of awesome girls from the Carp Team Scotland Ladies who were there to try and raise funds for their competition fishing. The poor girls used to watch my TV programmes many moons ago (sorry!) and I absolutely loved talking to them. They have a Go Fund Me page here and a Facebook page here. Big respect, and we did have a giggle about how we individually think about fishing basically all the time!

It fascinates me how widespread lure fishing for our fine bass is these days. I am very aware of some amazing Scottish bass fishing when it fires and I need to get myself up there to fish. I love talking to anglers and I hope they enjoy talking to me. I am fascinated in how different anglers go about their bass fishing, indeed I consider it fantastically ignorant NOT to be interested in other areas and anglers and techniques and all that sort of stuff. We might not go and do it, but what might you learn from communicating with other anglers or indeed people in life?

I spent some time talking to a Scottish bass angler for example who has taken the creature bait thing and run with it on the open coast. We talked about the sort of ground and tides and sea conditions he tends to target and it aligns somewhat with stuff that I have thought about and very much plan to implement later this year to see if it might work around me. He’s doing it though - and catching - and I am not yet. I am aware of bits and pieces going on in other areas along these lines and it fascinates me. We might live on a relatively small island with a hell of a lot of people, but it’s a big old world of fishing out there and I for one intend to keep communicating about it. Please note that I haven’t mentioned the weekend’s rugby yet because I am not feeling quite strong enough!

I will be at the event today and tomorrow, then I fly home on Sunday. Hopefully with the knowledge that England have beaten Italy in the Six Nations, but I am worried after the last two performances. Can Scotland turn France over and deliver on the promise they continue to show? You all have a good weekend and I will catch up soon.

But I do love communicating about fishing with anglers. The Big One Show is historically a massive and very busy carp fishing show that takes place up in Farnborough once a year. Predator Tackle decided to go a few years ago and I was asked to attend because I work with Savage Gear/Pure Fishing. It was a really good couple of years, but then for reasons I am obviously not privy to, Predator Tackle decided not to go this year. A very dynamic and professional lad at Pure Fishing UK was tasked with delivering two stands - Savage Gear and Penn - and basically gambling with what had to be a lot of money to see if it would work with “us” being at The Big One Show this year as THE (freshwater and saltwater) lure, shore and tuna fishing people.

I wasn’t there for the setup so I got to see the two stands for the first time before the show actually opened at 8.30am on Saturday morning. Yes I work with Pure Fishing so I know a lot of people within the company, but honestly, I was really taken aback by how good the stands looked. They were awesome, but would we see many lure anglers turning up to see and buy gear at what is honestly a scary-big carp show?

By 9am on Saturday morning we were absolutely rammed on the Savage Gear stand, and I know it was the same over on the Penn stand. I work for myself and I am perfectly happy to spend good periods of time on my own without talking to anybody. But I do love talking about fishing. Obviously. It’s now Monday morning and I am hoarse because I talked way more than I am ever used to over the weekend about bass fishing. It was absolutely incredible how many people of all ages wanted to discuss all things bass fishing, and it was extra special to get to yap to plenty of youngsters who either go bass fishing or want to go bass fishing. One group of three youngsters I talked to for a while reminded me so much of myself at that age - doing the school stuff you have to do but all you are really doing is thinking about going fishing! I love it.

What an amazing weekend then, and a lot of credit and respect must go to a bunch of Pure Fishing people for all their hard work (plus Todber Manor and Fils Tackle). The public has no idea how much work goes into these shows behind the scenes. I get to rock up and yap fishing so that’s the easy part. The main lad behind this year’s success did an amazing job and I hope that the grownups above him recognise what an achievement the whole weekend was.

A big thank you to a lot of you kind people who came up to me about bass fishing. It always makes my week to meet real anglers who read this blog - thank you so much. I also got to see a good amount of interesting freshwater lure stuff from Savage Gear that I would never usually see and which I think might have some application for some of my bass fishing. Contrary to popular belief a company like Savage Gear doesn’t just send out free samples of everything they make to people like me! I work on the saltwater side so that is my area of concern, but where do you think lures like the DoLive Stick, senkos, cheb weights and creature baits etc. come from? Yep, the freshwater lure fishing world. I am going to see if I can get hold of a few (freshwater) bits and pieces that I saw and have a proper play with them. It’s essentially how the Slender Scoop Shad from the freshwater world ended up being one of the best paddletails I have ever used for my bass fishing, so who knows what might happen? Keep your eyes and ears open at all times and make sure you communicate with other anglers who fish for different species…………….

I will be based around the Savage Gear and Penn stands at The Big One Show this weekend. Thankfully there is no Six Nations on this weekend to cause me stress, so instead I can just be involved in all things fishing and fishing tackle. You all have a good weekend, hope you might find a few February bass if you are out and about.

Which all adds up to the sort of ground I tend to like, but it has been playing on my mind that I should be doing more to try and work the area out a good bit more. If it ends up not being very productive then so be it, but I can’t see a reason why I couldn’t catch some decent bass there. I am always up for taking a bit of a punt and seeing what might happen, indeed one particular area which threw up a good few decent bass on the creature baits last year came about by doing just that - taking a calculated punt and working hard to figure stuff out. I have never seen another angler there and I will be pretty amazed if I ever do.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this area which I ended up fishing for a few hours first thing this morning. I fish way more ebb tide periods in estuaries than the flood, but my few endeavors on this ground during the ebb had not worked. I have a few theories as to why, one of which is that the windows of when bass might be mooching around on the ebb in specific areas could be very short, because at some point not that long into the ebb, the water’s going to disappear and expose the mud banks. There is no way I can get at the main channel when that water recedes off these mudbanks, not unless I fancy sinking into deep mud and potentially never getting out! The bass will know these timings far better than me, and I could have been previously fishing into water where the fish have already vacated. If they were even there of course.

So I decided to try a smaller tide and fish the early flood instead. See if I can find the bass moving in to feed. The main problem with my planning was that it’s February, and traditional logic as such suggests that trying to scratch an itch at this time of year in an estuary system that also has a hell of a lot of freshwater in it isn’t exactly what you might call a cunning plan. I woke up at 4am though after another epic and very weird dream - heart attack pills really do wonders for your dreams! - and thought what the hell, let’s give it a go. If nothing else it would be a decent walk in some slightly better weather and I’d be able to start gauging the various cut-off points on a flooding tide.

Yep, I definitely yelped when about an hour into this morning’s session I got the distinct sensation down through the rod that a bass was nipping at my 5g cheb-rigged Nikko Craw 3.2’’ creature bait. I seriously like these Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hooks for the various TPE soft plastics I might fish with (Nikko Craw, Z-Man, Savage Gear etc.) because they hold the lures perfectly in place and they are sharp as hell. I kept the lure gently moving then struck at a harder “tap” from the bass. It was a small bass at best, but bloody hell I was over the moon with it! I got to scratch a bit of an itch that different timings at least can work on this ground, and it’s only February. I am taking this morning as a win!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

I haven’t been fishing for a while for various reasons including work, weather and a dose of man flu, and after the pain of the rugby on Saturday and another wet dog walk on Sunday morning with my wife, I had no intention of fishing yesterday. But I noticed on the walk that the wind didn’t seem to be blowing as much as the forecast suggested, and although it was peeing it down, it did feel like the weather was breaking when we got home. A couple of forecasts even somewhat bravely suggested the sun might come out later on. I checked the tides and messaged a mate to find out that he’d been thinking the exact same fishing related stuff about the exact same spot.

I continue to find the whole chasing bass on lures in estuary systems at this time of year to be both exciting but also a bit strange. So exciting that a few fish seem to hang around and will move into very shallow water to hit certain types of lures fished in certain ways, but the fact that this can happen is causing me to ask so many questions I know I will most likely never get the answer to. I went fishing yesterday feeling pretty confident that at least a bass would be caught, and I kinda have to check myself that we’re talking about this time of year fishing the sort of water I’d never have usually gone near until at least well into April.

So whilst I accept that we are not exactly beating the door down in terms of numbers, I’m going to open my arms to this genuine chance at a few bass on lures at this time of year. I’ve caught a handful of open coast bass in February and March, but it’s not easy, and the fact that I somehow latched onto a 76cm bass in March a couple of years ago still slightly fries my brain. I am nowhere close to sussing any of this out. I never thought I’d be feeling more confident of the chance of a bass on a lure at this time of year in an estuary. Part of me thinks what the hell have I been ignoring for so long, but the other part recognises that it’s all a big learning curve and these amazing fish are even more amazing the more we learn about them.

Anyway, we found some pretty good conditions and I had one definite “pull” from a bass just as I came to move my creature bait along the bottom, but it didn’t come to anything. Mark did catch though. He connected with a properly fat winter bass which went 59cms, again on one of those cheb-rigged Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' creature baits. He was using this particular crab imitation because he had previously inserted a rattle into it and the wind yesterday was once again causing the shallow water to really colour up. Did the rattle inside the lure make a difference?

Who knows for sure, but what I do know is that rugby supporters who don’t support England will have been jumping for joy at Ireland’s incredible performance on Saturday. One minute they’re getting written off and we are being lauded, then the next minute Ireland are awesome again and England rugby is facing all kinds of questions again. Well done Wales for putting up such a fight against Scotland, and France are looking better than ever. How many of you England rugby supporters are genuinely worried about the trip to Rome in a couple of weeks?!

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Yep, I want never gets, but the simple HPA Chest Pack has done a great job for me for years. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close, and I am so used to it’s almost automatic to be able to reach for a lure box or go to place the lure box back in the bag on my left hand side. Whenever I have had to get a new HPA bag after about a year and a half of heavy use, I have always ditched the useless belt and shoulder strap and replaced them with a Simms neoprene belt (the Grundens Vector & Bedrock wading belt does the same job) and an old neoprene camera (shoulder) strap I have been using for years. I just don’t like using these side-sitting bags without a shoulder strap. I know it adds to the cost of a lure bag, but I have used that belt and shoulder strap on multiple HPA bags now and those two specific items are still going strong when the actual bags have given up.

The problem is that I can’t find the HPA Chest Pack in stock anywhere in the UK, and the French HPA website always seems to list it as out of stock. Over the years I have tried a few different “can sit at your side on a belt plus shoulder strap” type lure bags without enough success to make me change away from the HPA one, but then about halfway through last year I stumbled across this Westin W4 Super Finesse (lure) bag and thought it was worth a punt.

I wasn’t at all sure about this bag when I first saw it in the flesh, but I gave it some time and I’ve grown to really, really like it. For sure it’s more expensive and also larger than the HPA bag (which I always wished could have been say 10-20% larger overall anyway), but this Westin W4 Super Finesse bag comes with a couple of decent tackle boxes inside the main compartment, plus a folding bits and pieces tackle box which is absolutely perfect for the various hooks, jig heads and cheb weights I carry with me for the creature bait stuff (I just found out that you can buy the same sort of box here). I can think of numerous ways to use this folding bits and pieces box, it’s really handy.

You can of course use this Westin lure bag as is, but I took one look at the belt configuration, tried it on for size, then had a bit of a think, got rid of it, and clipped on a couple of simple stainless steel carabiner style clips so that I could use my own Simms neoprene belt instead. Much better if you ask me, but you really don’t have to do this. It’s probably just me. The shoulder strap again is okay, as in it does what it’s meant to do, but I have recently replaced it with that old neoprene camera strap which refuses to die, and I do prefer to “wear” the bag like this. Again you don’t need to do this, but I know what I like and I know how I want things to work for me.

So I was a bit skeptical of this Westin W4 Super Finesse (lure) bag to start with, mainly because it’s a bit bigger than I am used to, and I fancied the open and close double-zip setup to last about five minutes. I am very happy to be proved completely wrong though because I can’t find any signs of damage on this lure bag at all, and I am pretty sure I have yet to wash it down in freshwater as well. Westin says “Easy access top cover – easy to open with just one hand”, but this isn’t actually the case. If you pull the double-zip right back to access your lure boxes then most of the time you’re going to need to sort of reach around and “jiggle” the furthest zip away from your body to get them to line back up and close properly. Not a deal breaker at all and it works just fine, but I could think of easier ways for opening and closing the bag to be configured.

I thought the larger size would annoy me, but it doesn’t at all, indeed I really like how easy it is to fit your lures or lure boxes or whatever you might carry in a side-bag like this and easily get at them. None of this having to slightly squeeze in a couple of washable lure boxes just so as you need to do with that HPA Chest Pack. Nope, the larger main compartment is really handy and I have grown to appreciate this over time, and partly because I can get the bag to sit just right on my left hand side so that it doesn’t annoy me one single bit. If a lure bag gets in my way when I am fishing, wading, scrambling over rocks, moving through trees like a ninja, yomping back up cliffs etc., then it’s a goner in my book. I remember having to chop bits off an expensive Japanese lure bag many moons ago because it got in the way when I was lifting my legs up to get back up cliffs, but I don’t get any of that with this Westin W4 Super Finesse bag. I actually like this Westin bag to sit slightly lower on me (on my left side) than I typically would with the HPA Chest Pack.

Which all proves to me yet again that you need to give fishing gear proper fishing time before you can really know what it’s about. I tried to get a decent side-wearing lure bag made with Savage Gear and I did get some primary samples which worked well but needed various modifications, but the project died a death for whatever reason. I can’t find a way to carry my fishing lures that I like more than a decent lure bag sitting at my side, hence me always keeping my ears and eyes open. I know that I don’t want a waterproof lure bag for various reasons, I don’t get on with those sling-style bags which I can’t use anyway because of always carrying a rucksack, and I am a bit particular about what I want as I said!

This Westin W4 Super Finesse bag isn’t perfect, but it’s very good, and I think it’s even better with the simple modifications I have made. I also created some drainage holes in the bottom of the main compartment so that the bag can drain if I am deep-wading or out in the surf etc. - I used these simple eyelets here, if I can make them work then you definitely can! - and none of the areas around eyelets have shown any increased wear and tear (don’t go doing this if you don’t need to though). There are various pockets around the bag into which you can put things like a measuring tape or that little bits and pieces folding tackle box which comes with the bag. As a nice and easy, doesn’t annoy me at all when I am fishing or moving around type of side-bag for carrying my lures, I am really pleased with this Westin W4 Super Finesse (lure) bag. It has to fall apart one day with saltwater use especially, but about half a year of decent use and it’s all holding up very well so far. You all have a good weekend, here’s me hoping that last weekend’s England rugby disaster was a mere blip on the path to World Cup glory next year!!!

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I won’t bore you with all that we talked about, but one of the designers I spoke with was THE first person I have ever talked to within the fishing tackle trade who knew instantly what I was on about when I said the two words “neoprene compression”. It also helped that he was a hardcore saltwater sea trout angler from Scandinavia who was routinely putting their current and future products through a hell of a lot of real fishing time. Yep, as you can guess I was really keen to try some of the Grundens gear out, and I have been using these two Grundens waterproof jackets for a good few months now. These are the technical specs:

Grundens Full Share jacket (£120):

• Waterproof/Breathable - 10K/10K

• Zippered Hand Warming Pockets

• Heavy-Duty YKK®Aquaguard Zips

• Adjustable Hood and Cuffs

• Reflective Logos for Added Safety

Grundens Transmit X jacket (£180):

• 100% Nylon 15K / 10K Waterproof/Breathable Performance

• Dunkable Neoprene Wrist Cuffs to Prevent Water from Penetrating up Sleeves

• Placketed Center Front Zipper Construction Offers Protection from Wind Driven Rain

• 2 Fleece-Lined Handwarmer Pockets With Zippered Closures

• Internally Routed Shock Cords on Hood Adjustment for a Custom Fit to the Wearer's Preference

• Reflective Logos & Visibility Striping for Low Light Visibility

It will come as no surprise that I have worn both these jackets a lot in the pissing rain and around splashing seas, and I am pleased to report that they are both properly waterproof. Of course you’re going to get a bit of water down the front if it’s driving rain AND the wind is howling into your face, but that’s part and parcel of fishing to me, and especially when it never stops bloody raining like it has done recently! So here are my thoughts on each jacket:

The Grundens Full Share waterproof jacket, around £120 - after a lot of fishing time with both of them in all kinds of weather, I think of the cheaper Grundens Full Share waterproof jacket - there is also a smock available which I haven’t seen yet - as a year round, lightweight fishing jacket which I can roll up and stick in my rucksack and not even know it’s there until I need it. Layer up underneath as required, exactly as you’d expect with a waterproof “shell-type” jacket. The end of the sleeves where they secure over your wrist are perfunctory at best - simple velcro closures - so I would advise that you buy some cheap as chips sweat bands if you want to prevent water going down your sleeves in a good bit of rain (secure the sleeves over the sweat bands). To be fair to this particular Grundens jacket, I haven’t come across a waterproof jacket at any price which doesn’t let in at least a bit of water down past the sleeves when it’s really hammering it down for a while. Cast and retrieve repeatedly and you are naturally sort of offering your sleeves directly up and into the rain if that makes sense.

I find the Grundens Full Share waterproof jacket very easy to wear. I am an XL in most things and I am an XL in this jacket. It doesn’t “grab” me at all when I am walking or fishing, indeed a jacket which gets in the way at all really annoys me, so big plus points to this one. From the technical specs it’s not quite as breathable as the more expensive Transmit X jacket, but I can’t pretend that I have noticed any meaningful difference. Walk a long way in a waterproof jacket in warmer conditions especially and I don’t care how much the thing costs - there’s going to be a bit of sweat build up. I don’t know how you look at a price of around £120 for a waterproof jacket, but it’s definitely not high-end. I think this Grundens Full Share waterproof jacket is bloody fantastic for my lure fishing and indeed dog walking. It just works without any fuss in any conditions I have put it through.

Now we come to the more expensive but still not high-end Grundens Transmit X jacket which you can find for around £180. Again I tend to be an XL in most clothes and an XL in this jacket fits me perfectly. This very slightly heavier duty Grundens Transmit X is for me an autumn, winter and spring waterproof jacket, but of course you can wear it year round without any great hassle. I find this jacket noticeably comfortable to move around and fish in. I have been trying to find even something tiny about the cut of this Grundens Transmit X jacket which bugs me, but nothing annoys me when I am walking or fishing in it. I layer up accordingly, but if needed this thing definitely works well as an extra protective layer against the cold.

I did fish a specific session in this Grundens Transmit X jacket a few weeks ago when I honestly don’t think it could have got any wetter, as per the photo above (with thanks to Dave Trickey of Labrax Mafia lures for letting me use his photos of me fishing in this blue Transmit X jacket on this blog post). I will generally avoid yomping up cliffs in a waterproof jacket when I am carrying a rucksack if at all possible, but it was so bloody wet I had no choice. When I took the jacket off I dried my hands and had a good feel/look around, but I couldn’t find a single sign of water ingress. I do like the fact that both these jackets don’t seem to take too long to dry out when you hang them up at home after a wet session.

One thing I don’t quite agree with in the specs of this Grundens Transmit X jacket is this: “Dunkable Neoprene Wrist Cuffs to Prevent Water from Penetrating up Sleeves”. Sure they help a bit, but they are not tight around my wrists and you can’t tighten the neoprene sleeves up anymore. You can tighten the outer shell of the jacket around the neoprene wrist cuffs which does help a fair bit, but if you tend to suffer from wet sleeves as I do with waterproof jackets then as I said further up the page, get some sweat bands and use them because they really help.

There is undoubtedly a bit more of a luxurious feel to the overall experience when fishing in the more expensive Grundens Transmit X jacket, but so there should be for the increased price. Saying that, I have worn a lot of different jackets over a lot of years and for £120 I can’t recall using anything better for the price than the cheaper Grundens Full Share jacket. Both jackets are nice and light for rolling up and carrying in a rucksack etc. which I think is really important for how I use gear like this. Aside from these minor sleeve-related niggles I described above, as my introduction to Grundens gear you can colour me massively impressed. This is some serious fishing gear……………

Very excited about Saturday afternoon when England take on Scotland in Scotland. One round in and I think we have the makings of a classic Six Nations, or is that the kiss of bloody death upon England and their progression? France look scary-good to me and I feel for Wales this weekend, and can Italy turn over Ireland? You all have a good weekend…………

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But bass related stuff is going on. I am guessing that some of the “changes” we are seeing are down to global warming and associated factors, but one principal variable which I think has to be considered is the fact that there isn’t a lot of historical data of bass catches on lures in estuaries for the first few months of a regular year. I am not saying that no (bass) anglers were out and about in estuaries with lures in the past at this time of year, but even the most diehard angler has to admit that cold, coloured estuary water in the middle of winter has never traditionally been a go-to thing.

I am guessing that like me, you also hear of a few big bass coming to estuary based flounder anglers during the winter months. I don’t know if various populations of bass remain in some estuaries or not all winter long, but I went back through my blog and found this post here which describes what was then the earliest in the year (very little!) bass I had ever caught in an estuary on a lure. It gave me a huge amount of confidence to really keep at it with the whole creature bait thing, and the more confidence you feel, the more you are inclined to push and try things.

I was really surprised to be getting reports and photos of a few bass on lures in estuaries when I was away in Kenya over Xmas and New Year. Surprised mainly because I saw that the UK was having a serious cold snap, so I couldn’t really believe that bass would be looking for food in such shallow and cold water. But they obviously were. And here we are now after the wettest January on record in Cornwall - February hasn’t been any better so far! - and there still seems to be the chance of catching a few bass in water that I don’t think was really being seriously thought about a few years ago.

So is it just a case of global warming and so on being the main reason why this is possible, or is it because more anglers are coming into bass fishing and they are basically ignoring the “traditions” as such and thinking what the hell, why not give it a go? Then you have a few old gits like me who obsess about this one species of fish probably far too much and also think what the hell, let’s give it a go.

So have we been missing out on some extra bass fishing if you like that’s been almost under our noses all this time but the collective understanding was that it ain’t happening at this time of year, in these locations, and with the sort of weather conditions we’ve been getting? I know what I think, but what do you think?

Only a few years ago I was so pleased because I managed to catch my last estuary bass of the “season” on 4th December, then when a mate suggested that we try fishing the same estuary in early April of the next “season”, I was distinctly unimpressed! I know that a certain waterway has the reputation for staying clear nearly all the time and also producing bass all year around if you know its secrets - I very much don’t - but I am particularly fascinated in taking these creature bait/lighter approach tactics into more regular estuaries and seeing if I can unprove to myself what I previously thought was “fact”.

I like where we chose to fish yesterday, but I wasn’t much liking the admittedly forecasted increasing strength of wind in our face. We were targeting some shallow water and the wind was right at us and really starting to colour the water up. There has obviously been silly amounts of rain recently, but actually the water in some areas isn’t too bad, with all things being relative of course. The colour we were fishing into yesterday was caused quite simply by the onshore wind stirring things up in front of us. As I said at the top - I’d never have fished a mark like this a couple of years ago in early February, and my head has been almost pre-conditioned to walk away from water that coloured and look for somewhere else a good bit cleaner.

Thanks to a birthday voucher from our youngest girl, I was out for a delicious Sunday lunch yesterday with my wife, and my mate had missed a bass just before I got out fishing. So I rigged up and started fishing. It feels weird to feel kinda hopeful that you might actually see a fish in such shallow but coloured estuary water at this time of year, but I guess you either do what you have always done in life, or else you embrace a decent bit of change and enjoy the never stop learning process.

So I’m fishing away with what has become one of my go-to setups for this kind of bass fishing - one of those little BKK Fast Snap-41 size 1 20lb lure clips, a knot protector which I think definitely cuts down on weed hassles, a Berkley Fusion cheb weight somewhere from 5-10g depending on depth and current and wind etc., a 3/0 Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hook (the cheaper 2/0 or 3/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook also works well, but I do like the lure grabber thing on the Eagle Claw), and a Nikko Craw 3.2’’ creature bait. If you’re going to put yourself out there trying to catch bass at this time of year in areas which you might know well but which are somewhat alien at this time of year, I do need to be feeling very confident with my offerings.

But that water was getting more and more coloured as it got even shallower and the wind kept freshening into our faces. I stood back and had a bit of a think. Time to try a creature bait with a rattle in it, to see if a bit more “come and get me” noise to the lure might help in all that colour. I love that Nikko Craw 3.2’’ lure, but I also really like some of the Z-Man creature baits as well, and I find it particularly easy to get a small glass rattle into the Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' with that rather clever Z-Man Rattle-Snaker tool (check here on this blog). So I clipped one of those Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' on because I’ve always got a few of them with and without rattles inside living in my lure box.

A few casts later and not very far out I get that unmistakable tap, but then the fish swims towards me. I keep in touch for maybe a couple of yards then wait for the pull away again, and now I set the hook. To say a huge smile sat across my middle-aged face as a chunky, maybe 4lb bass came to hand is an understatement. I was absolutely over the frigging moon! The day after my 53rd birthday and a fantastic start to the Six Nations, so I’m calling it a birthday bass.

Mark momentarily hooked but dropped a bass a little while later, then once again on that killer Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' I got a tap, tap, move away hard, can’t really miss it kind of hit. And I didn’t miss it! Another fat bass that again might again have nudged 4lb came to hand pretty swiftly, and Mark kindly held the fish in a few different ways so I could snap a bunch of photos. I can’t prove that changing over to a creature bait with a rattle made all the difference yesterday, not at this time of year with what I presume is less bass around than in late spring or summer, and not with the fact that Mark had a couple of hits which didn’t result in bass - but on another day might well have. I had two hits which happened to result in two bass landed, both on a creature bait with a rattle in it. Whatever is or isn’t actually the case, the whole thing continues to absolutely fascinate me with how much more there can be to this one amazing species of fish if you are prepared to open up your mind and try different things………………

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And I am pretty much convinced that as human beings who think human beings' thoughts, we are almost pre-conditioned to feel way less confident when the water gets really, really shallow. It just doesn’t look quite right when there is so little water for predatory fish to move around in, but even the other day when it’s hardly the most epic time of year to try for bass within a rain-soaked estuary system, we didn’t get a sniff of a bass until the water had stripped almost right out. I have always believed that bass know full well about how their potential food sources quite literally have to get out of dodge if it’s literally going to dry out towards the bottom of the tide - and they use this to their advantage of course.

But what about the early flood tide, a time in the (estuary based) tide cycle that I know I don’t utilise enough. I fish way more ebb tides than I do flood tides, but I have a nagging feeling that when I am fishing marks that I know tend to fish well on the last of the ebb, I should be standing back over the low water and waiting for the first signs of the new flood tide. For sure it depends on the makeup of the mark and if the ground dries out and/or the size of the tide etc., but you get my drift. I have such a strong memory of chasing a good bass in virtually no water last year - check here - and I wonder how much more I should be doing stuff like this. At the start of each year I always wonder if there can really be much more to this whole lure fishing for bass thing to bounce about, but there always is. It’s an amazing way to go about your fishing. I have got so much more stuff to experiment with this year.

You all have a good weekend, hope you enjoyed that epic Thursday evening start to the Six Nations if rugby is your thing. Even if France did go off the boil a bit in the second half, bloody hell they were ominously good for much of it. I do love Irish rugby, but I reckon France were so dominant that the eventual scoreline flattered Ireland a bit. I cannot help but be very excited to see how England go, but I tend to get my homes up most years and then suffer the pain of various defeats! I turn 53 on Saturday and I will be watching England v Wales and dreaming of a potential Grand Slam decider in France on the last weekend of the Six Nations……………

Anyway, so what sort of breaking strain or diameter fluoro or mono leader do you turn to for your bass fishing? As with braid and the complications surrounding labelling, we are going to have to accept that a 20lb fluoro from one company often isn’t quite the same as a 20lb fluoro from another. Unless you are physically going to check the diameters of your leaders yourself - easily done to be fair, tools like these can do it for not much money - then I guess we go with the labeling on the spools and lean into what you know and trust.

I am probably a bit old school in that I have the somewhat traditional mono diameters versus breaking strains in my head. I tend to think of a 0.35mm mono or indeed fluoro line breaking at around 15lbs on a straight pull, then a 0.40mm line breaking at 20lbs, 0.30mm breaking at 12lb, and so on. I remember when I started fishing for those big sharks and so on from the beaches in Namibia and the local anglers would always talk about their mono mainlines in terms of diameter and never breaking strain - which when you think about it makes a lot of sense. A 0.50mm mainline is a 0.50mm mainline - if the diameters are correct of course - and if that 0.50mm mainline works for you and your fishing then it doesn’t really matter what the quoted breaking strain is. Rather than worry about the quoted breaking strains and potentially end up with thinner or thicker lines, you can buy on diameter and see which one you like the most.

I guess it’s a bit different when it comes to the short length of (leader) line you may or may not secure to the end of your braid, but you get my drift. Way before this lighter estuary based fishing seriously came into my life, I am pretty sure I used to fish most of the time with that 16lb/0.346mm YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader, and I can’t recall any issues save for the fact that I would start the new season with a fresh spool of the stuff. I remember the odd unexplained breakage when tying a knot to my lure clip if I was using a spool of the leader from the start of the previous year, but it must depend on where and how you store your line. None of these monos or fluoros like being left out in direct sunshine for hours on end for example, and yes, I grant you that overexposure to sunshine isn’t exactly much of a problem at the moment!

I am going to guess that the majority of UK shore based bass lure fishing is done with a 20lb braid and a 20lb leader - whatever that particular 20lb braid and 20lb leader actually is of course. It’s potentially a complicated alley to head down, but if you come from or know much about certain types of fly fishing for trout fishing for example then you will know how much leader diameters can make a difference in certain situations. Many species of fish which are targeted on fly fishing gear are known for shying away from thicker leaders in some types of water and over some types of ground and so on. Do we think about it much with our bass fishing?

I don’t think what we are generally doing makes much difference when the water is really bouncy or a good bit coloured, but I have been around enough bass fishing situations before when I do think the diameter of the leader has made a difference to the fishing. It can be hard to prove, but a few select times there have been enough anglers fishing for the change to a lighter leader proving to be THE factor which made a beneficial difference. I agree that changing leaders can be a bit of a pain if you are on the one rod and reel setup, but with the potential size of the bass we catch and the ground we might fish over, does the one strength or diameter of leader cover it all?

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

But a mate had the day off work and suggested a bit of a sniff. I was home alone last week - one girl in France, one girl in New Zealand, wife with her dad in the Isle of Wight - and I’d obviously been hoping for literally anything other than the weather conditions we’ve been getting! Lots of very wet walks with Storm and even wetter runs around Torpoint instead. I went for a dog walk at 6.30am yesterday morning and guess what? Yep, it was raining! I said to myself that I wasn’t going fishing with my mate, but then the clouds started to break while I was having breakfast and I thought why the hell not. If you don’t go you will never know.

I was very, very surprised to find the estuary water in just about okay shape, but if there is one thing that this whole creature bait or lighter/closer quarters approach to much shallower water is teaching me, it’s that I can catch bass in much more coloured water than my brain wants me to accept as acceptable. I love having to learn all the time with this whole bass fishing thing, so there was a degree of what we hoped was logical thought around where we would try fishing yesterday when it wasn’t actually raining for a change!

I notice that my mate Mark rigs up with the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ creature bait a lot of the time these days, and it’s the same with me. Ever since I first tried these amazing lures last year they have always been in that HTO Double Latch 20.5cm lure box which I use for the sort of lures I carry with me when I am bass fishing like this. I keep any of the TPE-type soft plastics in the separate compartments together - Z-Man creatures (together) in one, Nikko Craw creatures in another, Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slugs in another, then anything else in another compartment. No melting of any of the soft plastics or the lure box after months like this so I know it all works.

Details on how I am rigging up the various creature baits can be found here on my website, hope it’s useful for some of you

Anyway, when Mark shouted over that he was into a fish I will admit to initially thinking bless him, he’s hooked a bit of weed! But no, the rod was going and I ran for my camera gear whilst trying not to slip on all the bladderwrack. If you keep an eye on UK based lure fishing for bass in general then a bass on a lure in an estuary or on the open coast at this time of year might seem more normal these days. For an older fella like me though, I will never lose the sheer amazement at how fishing for this one incredible species of fish continues to change and adapt as more anglers refuse to follow out-dated traditions.

Literally my next cast after picking up my rod again after shooting a bunch of photos and I felt my cheb-rigged Nikko Craw creature bait “tap” as it hit the bottom, then a split-second afterwards I got a much harder “tap” from a fish. I instinctively pushed the rod out a bit to give the fish a smidgen of slack, then everything tightened up with the bass moving away, and I struck. I got one delightful thump then everything went slack. I’m calling it bad angling because I was a bit out of touch after not fishing for a couple of weeks!

A short while later though and I did connect with a bass. I got a few seconds of delightful thumping on the rod but then the bass swam straight into a wedge of bladderwrack. I always use barbless hooks and by the time I got out to the jammed fish it had successfully unhooked itself. I can’t count it as a caught fish, but for the 1st February and with the ridiculous amounts of rain and wind we’ve been getting? I’ll take it! My mate landed a bass, I missed a bass and then lost a bass, but that one session I hadn’t intended to fish has once again banged home to me that much more is possible in water conditions that I usually feel almost pre-conditioned to walk away from………………….

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I am aware of good bass being caught by some anglers on prawn imitation lures, and whilst I have tried a few out myself, in truth I have not given them nearly enough time. A mate was out fishing not long before Xmas and went through all the right motions with the creature bait stuff, but nothing was doing. He thought what the hell and clipped on a prawn imitation lure I think he had found on something like AliExpress, cast it out into the same ground he had been fishing with the crab imitation stuff - and bang, a good bass on straight away. It got me thinking at the time, and it gets me thinking even more at the moment with how the weather is throwing such a hissy fit. You know how I do like having options.

It will not surprise you that I have shown moments of weakness in the past and purchased various prawn imitation lures, both pre-rigged and not. If something looks nice and interesting then “from time to time” I have been known to give in and abuse the bank account! The two lures that I think look really good are the pre-rigged Z-Man Prawn StarZ above, and the un-rigged Z-Man EZ ShrimpZ below which I rigged onto a Z-Man ZWG Weighted Swimbait Hook 3/0. I have played around with both these lures a bit and to me they look nice in the water, but with the sort of ground I would be tending to think about I can’t help gravitating towards the un-rigged lure because I can then rig it weedless.

Does this really matter though when you can of course fish perfectly effectively around the bladderwrack and so on? As I said, I haven’t given these lures nearly enough time and with how much time I have now put into the creature baits, I do favour the hookpoint being tucked away as much as possible. Please note though that better anglers than me have caught some fantastic bass on pre-rigged J-hook prawn lures, so as ever take what I say within the context I am providing.

One specific soft plastic which ended up producing a number of good bass for me during the last few months of last year especially was the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug - as per this blog post here when I first put one into bass related action (they are lethal for wrasse!). Now for location related reasons mainly, I ended up fishing this Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug soft plastic much like I used to fish the deadly MegaBass XLayer in fast runs of estuary based current over in Ireland especially. When something works for you I guess you tend to stick with it a bit. I have had a bass or two when I have used these Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slugs as I would a creature bait, but one thing on my endless list of bass fishing stuff to do is to fish them way more in those situations.

Which then gets me thinking about the whole prawn lure thing. We will never really know what various fish are seeing when they hit our lures, but we have to at least believe that they are not quite seeing what we might see when they smash something like a cotton candy coloured IMA Komomo SF-125 hard lure in bright sunshine over shallow reefy ground! So in turn I wonder if my urge to give the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug a lot more time when I would more usually be turning to a creature bait/crab imitation isn’t in fact offering a rather good prawn imitation. I don’t know how a bass sees a specific lure as some specific food source, but with my human eyes and human brain I can’t help but think that twitching a Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug around when it’s rigged on something like the Seadra weedless jig head 2/0 (above) or the Z-Man ZWG Weighted Swimbait Hook 3/0 (below) is actually a damn good prawn imitation. Or simply cheb-rig it as I would a creature bait. Or prawn. So much fun stuff to keep on with this year, roll on an end to this endlessly shite weather, you all have a good weekend…………..

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So I got to thinking, and it’s partly because at some point in the near future I am due to receive some new lure rod samples so that I can provide feedback and thoughts on what I might change or not. These sample rods will be part of a concise range, and whilst I will naturally gravitate towards certain rod lengths and casting weights, I need to be thinking in terms of a range and not perhaps the one specific rod which might or might not float my boat. I can’t help but gravitate towards a lure rod which I am almost conditioned to think might do the most varied amount of work for me - hence my previous obsessing about the one lure rod to do it all - but in fact I don’t think that rod exists for me anymore. Not because rods aren’t better, but because my needs are different to what they were a while back.

Of course a percentage of anglers who chase bass on lures can do what they need to do with the one fishing rod. It’s only me suggesting that as bass fishing keeps moving forwards I would suggest that some of the techniques and lures you might be fishing over a wider range of locations might benefit from say a lighter rod. Or a more powerful rod if you are travelling to somewhere like SW Portugal where you are most likely going to be confronted with seas and winds the likes of which we ain’t generally facing here in the UK.

When I was out blanking the other day (when the weather actually behaved for a day or two) in some stunning surf conditions, I would more usually turn to a 9’6’’ or 10’ long lure rod rated to at least 40g. I am not choosing a rod like this because I am expecting considerably larger bass than somewhere else I might fish. I tend to go for a rod like this because I believe it’s an efficient way to cope with surf conditions and the sort of lures I would use. But I did just fine with a good 9’ 35g rod. I do prefer a bit more length and power in heavier surf especially for various reasons, but I would always urge an angler to fish with whatever they feel most comfortable with - and then adapt or modify if you feel like you’re struggling to fish effectively.

And a 9’ 35g lure rod in reality can do the bulk of my bass fishing. So could a shorter rod though, and so could a longer rod. If a specific rod length works well for you then don’t be in a rush to change. What has changed for me though is the casting weight of the rods that I look at for as regards what has become a big part of my bass fishing - the lighter side of things. For sure that same 9’ 35g lure rod could also do all my lighter estuary fishing, but I believe that by going a bit lighter and perhaps shorter that I am gaining a few advantages. Not over other anglers I might add, I don’t work like that. Nope, I just feel that dropping down to something like an 18g or 25g lure rod around that 8’ or 8’+ length is giving me a bit more touch and feel when it comes to the lighter stuff.

I know that none of this stuff can be measured in any meaningful way, but I do know that when I used to obsess about that one lure rod which could do it all for me, I wasn’t also obsessing about sneaking about way up some estuary with a bunch of lures I’d have laughed at years ago. I might well be a somewhat older git these days, but who says you can’t teach the old dogs a few new tricks? I really enjoy fishing different types of locations and conditions, and I also enjoy how these differences then force me to adapt my gear and my thinking……………

In early December 2010 I flew to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean for a fishing photo job. I left my wife and two young girls back home in Plymouth and jetted off to some lovely sunshine. Both sets of parents have always been a good few hours away from us, so my wife and I have always been perfectly used to getting on with raising our girls with very little external help. I used to be away for easily three to four months a year for work and we have always just got on with things pretty well.

When I landed in Mauritius I got myself down to Port Louis and jumped on the mothership that was going to be home for a couple of weeks. This was before the days of satellite internet and so on, so I would be out of touch with my family for at least 12 to 14 days or so. We never used to worry at all about this because it was just part and parcel of our normal lives. The start of the trip was a 24hr+ crossing to the remote St.Brandon’s Atoll where I was going to be photographing some pretty awesome saltwater fly fishing, then at the end of the fishing there was the same 24hr+ crossing back to Port Louis. On the crossing to the atoll it got that rough I remember the angler I was sharing with being literally thrown out of his bed by the storm, but once we got to the atoll it was very sheltered and the fishing commenced. I have always loved being around fly fishing, even if I am pretty rubbish at it myself, and when the weather is warm and the fish are rather special it was a part of my work I used to seriously love doing. Especially when I had left a UK winter behind to come and do it.

I came away with a lot of photos and words which went off to various fishing magazines and books etc. around the world when I was back home, and by the time we had done that (bouncy) 24hr+ crossing back to Port Louis I was pretty knackered. When the boat docked back at port I obviously hadn’t had any contact with my wife or indeed the outside world for a couple of weeks, so I switched on whatever sort of mobile phone I had back then and called home.

Now my wife is a very level-headed and incredibly competent girl. We got through those times apart with minimal fuss and I reckon the two of us have raised a couple of pretty awesome girls (it’s somewhat quieter here at home with the eldest in SW France and the youngest in New Zealand, we won’t see them until May I believe). My wife and I have been together since we were 19 years old so we know each other pretty well, but even I was a bit shocked by that brief conversation we had after a couple of weeks of no contact. It went something like this:

Me: “Hi sweetheart, how are you all doing? It’s been an awesome trip, we are just back on dry land but it’s been a tough one, I’m pretty knackered. How have you guys been?”.

Talk about the wrong thing to have said, because then I copped an unfortunate one! I subsequently learnt that right after I had left, the boiler had broken down right when a serious cold snap hit, there had been a bit of a flood in the kitchen, plus one of the girls hadn’t been very well. Basically it had been a pretty rubbish couple of weeks in the icy UK. Whilst I had been sunning it up in the Indian Ocean and calling it work. Which it was, just that it was a particularly awesome form of work in lovely warm weather in a stunning part of the world.

My wife: “Don’t you give me that I’m knackered crap you selfish b&^&ard, try a load of what’s been going at home and then say that again!” And so on, but you get my drift. I was somewhat taken aback!

Me: “Hang on a minute, I’ve been working, it’s been really tough out here”. Why oh why did I persist with this line of defence? Us blokes don’t tend to learn that fast, because I copped another load which is seriously unlike my wife. We still laugh about it now though! You all have a good weekend and let’s hope this sodding weather does one and starts getting a good bit better…………

If you went way back on this blog you would find some similar travails with Sufix 832 braid, a mainline which I still think is about the strongest and most robust I can recall lure fishing with (you should be able to find those blog posts by simply searching “Sufix 832” in the search bar at the top of the blog home page here). An incredible braid which I had initially walked away from because my first spool of Sufix 832 had come from the US and the labelling was miles out when compared to the figures we tend to use in Europe. A meeting at Rapala HQ in Finland led me back to trying the “correct” specs of Sufix 832, and I then fished with the braid for a good while and seriously loved the stuff.

So I gave the Berkley X9 braid one outing but gave up on it because it was way too thick when compared to nearly all other braids I am familiar with. I then forgot all about the stuff until I started to see a few random comments from various anglers who were raving about the line. Over time you learn to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to online fishing stuff, and enough random anglers were talking highly of this Berkley X9 braid. What the hell happened at my end then?

Another case of braid labelling being hugely confusing and arguably misleading as well. I work with Pure Fishing and Berkley is one of their many fishing tackle brands, but I don’t currently talk to anybody directly within Berkley so I am not remotely privy to how they make their numerous lines and how they then label them. It’s not remotely unique to Berkley, indeed it bugs the hell out of me how confusing and misleading the whole line specs and labelling system is around the whole world of fishing. But what does a line company do when they make lines for a global fishing market and different regions expect their lines to be specced and labelled in different ways? A 20lb braid in the US isn’t anything like a 20lb braid here in Europe for example. We expect thinner but the US anglers expect thicker! Stick your neck out and label a mainline “properly” - whatever that actually is - and risk not selling the stuff in a region where the anglers expect to see different specs. It’s impossible, and believe me, it’s a serious rabbit hole if you want to go down it.

I did go down the rabbit hole with this Berkley X9 braid though, mainly due to the positive feedback I was seeing online, and also because it came in white which I like so much. In due course I began to understand how to literally “translate” the labels on the Berkley X9 packets and spools. What figures to actually concentrate on so that I could get a (white) mainline around the sort of diameter/breaking strain we are more used to, so that I could then start to give this braid some real fishing time and see how it performs (I don’t need to do this by the way, in that nobody at Pure Fishing has ever asked me to fish with this mainline). I am doing this firstly because I am interested in stuff like this, secondly that I had to take note of the positive feedback, and thirdly that the prices I can find for 150m spools of this Berkley X9 braid seem to be really good when compared to other braids I know and trust.

Dial down into the labelling and you will notice a bunch of different information. From my going down the rabbit hole I would urge you to ignore most of it if you fancy giving this Berkley X9 braid a go (it also comes in “Lo-Vis Green” and “Flame Green” colours if that is any help). Forget the LB-Test and diameter numbers because they are meaningless compared to what we know and expect. For us there are two main things to look at on the label - Max Break, then in very small letters, the #PE rating. The Max Break is actually what you and I would simply call the breaking strain, or Actual Breaking Strain as I have seen it referred to (i.e. it’s measured on a line machine as a straight pull on a length of the line with no knots in it, not the daft US figures which actually correspond to age-old monofilament equivalents). Take a close look at the different spools and you will note that the “Max Break” corresponds pretty much to the #PE ratings which are there but you need to look closely to see them. As I said, it’s a rabbit hole!

Let’s take the spools above and below then. I have these two lines loaded onto a couple of reels and they are performing flawlessly for me so far. Berkeley X9 takes the FG knot really well and it’s a very quiet braid through the rod guides. I need a lot more fishing time with this Berkley X9, but so far I think of it as having the benefits of something tough as hell like Sufix 832, but with a smoother, arguably more modern feel through the guides like the higher-end Japanese style braids a lot of us like fishing with. So far so good for me, but also this mainline highlights just how confusing it can be if you go looking for a “typical” braid to load up with. I am basically telling you that a spool of braid which most people would see labelled as an 8lb breaking strain mainline in a shop or online - not nearly strong enough for our fishing I hear you quite rightly say! - is in fact your more typical 20lb or #PE 1 mainline as we would know it.

Sorry, I really didn’t mean for this blog post to get so long, but I will leave you with a quote from my Facebook page which a lad called Kieren Faisey left. He is the owner/skipper at Unleashed Fishing Charters down in Penzance (tuna!), and he also does a lot of fishing for serious fish overseas. I don’t know Kieran well, but I know enough about him to trust what he says about fishing tackle. This was his comment about this Berkley X9 braid which he put up on a post of mine on Facebook: “Berkeley X9 particularly the white is hands down my favourite braid across the board, this is in regards to home or aboard, I’ve recently started to use it on my UK bass outfits too - I’ve used Tasline for years too and X9 white is as good as the same from my experience over many years of use, but at a fraction of the price. Reason I love the white and have noticed this over time with travelling over seas, excessive exposure to intense light, high salinity water, drying, using, drying using etc… and when using braids for the likes of Slow Pitch Jigging in the tropics where your braid is fished to its extreme limits on big tropics fish, is that the white I haven’t seen perish and become brittle like that of other coloured/multicoloured braids and from various brands in these same scenarios/exposure. Practically all I will use on my set ups where I know they are getting pushed to their limits is X9 and hasn’t ever made me question it! … I was using a Daiwa Saltiga multi braid in Panama years back, and randomly became brittle, caused me to lose 3 trophy fish in 1 day - that was me finished on that. I do quite like the Spiderwire Stealth Smooth multicoloured braid, that’s held up well for me for a while now”. I find his thoughts on the use of white braid very interesting………….

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So it might well be the middle of January and my expectations are somewhat tempered, but I was still pretty amazed when I walked away after a few hours of fishing without a fish landed or even a hint of a fish in the bank. If it had been say October with those conditions I’d have gone back home and sold all my gear after giving myself a damn good thrashing, but even so I’d have fancied seeing at least A bass in water that good in the middle of January.

I liked the size of the tide for starters - not too big, not too small. I liked the state of the tide and where the water would be sitting on the beach before it started moving in. I hoped to find decent water clarity with no weed and I did. The wind was onshore with enough strength to be positively impacting upon the shape of the lovely sized waves rolling in - nice, short swell period - but not too strong so that I lost a lot of the peaks and troughs which help to create so many different bits of current. And talking about current, wow, there was an east to west running rip current that was as strong as I have ever seen it where I was fishing.

To the point that I’d have been seriously worried about ending up in the water with a rip current that powerful. I understand how rip currents are created and I use them to my bass fishing advantage whenever possible, but I don’t quite know why certain combinations of conditions can create such a particularly powerful rip. I have had plenty of bass from this spot in the past when I have literally been able to almost dead-drift something like a DoLive Stick in the current, or slowly swim the Gravity Stick Paddletail out and across when it’s rigged on the 6/0 3g belly-weight weedless hook. I obviously tried both these methods into this incredible rip current I found, but still no bass!

For much of the time I was searching as much water as possible with different weights of Savage Gear Seekers and Surf Seekers. To get as far out into the back of the waves I would clip on the 30g or 35g Surf Seeker and blast it, then at times I would use that rip current to slowly swim the 23g regular Seeker across it. I picked up literally three or four bits of weed the whole time I was fishing, and with every single cast I felt confident. I was on my own, I never saw a hint of another soul, and the weather was even pretty warm for the time of year. Happy as the proverbial to be out fishing, but confused as hell when I came away that I had not managed to bother the scorer! I did manage to also put more time into what I reckon might well be THE fastest, sharpest and steeliest 9’ 35g lure rod I have ever fished with. Talk about literally a weapon of extreme precision that makes me grin when I wind it up and let it go. The obsession still rages on…………

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I am guessing that a lot of you here spend a fair amount of time on something like Google Earth, literally hunting for spots where you might find bass or other saltwater species we can target in our waters. But does it ever strike you that with all you might know right now, there are still a hell of a lot of places we don’t know. I could show you some of the different marks I might fish in a specific area and I bet you another angler would be saying have you fished there, or what about this bit here and so on. We might know what we know, but where’s the fun in fishing the same spots over and over again?

And yes, a lot of my thinking here is based around the increasing amount of estuary based bass fishing I find myself so absorbed by. A few years ago I would be looking for the mouths of different estuaries where I might be able to bump soft plastics along the bottom during the last few hours of an ebb tide, whereas now I am thinking about and looking for a far wider variety of bass fishing locations which could well be many miles from the mouth of the estuary. I used to have this sort of mental image of bass leaving an estuary on the ebb tide then moving back in as the flood tide got moving, but how far removed is that simple theory from the actual truth? Your head says look for a decent covering of water for the bass to move around in, when in fact the truth of the matter is often the less water the better the fishing.

Anybody else here got a bunch of spots which you physically need to go and check out? Google Earth and various online resources can get us so far, but feet on the ground and actually checking somewhere out in the real world is vital in my book. I think about one little creek I fished a bit last year and I realise that firstly I haven’t yet pushed on way up the creek to see what happens, and secondly that there is a lot of ground further up the estuary from the creek and fairly nearby that I don’t even know yet. A new year starts and with it comes the potential for so much interesting fishing……………

At the end of the day you tend to use a beachcaster/shore fishing rod somewhat differently to how we might use a lure fishing rod. That might sound rather obvious, and it’s meant to, but those fundamental differences are why I find a lure fishing rod more interesting than I find a beachcaster. Not better or worse I guess I need to add, just different. I accept that lure fishing has got me in its grip completely, but so did bait fishing for many years, and I fully expect for it to creep back into my fishing life at some point down the road.

Lure fishing to me arguably shares more with fly fishing than it does with bait fishing. I don’t mean species or locations here, rather that with fly fishing and the sort of lure fishing most of us do - trolling etc. aside here - casting repeatedly is a principal part of the actual fishing. Therefore you are always holding your fishing rod. If you do hold your bait rod for something more subtle like tough-ledgering for bass or mullet then there is more crossover here, but the reason why I tend to find lure fishing rods so interesting is that my/our fishing requires a sort of intimate connection between the angler and a length of carbon fibre. Casting and retrieving, casting and retrieving, plus the lighter rod element comes into play when you are hooked into a fish of course.

I think it’s fair to say that most of our (shore based) saltwater bait fishing revolves around casting a bait out, then putting your rod or rods in a tripod or resting on the rocks, and waiting for the signs of a bite. A fishing rod is a vital bit of equipment in any fishing, that goes without saying, but for most of the bait fishing I did, my rod or rods were out of my hands for most of the actual fishing time. With lure fishing though, unless I am taking photos or drinking some coffee or water, my fishing rod is in my hands nearly all the time. Not to get too deep and meaningful here, but that one rod feels like a part of me when I am actually out fishing. How that rod feels in my hands is an important part of my lure fishing so I can’t help but be interested in different lure fishing rods.

Casting is also be a very important part of bait fishing, but the simple fact is that you are doing it way less. You are not casting and retrieving constantly because you are not using a lure or a fly which requires action on behalf of the angler to bring it to life. With lure fishing we are essentially hunting for the fish rather than laying a scented trap and waiting for the fish to come to you. In no way am I trying to say that one type of fishing is better or worse than the other because I am really opposed to that kind of thinking within fishing, rather that the constant connection to a lure fishing rod when I am actually fishing quite naturally gets me thinking and analysing. You might well not and that’s just fine. A modern beachcaster is an incredible tool that is also a vital tool, but a lighter rod which I am constantly in touch with is what interests me the most I guess.

I recognise that via my work I get to play around with a bunch of different rods so perhaps that feeds and grows my interest more than other anglers, but it’s incredible what some of these tackle companies are able to do with various materials. I have just got hold of what I reckon is the fastest, sharpest and most precise 9’ lure rod around that “standard” sort of 7-35g casting weight that I have ever fished with, and I have also stumbled across a very good value for money lighter lure rod that I think is pretty damn good for the lighter estuary fishing. I dread to think how many lure fishing rods I have tried to date, but my interest hasn’t diminished, and no cynicism has crept in at all. It’s all an important part of fishing to me and I hope that you kind people who take the time to read this blog will continue to enjoy it all with me………………..

We found some rather nice open coast bass fishing conditions on the ebb tide yesterday, but apart from what felt like a sharp “bang” on one retrieve, there were no bass landed. It was peeing it down when I left home and the rain only got worse. Another good test for the Grundens waders and jacket which are performing so well for me, but towards the end of the session I was once again struggling to feel the tips of a few fingers. I have a fairly good glove/protection system sorted out now for the colder weather now, but I have had to accept that post-heart attack with the various drugs I am on, my hands and finger tips especially get colder far easier than they ever used to.

It was only a few days ago when at times it felt almost too hot out in Kenya when the sun got high in the sky. Contrast that to being trussed up like a Christmas turkey to go fishing yesterday and I couldn’t help but grin at the difference. I gave it a good go and it would have been great to catch a January bass or two, but getting out fishing again felt pretty damn good on its own. I am obviously looking forward to spring as much as any of you here, but there’s plenty of bass fishing stuff I want to do and try out over the next few (colder) months.

My youngest girl left Heathrow yesterday morning and I woke up early here in Cornwall to find a WhatsApp that she had got to her hotel in San Francisco where she is staying for a couple of days before flying on to New Zealand. She’s going to head out for a run across the Golden Gate Bridge which will be somewhat different to me heading out around Torpoint for my own (slow) run when it gets light here in Cornwall. Hope you’re all okay after those serious winds last night, I don’t like a NW storm at all around here, it usually brings a few trees down and we tend to lose a few roof tiles and so on. Let’s see if anything has happened when it gets light………

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

We made some wonderful family memories and we were so, so lucky to experience such a trip. I obviously took my camera gear because I couldn’t not, so I will put a few photos up which I hope you might enjoy. I am miles away from being a wildlife photographer, but it was a blast to point some lenses at such glorious wildlife and see what I could do. This was a family holiday the likes of which we have never done before and will most likely never do again. I have been lucky enough to see many amazing places through the course of my working in fishing, but there is quite simply nowhere like Africa. The people, the wildlife, the land, literally the way the continent smells, it’s intoxicating.

I found this quote in a book I saw when we were in one of the safari camps the other day: “Africa changes you forever, like nowhere on earth. Once you have been there, you will never be the same. But how do you begin to describe its magic to someone who has never felt it? How can you explain the fascination of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths?” (Brian Jackman, writer).

Anyway, back to the UK and fishing of course! While we were away I kept in touch with a few mates and various social media fishing stuff when possible, but I didn’t think with the time of year plus high pressure and cold weather that you guys have been experiencing that I’d be seeing and hearing reports of so much good bass fishing. I think it’s absolutely incredible, but maybe that’s because I am an older git these days. I might not have been bass fishing all my life, but I do remember those more “traditional” seasons that were kinda bandied around back in the day.

I find it so interesting how the world of lure fishing for bass is changing. For sure the conservation of these fine fish must always remain a principle focus, but I do feel so excited and invigorated at how the “rules” are being so forcefully shown the door as new anglers come into lure fishing for bass and mix with the anglers who have been at it for longer. For sure the tackle companies need to sell fishing tackle - it’s called business - but I choose to ignore any cynicism and celebrate how this one amazing species of fish which so many of us obsess about is still offering us so much to learn about them if we are willing to open our minds and see what is possible.

I am at my mum’s house as I am typing this rather early in the morning because I haven’t got back on UK time yet. Later on this morning we will drop our eldest girl at Stansted airport for her flight back to SW France, then my wife and I will most likely head back to Cornwall tomorrow morning on our own. Our youngest daughter stays with my mum who will then kindly drop her off at Heathrow on Thursday morning to fly to San Francisco for a couple of days before connecting on to New Zealand for a month, then Australia and onto south east Asia. We won’t see both our girls most likely until May so it’s going to be a quieter house back home in Cornwall. You raise your kids up the best you can, then you watch them go and get on with their lives. My dad loved his grandchildren so much and I know how much he’d have loved to see my two getting on with their lives. Happy New Year to you all………………..

Not long after New Year my wife and I will be on our own at home for an extended period for the first time in years. Our eldest girl will head back to SW France where she is teaching English in a couple of French schools as part of her third year of a languages degree at Durham University, then our youngest girl heads off travelling to some amazing parts of the world for five months before she does the uni thing next autumn.

So it’s going to be a quiet few months here at home. Who am I going to talk to about running when my youngest girl isn’t here? My poor wife is going to have to suffer my talk of splits and cadence and kms per month and so on! I guess you raise children together with the aim of them leaving home at some point and forging their own ways. My wife and I wouldn’t choose to live anywhere else than here in Cornwall, but I don’t see either of my girls settling down here after university. It’s been an amazing place for our girls to grow up, but the world’s a big place and there are more opportunities elsewhere. My dad would have so loved seeing what my two girls were getting up to with their lives.

Anyway, we are nearly at the end of another year and I am still here! I remain ever thankful that I got through my heart attack and managed to stick around for a while longer. I hope you all have a bit of a break over Christmas and New Year, and if you manage to get out fishing then I hope the fish of your dreams does the decent thing and snaffles your lure, bait or fly. Catch you soon………

Film of the Year 2025: Train Dreams

If you have got Netflix then have a watch of this stunning film. Train Dreams is very much not a crash, bang, wallop film, indeed it’s beautifully meditative and emotionally engaging. Shot mainly with natural light I believe, it’s a gorgeous film, and the lead actor Joel Edgerton is outstanding. I love a loud action film as much as the next person, but sometimes I like my films to worm their way into my head and luxuriate there. Train Dreams is one of those films for me. Stunning.

TV Series of the Year 2025: Task

There is so much good television out there and we haven’t got a hope of seeing it all, not if you want to live some kind of life which doesn’t revolve around sitting on your arse all the time! “Task” did it for me on so many different levels. Adolescence and The Agency are right up there for me as well from this year.

Book of the Year 2025: Battle Mountain by C.J Box

I haven’t read a book this year which has massively stood out to me like a few specific books have done in the past, but I do love C.J Box’s long-running series based around a game warden in Wyoming. Battle Mountain is number 25 in this series and I can’t recall a single C.J Box book which I haven’t loved reading.

Album of the Year 2025: Dissonance Theory by Coroner

Always one of my favourite thrash metal bands anyway, but quite how the Swiss group Coroner releases a new album a whole 30+ years after their last one AND it’s this bloody awesome is beyond me. Incredible. If you are into your metal then two other albums came very close to the top spot for me in 2025 - “Nevertheless” by Thormesis, and “Lonely People With Power” by Deafheaven. I love these two albums as much as the new Coroner one, but I gave the top spot to Coroner because listening to their new album provokes such feelings of nostalgia in this old head of mine.

Podcast of the Year 2025: Test Match Special

I listen to a few different podcasts when I get the time, and however badly the England Test team continues to do in Australia, at least the Test Match Special podcast is consistently brilliant.

Best Buy of the Year 2025: Hoka Clifton 10 road running shoes

I am racking up a lot of miles in these running shoes and I really like them. Very light, plenty of cushioning for an older body like mine, I think these Hoka Clifton 10 shoes are the best Hoka running shoes I have come across so far.

Another Best Buy of the Year 2025: Temso Clip On Polarized Flip up Glasses

Yep, they do look a bit ridiculous, but I had to find a polarising solution for my fishing and the fact that I wear varifocal glasses most of the time these days. I took a punt on these Temso things and they do actually work pretty well. Obviously not as good as a proper pair of polarised sunnies, but I can easily get by for much of what I do these days. Much better than I expected.

Another Best Buy of the Year 2025: Apple AirPods Pro 3

It would be so much easier if Apple gear wasn’t so good, but through my work and phone I am kinda bound to the Apple ecosystem. I think these newish AirPods Pro 3 are a good bit better than the previous generation. I far prefer USB-C charging for starters, plus they sound a bit better, but the big thing for me is that I think these new ones are a much better fit for my ears.

Another Best Buy of the Year 2025: Danish Endurance Merino Wool Hiking Liner Socks

When it finally came to buying some new socks to wear with BCWs, I went (again) with the Bridgedale Coolmax Liner socks which had lasted me for so long. Like so many things in life it now seems though, the new ones I bought just aren’t as good, so I took a punt on these Danish Endurance Merino Wool Hiking Liner Socks and I haven’t looked back. Really good and they just don’t get at all smelly, even after days on end of being trussed up inside neoprene socks inside a pair of wading boots.

Proper Pile of Crap 2025: Ulanzi CG-02 Grip Holder for Smartphone

I thought this might be a clever way of making it easier to use an iPhone a bit better as a camera, but when the removable shutter button “removed” itself from the grip and fell in an estuary on its first trip out, I knew I had bought a pile of poo. Credit to Amazon for giving me a full refund.

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

“Achieving an excellent bass fishery”

Aim:

Get a science report on pros and cons of different targets for the bass fishery. Use this to ask the government to target a large bass stock

Bass Angling Conservation's vision is an excellent bass fishery:

• for sea anglers - fewer blanks, more hook-ups, more trophy bass landed

• for spearfishers - more bass and more big bass

• for small-scale commercial fishers – higher catch per unit of effort, more big fish with a higher price per kilo, less cost, more profit.

• for recreational fishing businesses - more fish = a better fishing experience = more fishing = more sales = more profit

• for everyone - a restored bass stock that improves the marine ecosystem

We can only get an excellent bass fishery if we target a large stock size. But Defra targets killing the highest tonnage of bass over time and keeping the stock at a low level. Recreational fishers are the biggest stakeholder in the bass fishery and commercial bass fishers are mostly small-scale vessels, so why do we still have a target that only suits high-volume commercial fishers and ignores the needs of recreational fishers and small-scale commercial fishers?

To help change Defra’s mind, we need a scientific review of the current target and possible alternative targets. This review will cost £27,000 and take three months to complete.

The Marine Management Organisation has agreed to refund 75% of the cost. So Bass Angling Conservation needs Crowdfunding donations of £7,000 to pay the balance.

Time is short, the project must complete by 31 March 2026, and since the project will take three months, we need to raise the funds and start the project by the end of December 2025.

Bass Angling Conservation was formed to continue the work of Save Our Sea Bass and has been pushing for a better bass fishery since 2014.

I literally had to calm myself down and make sure my heart rate didn’t spike too much when I got to see the sea yesterday morning. Goddam it looked good, with exactly the right shape and colour I had hoped to find for where I had decided to fish. I have tended to do pretty well at this spot in the past when the sea has looked like this, but mainly on bigger tides than the miserably small ones we had yesterday. If there had not been so much sea running I’d have most likely chosen a different mark that I actively like on really small tides, but in my mind the forecasted sea conditions dictated to me that I needed to fish where we ended up. And hope that the small tides didn’t mess things up too much.

All looked pretty good when Dave hooked and landed a bass right at the start of the session on one of his Labrax Mafia (pink!) Morsetto 115mm paddletails rigged on a Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head. Because the light and sea conditions looked so incredible I wasn’t even fishing yet, and instead I was crouching down and firing away on my camera gear. Sometimes it all goes right and the angler hooks a fish while you are lined up like this, and Dave did. I got a bunch of photos you can see here which I am really pleased with. I love it when the winter light gets really interesting and the sea is lovely and bouncy and the angler is fishing right in amongst it.

So of course we fished on with real purpose, but that one bass right at the start was the only fish we had. Nearly every single thing screamed bass at us, but the longer we went without any more fish, the more the really small tide thing began playing on my mind. You know how you look for a variable when the fishing doesn’t go to plan? Of course I don’t actually know if the small tide was THE single reason for a lack of bass there yesterday, but I do know that this place has worked well for me on bigger tides because I believe the bass can access a specific area where I think that any bait is basically forced into. That didn’t quite happen yesterday with there being less water. I know it’s nearly Christmas and any day on the coast in good conditions at this time of year is to be embraced and not complained about, and to be perfectly honest I am as happy to come away with photographs that I am really happy about as I am a bunch of bass. I do love it when both things happen though! Too much to ask at the end of December?

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

I asked the nice people at Veals Mail Order if they could do a bit of a discount for the Gear of the Year stuff below, and they kindly said yes. If you want to save yourself 10% off the “winners” below then go to this specific VMO webpage here to place your order, then use the code GOTY2025 at checkout. This 10% discount is valid until midnight this Sunday, 14.12.2025.

As always I wanted to say a big thank you to all of you kind people who take the time to read this blog and also interact with me via the comments section, or on my Facebook and Instagram pages. Thank you!! I am awarding “prizes” to fishing tackle which I have either reviewed this year or mainly fished with this year, with a couple of exceptions aside which I hope will make sense further down the page. Here goes then and you all have a good weekend.

Regular bass fishing Lure rod of the Year 2025: Favorite Black Swan 9’ 902MH 10-36g

Review here. As always I must say that fishing rods are very personal things, plus it’s not easy trying to compare different rods with similar specs when rods might well be so different because that is how they were designed to be. If we take the sort of lure rods I tend to like then, I have fished with numerous 9’ lure rods around the 30-36g rating which have cost a serious amount more than this Favorite Black Swan 9’ 902MH 10-36g - and I’d take this Favorite Black Swan 9’ 902MH 10-36g over any of them. End of. I think this rod is that good. Hell, I know this rod is that good. I also think the shorter Favorite Black Swan 852MH 8'5'' 10-36g is a truly phenomenal rod (review here), but I reviewed that one back in 2024.

More powerful Lure rod of the Year 2025: Savage Gear SG8 Defiance 10’ 10-45g

I definitely err towards shorter lure rods than this Savage Gear SG8 Defiance 10’ 10-45g, but damn this thing is sweet. Powerful, but SO easy to wind up and get lures out a frigging mile if you need to. I mainly fished with this rod in Portugal earlier year and it’s ended up becoming my surf rod of choice now. I got to work closely with one of the Savage Gear product guys to bring this rod to market and I am really proud of it. I’d obviously prefer it to be a bit cheaper, but I know what has gone into it.

More finesse style Lure rod of the Year 2025: Favorite Skyline '25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g

Review here. I was torn between four specific rods here which I have fished with extensively for a lot of this lighter, mainly estuary based bass fishing I have been doing so much of. The Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g which I reviewed in 2024 so I can’t go for it (review here), the shorter and even lighter Favorite Black Swan 772ML 7'7'' 4-18g (review here), and two of these 2025 version Favorite Skyline rods, the Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g and 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g rods (review here). I would quite cheerfully have any one of them for this type of bass fishing, but tie me down, make me listen to Coldplay, and I’m going for the Favorite Skyline '25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g.

Value for money Lure rod of the Year 2025: Westin W2 SBass 9' 9-35g or Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g

Westin review here, Sakura review here. Give me a maximum of £100 to spend on a lure rod which I could use for most of my bass fishing and I’m going to happily take either of these Westin W2 SBass 9' 9-35g and Sakura Ryokan 902MH 9' 9-35g rods. Amazing what fishing tackle we can get for our money these days.

Braid of the Year 2025: Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8

Yep, this Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8 is not remotely a new braid to me, but it’s the first 8-strand braid I ever fished with - and in 2025 I kinda came back to it to see if it was as awesome as I remembered it being. It is! Amazing mainline which I blame for starting my slight obsession with higher-end braids.

Fluorocarbon leader of the Year 2025: YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader

As with the braid, this YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon is not a new leader to me, but I was interested to come back to it. I haven’t left yet. I love this stuff and I use it from 12lb up to 25lb depending on where and how I am fishing.

Hard Lure of the Year 2025: Savage Gear Seeker and Surf Seeker, new colours, bit of a cheat I know!

Sorry, these Seekers are obviously not new lures, but I love the new colours and they have all caught plenty of bass.

Alternative style Soft plastic lure of the Year 2025: Nikko Craw 3.2’’ creature bait

I know how good and easy to use the RTF (Ready To Fish) MegaBass Sleeper Craw is, but I tend to prefer the added flexibility that a cheb-rigged, separate creature bait gives me - and I really like this Nikko Craw 3.2’’. It sits bolt upright when you trundle it along the bottom, bass smash it! As with the Z-Man soft plastics, these are made from a TPU plastic and you don’t want to be mixing them with other lures.

More regular soft plastic lure of the Year 2025: Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug

Mads from Savage Gear urged me to try these Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug lures for bass and I will admit that I resisted for a while. I am a tit though, because these things are absolutely lethal. I have been mainly bumping them along the bottom in a run of current, much like I used to fish the MegaBass XLayer. I tend to cheb-rig these Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slugs, but one of my aims for next year is to see how much more I can do with them. On a cheb-rig they sit bolt-upright so I know that I need to put time into them where I would more usually fish with a creature bait for example (surely it’s almost a prawn-type lure as well?). As with the Z-Man soft plastics, these are made from a TPU plastic and you don’t want to be mixing them with other lures. Deadly wrasse lures as well!

Terminal Tackle of the Year 2025 no.1: Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hook with moulded keeper

Review here. I know that a hook is perhaps not the most exciting thing in the world, but this Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hook with moulded keeper is brilliant for TPU-style soft plastics especially. It’s bloody sharp, when it goes in, it properly goes in, and that “moulded keeper” really helps keep soft plastics in place. When I turn to lures like the Nikko Craw and Z-Man Pro-CrawZ creature bait or the deadly Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug, this is the hook I turn to.

Terminal Tackle of the Year 2025 no.2: Berkeley Fusion Cheb weights

Simple and effective, I know that I should ideally be using tungsten cheb weights, but now find me a 5g or a 7g tungsten cheb weight which can accommodate a decent lure clip. Slightly bigger these Berkley Fusion Cheb (lead) weights might well be, but they work well and the metal clip things are plenty strong enough for our bass and indeed wrasse fishing.

Terminal Tackle of the Year 2025 no.3: Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head

Not at all new to many of you, but I didn’t start fishing with these fantastic Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig heads until this year - and I really like them for specific soft plastics and more situations than I initially envisaged. I especially love how the awesome Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad sits, swims and fishes on these weedless jig heads. I don’t go out without these jig heads now.

Bits and pieces of the Year 2025 no.1: HTO Double Latch Box 20.5cm

This HTO Double Latch Box 20.5cm is cheap and it works great. I have stored various TPU-type soft plastics in this thing for months now (Z-Man etc.), and there is absolutely no sign of damage to the box or the lures.

Bits and pieces of the Year 2025 no.2: BKK Fast Snap-41 size 1 20lb lure clip

I know, it’s a bit of a cheat when the regular size 2 version of this fantastic lure clip was here last year, but I am really liking this smaller size 1 BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clip for the lighter side of bass fishing.

Waders of the Year 2025: Grundens Vector Stockingfoot waders

Review to come. Not cheap, but these Grundens Vector Stockingfoot chest waders are fantastic, and there’s a really robust and easy to understand repair policy. For sure you’re going to pay for repairs if you damage these things - it’s going to happen at some point in saltwater fishing! - but at least you know that you can get lots more life out of these waders if need be. Very comfortable and easy to wear, they feel seriously tough and very well made, they have already lasted me longer than the Simms high-end chest waders I used.

Wading boots of the Year 2025: Grundens Bankside Wading Boots

Review to come. My favourite boots for use with waders are still the awesome Bestard SAR Pro Water Rescue Boots, but if you want a pair of “proper” wading boots then these Grundens Bankside Wading Boots are seriously worth a look. I have covered a lot of miles in these things when I have been doing my co-guiding work especially, and I really like them. No sign of any wear or damage so far (the kiss of death?!).

Waterproof jacket of the Year 2025: Grundens Full Share jacket

Review to come. For around £120 I think this Grundens Full Share waterproof jacket is outstanding. Light and easy to wear, properly waterproof, there is also a smock version of this jacket which I haven’t seen or used, but I’d like to. If this Grundens Full Share jacket keeps me dry when Kerry in SW Ireland throws a proper hissy-fit then that’s good enough for me!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

As I have said before on here, if lure fishing for bass was only about flinging shallow-diving hard lures, surface lures and various soft plastics across shallow reefs on the open coast I don’t think I would still be obsessing so much about the one species of fish. It simply isn’t enough for me. They ain’t the biggest fish in the world, and there are many fish way more powerful than our bass - but I would put our amazing bass right up there as one of the most adaptable and fascinating fish we can target with lures, bait or flies. Why on earth would any angler want to close themselves off to the skill and learning it takes to target this one species in all their glory?

I am not perfect though! I admit that the idea of chasing bass from a boat doesn’t interest me nearly as much as chasing them from the shore does. Boat fishing is no more or less skillful than shore fishing of course, it’s nothing to do with that, even if I do joke from time to time that any bass from the boat is worth half of one from the shore (please do not take this seriously!). It’s the being tied down to a boat that doesn’t float my boat as such. I want (and need) the walking, wading, clambering, climbing and various physical demands that some of my shore fishing places upon me. I want the variety of photographic options that shore fishing gives me when compared to the restrictions of taking photos on a boat. I know virtually nothing about boat handling so I would be relying upon somebody else’s skills to help me catch bass from the boat, whereas with my shore fishing it’s me and my decisions which produce fish or not.

Rightly or wrongly I made a conscious decision earlier this year to really go for it with the whole finesse-style, mainly estuary based bass fishing. I have got a lot of open coast stuff all around me and I continue to love it as much as ever, and if you have been following this blog for a while then you will have noticed that I have always done a lot of estuary based bass fishing anyway. But I haven’t gone at them like I have done for a lot of this year, and bloody hell it’s been a blast. I know I’d have caught greater numbers of bass if I had done more of what I think I know much better, but I am obsessed with trying to get better as an angler. I am nowhere near the finished article when it comes to open coast bass fishing of course, but I feel fairly comfortable in a number of different situations I guess.

But there is SO much more to this bass fishing adventure/journey than I ever could have realised. Just a few days ago a mate had an experience with a good sized bass in ultra-shallow (estuary) water that has got us thinking even more about what might be possible with a bit more leftfield thinking. Then a couple of days ago he had another (estuary) experience with a good bass which has really gone and fried my brain! For sure the open coast stuff gets me thinking all the time, but the more of this lighter estuary fishing I do, the more excited I get. It’s nearly mid-December and a few years ago I wouldn’t have even entertained the thought of lure fishing for bass in the regular estuaries at this time of year - and yes, there is a reason for using the word “regular” here (if you know, you know) - but what’s to stop me keeping at it and seeing what happens?

I have learnt so much more this year, but the more I learn about the generally more finesse and often very close-quarters bass fishing, the more I realise how little I actually know - which in turn drives me onwards. I know what I know now if that makes sense, but the more of this style of bass fishing I do, the increase there is in my questioning of where to go looking and how to refine my approaches. I love a lovely creature bait as you know, but bass aren’t just feeding head-down on crabs in an estuary system for example.

I don’t count how many bass I might catch and I very rarely ever measure or weigh a particular fish. It’s no criticism of other anglers who do by the way, but it has to be a bit of a male thing that we obsess so much about catching say a 68cm bass or a 6lb bass and so on. I might not measure or weigh many fish I catch, but when I go running I want to measure how far I run and how long it takes me. I ran 150kms last month which is the furthest I have ever run in a calendar month, so why do I obsess about running statistics and not fish statistics? I might add that a lot of my obsessing about running is because I want to try and keep as fit as possible for my fishing, and if I was to get into boat fishing (which I used to do a good bit of) then I am lessening the amount of exercise I take. Which I don’t want.

Sorry, a bit of a tangent. What I was getting at is that I know I have caught less bass this year than I caught the year before, but it’s the nature of so much of the style of fishing I have been doing. It just doesn’t tend to be a numbers game - which isn’t my thing anyway. Every single bass I have caught or lost or seen or spooked with this lighter side of estuary fishing has taught me something I can take forward. As indeed does every bass I might catch on the open coast, but it’s this closer-contact with this style of estuary fishing that is teaching me so much more about these amazing fish. I also know that I have caught a few specific bass on the open coast this year which I don’t think I’d have caught previously, mainly because I (naturally?) tend to hang back and fish away from the water’s edge to start with in certain situations. It is literally frying my brain at how many more places I have got marked down to take a look at and start fishing. The further I am off the beaten track, the greater my chances, that is one unavoidable thing I have learnt this year………………

I blanked the other day. I had such a cunning plan to move maybe half a mile away from where Dave was fishing because I wanted to access some rip currents which I knew would be created by the bouncy onshore conditions combined with the state of the tide we were fishing. I was absolutely convinced my moving further along the ground was the way to go, and because the sun was out and the water was green and fizzed up, I started off with a white Gravity Stick Paddletail which I rigged on a 4/0 Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig head. I err towards belly-weight weedless hooks with these particular paddletails, but I needed a bit more grip in the conditions, and I also wanted to be able to bump the lure across the rips from time to time. I was excitedly hoping for a hit at any time, and to be perfectly honest I was simply enjoying being out on the coast in some December sunshine.

Dave and I were connected by walkie-talkies which I usually carry with me, and soon enough he was giving me a shout to say he had just caught and released a bass. Pretty soon afterwards I got another shout about another fish, then a while later he landed a better (third) fish so I asked him to put it in a rockpool and I’d make my way back to where he was fishing to shoot a few photos. My cunning plan wasn’t working very well so a move wasn’t exactly unwelcome, plus I was interested to see what he was fishing with.

If there had been bass in front of me I’d have fancied catching with what I was using, and when you’re fishing more than half a mile apart there is of course every chance that a few bass might be somewhat localised. Either they weren’t localised where I had (cunningly) chosen to fish, or what Dave was fishing with was making a difference. To give the guy a load of credit, he’s been fishing so much with his own Labrax Mafia paddletails and twitchbaits - and catching plenty of good fish on them. His three bass from this session came on his smaller Labrax Mafia Morsetto 115 paddletail rigged on a 4/0 14g Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head - in a bright pink colour. A bit more weight was required to combat the strengthening onshore conditions, but what really struck me was the bright pink colour of his paddletail.

To be fair a mate rocked up and hooked a bass on his second cast with a white paddletail, but when I catch sod all and another angler catches three fish on a very different lure colour to what I am using, it obviously lodges in my brain. We continued to fish and move and cover ground, but that flurry was it for the session. I only carry two washable lures boxes with me and I know how to stuff as many soft plastics as possible into the horizontal slot version, but with lures I trust implicitly and lures I need to try and so on? I need to find a few more slots! You all have a good weekend…………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Which I compared to fishing the same place the other day when I had sea conditions I really liked - and it was like chalk and cheese. When I fished there with Del we had a similar size swell to when I fished there more recently, but the big difference was the swell period. I grabbed this from Google which explains things pretty well:

“How swell period works - Measurement: It's measured in seconds, representing the time from one wave's peak to the next. Deep water: In deep water, longer period swells travel faster than short period swells. Shallow water: As swells approach shore, they slow down. The longer period, more powerful swells will break with more force than shorter period swells.

Impact on waves - Long period (12+ seconds): These swells are typically generated by distant storms and carry more energy. They create larger, faster, steeper, and more powerful waves that are often cleaner and more organized. Short period (< 12 seconds): These are often caused by local winds and are generally weaker, choppier, and less powerful.

Why it's important - Surf quality: The period gives a better indication of wave quality and power than height alone. For example, a 2m swell with a 15s period will be much more powerful than a 2m swell with a 7s period. Surf forecasting: Knowing the swell period is essential for accurate surf forecasts, as it predicts how the waves will behave when they reach the shore. Wave energy: Longer periods mean more energy, which translates to bigger, stronger, and more powerful waves at the beach”.

What did this mean in real fishing terms? When I was there with Del, the longer swell periods and stronger wave energy prevented us from accessing specific parts of the mark at specific parts of the tide. You simply couldn’t fish exactly where I wanted to be and when because the more powerful waves kept them under water for longer than usual in a typical tide, and if you had ventured out there between wave sets you’d have got washed in when the next bit set rolled in. We managed to tuck away a bit and Del got a small bass, but we were never fishing the mark in the way I wanted to.

But the other day I was able to access exactly where I wanted to be at specific times in the tide. The fishing wasn’t actually very good I might add, but that much shorter swell period was giving us a far choppier and more predictable sea state so we could push to where we needed to fish - and when. A big thanks to Dave of Labrax Mafia (lovely paddletails!) who I was fishing with for shooting a few decent photos of me into a bass and with a bass for a grip and grin. Awesome to fish with an angler who can actually use a camera!

How do you “compute” where you go fishing? Certain tide sizes tend to get me thinking about the potential for various marks or areas, and of course the conditions on the open coast especially narrow things down. I chose my mark yesterday based on a number of different factors - I do love a short, onshore sea - but I also had a couple of backup places in mind if I ended up finding very coloured water or loads of weed and so on. When I got there it all looked good, and as much as there was a lot of ground to cover if you wanted to, even amongst all that loveliness there was a specific bit that I was always going to make sure I was fishing as the tide started to ebb. The more you fish specific areas, the more you learn their intricacies.

So I start off by covering a lot of ground with your typical paddletail on a belly-weight hook sort of thing. Long-casting but retrieving to my feet, and moving around. For me it’s most likely going to be the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletail on the 6/0 belly-weight corkscrew hook we made for them, or else the 13cm or 15cm Slender Scoop Shad which also sits nicely with the same hook (but I LOVE the Slender Scoop Shads on those Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig heads, check here for the sizing info). I like and trust these particular paddletails as much as you most likely like and trust any number of different and also very good paddletails.

I also rigged a 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick up on what I think is THE best weedless hook I have used for these incredible twitch-sticks - the BKK Armor-Point Permalock (I really like the 5/0 size for the 6’’ DoLive Stick and the 4/0 for the smaller 4'.5’’ DoLive Stick). When I initially bought these hooks they were not easy to find, but I have just done a search and I found them here in the UK (and somewhat cheaper than when I bought them from somewhere in Europe as well!).

Anyway, I didn’t bother the scorer to start with but I was always working my way towards this specific little section of the big area where there tends to be a big gully scoured out as the rocks give way to a bit of beach. How much gully there is depends a lot on how much sand has been shifting around with various storms and spring tides, but I could tell from the shape of the waves rearing up a bit more and dumping down that there was plenty of gully to fish. If I was going to catch then this was where I felt the most confident.

When I am fishing a place where I need to specifically put lures into a gully almost beneath my feet, I tend to turn to soft plastics rigged on jig heads. Fiiish Black Minnows, Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless and Savage Minnow Weedless, those types of lures. I want the paddletail, but I want a bit more weight and at the front of the lure to hold me as long as possible where I think the bass are going to be feeding. Not only can I get down a bit faster with the weight at the front of the lure, but it holds me better in the turbulence and I can also bump the bottom. Very importantly I can also “hold” the lure for those split-seconds as the water strips back.

And what is one of the things I start doing way less of when I am targeting specific ground very close to the shoreline? Casting shorter. If there is any weed in the water then my theory is that the longer your lure tracks through the water, the more chance you have of picking weed up. If I carry on blasting my lure out but my real intention is to fish very close to the shoreline, surely I risk some weed on my lure MORE than if I was to gently cast the lure out just beyond the gully and start fishing it?

Because of all this ninja-style estuary fishing I have been doing, I also find myself naturally standing back from the water’s edge when I first start fishing this gully. In time I will move closer to the water or end up standing on certain rocks out in the water to get an angle on where I want to fish with the dropping tide, but I don’t think it hurts to hold back a bit for those first few casts at least. As I am trying to almost hold the paddletail rigged on the weedless jig head as the water sucks back off the beach, I get that glorious tap, tap - and I strike. In no time at all a plump winter bass around 3lbs+ hits the beach and I can easily nudge the barbless single hook out of its mouth and return it. No measuring, no photos, I know I caught it and I don’t want to waste fishing time.

In due course I hook another bass so close in that I am surprised I didn’t see the fish take the lure, but it comes off. I got a few more bumps which came to nothing, and then I hooked what felt like a better fish which thumped its head in the gully a good few times and bloody well came off. I do think that with this very close-quarters style of bass fishing that you are going to drop or miss a few fish because their window to hit the lure so close to the beach and in that turbulence is smaller than if they were tracking it for a while. I don’t actually know this for a fact by the way, but that is my current thinking - which might actually be an excuse for me not fishing very well!

I ended up moving to access a bit of deeper water a little further out, and I stayed with the same weedless jig head approach because I wanted to try and keep swimming my lures through various gullies which I know are there because I have deliberately walked around this big area at low tide in the past, looking for specific features. What I didn’t bank on was getting absolutely walloped on the drop, and I wasn’t quite ready for it. I had to strike even though I instantly knew I had messed up, but we live in hope I guess and I didn’t connect. I never had another sniff of a bass but the light ended up going a bit loopy and I managed to shoot a few photos. One of those winter sessions that really gets me thinking…………

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If you have been reading my blog this year - thank you as always - then it should come as no surprise that I am reviewing another couple of lighter lure rods. This time it’s two of the 2025 version Skyline rods from Favorite, a company which I think is currently making some of the best lure rods we can get our hands on…………

Here is some information I grabbed from the Favorite website to get us started: “The updated line of Favorite Skyline professional rods is designed primarily for fishing with soft lures on jig heads. The blank combines top-grade carbon materials, including M40X, previously available only for the Japanese market. This carbon fiber is 30% stronger than standard 40T carbon, enabling the rods to be lighter and more sensitive without loss of durability. Additionally, the butt section is reinforced with an 8-directional OCG carbon wrap. The updated Skyline models feature more functional DKK ZrO2 guides on most blanks and Seaguide ZrO2 for ExH models, replacing the outdated Fuji Alconite used in the previous version. The combination of guides in steel frames along the blank and in titanium frames on the tip section unloaded the rod’s tip, improving balance and reducing tip inertia. The design is minimalistic, free of excessive elements with no functional value. As a result, the new Skyline is lighter, more sonorous, and “meaner” than the previous version”.

I have had a lot of proper fishing time with a number of the Black Swan range from Favorite, and I also got to fish with a couple of the previous generation of Favorite Skyline rods a few years ago. From memory they were 8’6’’ rods rated up to 16g and 21g I think, and if you search Skyline or Favorite on this blog I am sure you will find the actual reviews. I remember loving the rods, but because I wasn’t so obsessed with the lighter side of lure fishing for bass back then, my need for lure rods like these was somewhat limited.

Then along comes the truly outstanding Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod (review here), and soon after that comes a growing obsession with creature baits and a lighter side of estuary fishing - and I’m hooked. Lighter lure rods have seriously come back onto my radar again, and thanks to a very kind person I know I managed to get hold of both the Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g and Favorite Skyline ‘25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g lure rods to try out.

And these are different rods to the lighter Black Swan rods I have fished with. Not so different that I’d be buying one of these specific Skyline ‘25 rods if I already owned one of the lighter Black Swans I’ve reviewed (check here and here), but they are deliberately different rods and you can feel it when you fish with them. I like how Favorite have laid it out in black and white on their website: “The updated line of Favorite Skyline professional rods is designed primarily for fishing with soft lures on jig heads”. I don’t find it at all easy to try and technically describe rod actions to you, but from a clinical point of view I believe these Skyline ‘25 rods are what is known as an extra fast action (and yes, on the website they are described as this).

Most of the action in the blank is in the tip section as per their design, or as I borrowed from a website: “A fast action rod bends closer to the tip of the rod blank making your lure more sensitive”. These Skyline ‘25 rods are so good for casting, so easy to accurately place lures, there’s plenty of feedback (with the usual caveats of wind, waves, depth, current, lure type etc.), and as much as these rods are meant to be best for “soft lures on jig heads”, I also think they are pretty damn sweet for any kind of lighter lure fishing you might be doing. Surface lures, paddletails, creature baits, twitch baits, you name it, these things excel.

Two rods rated 5-18g and 8-24g are obviously going to be lighter to fish with than the more powerful rods in the Skyline ‘25 range, whatever’s going on through the rod as you cast and retrieve lures. Tippier than the equivalent Black Swans these two Skylines might well be, but I’d happily take either, indeed I’d be fascinated to try some of the more powerful Skyline ‘25 rods and see how they compare to the relevant Black Swan rods I now know so well.

If I had to compare that incredible Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod to this Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g then I’d say the Black Swan is more powerfully parabolic if that is the right word. An equivalent level of power that bends through the rod more than the Skyline ‘25 which has a more pronounced tip on it. I hope that makes sense because I know what I can feel, but it’s hard to put it into words. Interestingly the lighter rated Favorite Skyline ‘25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g is a bit less tippy than its 862M 8'6'' 8-24g sibling, but of course the 24g rod is a bit more powerful overall than the lighter 18g version. I go out fishing with the 5-18g rod and I come to the conclusion that it’s definitely my favourite out of the two, then I go out fishing with the 8-24g and that rod then becomes my favourite. Or Favorite. A friend of mine landed a 78cm bass at night on his Favorite Skyline ‘25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g, and while it’s an awesome bass, I am not remotely surprised that it was successfully subdued on a rod this “light”.

You know that I don’t worry much about the lure rods we use and how they respond when we fight these bass we chase, but I found it very noticeable from the off how delightful it feels to get bass in on these two Skylines. The way the rods bend makes me feel so confident at closer quarters especially, and whilst I have not yet landed a 78cm bass on either of them myself, I have had a few decent fish when using these rods.

Which rod would I go for though? I have mostly fished with various creature baits at various ranges and also bumped those Savage Gear NED Dragontail lures a lot in current on these two rods - both types of lures rigged mainly on 5g, 7g and 10g cheb weights - but I have also wound up the odd Seeker or surface lure or DoLive Stick and so on. The 18g rod easily deals with 18g lures while still feeling so light and responsive, and the 24g rod can chuck a 24g lure at full power and not feel remotely overgunned.

I am sure you could go over the recommended casting weights on both rods, but I haven’t seen the need to do so myself. I honestly can’t give you my definitive answer because both rods have left such a strong impression on me, and to be honest either of the 18g or a 24g top end casting weights work well for the type of estuary fishing I have been doing so much of this year.

The 8’6’’ lengths sit so well in my hands when I’ve strapped a lightweight 2500 or C3000 size Shimano spinning reel to the rods - I do like the Vanford for my lighter estuary fishing - and yes, I know I am trying to avoid having to give you an answer to the question I asked myself above. Tie me down and I think I’m going for the 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g, but bear in mind that’s my opinion as I am writing this review, but last week I fished a good bit with the more powerful 862M 8'6'' 8-24g and I might have told you that this one was my favourite. Or Favorite. Sorry!

Both these Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g and Favorite Skyline ‘25 862ML 8'6'' 5-18g lure rods are incredible lure rods which I think are perfectly suited to the bass fishing I have been asking them to do. Bear in mind though that I also think the Favorite Black Swan 772ML 7'7'' 4-18g (review here) and the Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rods are also incredible lighter lure rods (I know that this doesn’t exactly help matters). Want a slightly tippier rod that feels so good for precision casting and “bumping” especially? Go for the Skylines. Want a more regular feeling lighter lure rod that is perhaps ever so slightly better suited to all the types of lures/rigging you might use? Go for the Black Swans. But it’s SO down to what sort of lure rod you like, and don’t let anybody tell you that you have to use a specific type of rod for a specific method. Hope that helps, because I’d cheerfully take the lot of them! You all have a good weekend, free from any dream-shattering Ashes cricket and awesome rugby…………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

You might have noticed that I always put a disclaimer at the bottom of a blog post if an affiliate link is used. Not all links on this website and blog are of the affiliate nature, and I only link to gear I know and use, or have used myself for my own fishing. Now that is out of the way, I found a few lure related bits and pieces on the Veals site which I have fished with and which are on special Black Friday prices. Even though it’s Monday………….

BlueBlue Scarnash 120F (120mm, 18g), £13.99 instead of the usual £19.99: reminds me a lot of the brilliant IMA Sasuke 120, this BlueBlue Scarnash 120F caught me a few nice bass when I was fishing with it. Absolutely flies, some good colours, very grippy in bouncier seas, loads of typical hard lure action even at a slow retrieve speed. There is a larger 140F version of this lure on sale as well, but I haven’t fished with this one.

BlueBlue Aizer 125F (125mm, 22g), £13.99 instead of the usual £19.99: long-casting, very shallow-diving, reminds me of the killer IMA Komomo SF-125. Didn’t seem to affect the action when I removed the middle treble, for a shallow-diver this BlueBlue Aizer 125F has got a lot of presence in the water.

Seadra double-sided washable lure box, £3.99 instead of the usual £6.99: I am lost without these types of lure boxes, and especially this specific design where the slots run across horizontally instead of the more usual vertically. This is how I carry my soft plastics.

Seadra Surface Launcer surface lure (165mm 19g), £9.99 instead of the usual £13.99: missile! Very easy to work, some good colours, covers a huge amount of water, I like it for calmer to starting to get a bit more lively conditions.

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Give me the “right” conditions for the open coast especially and I’d fancy some decent lure fishing at least into January around here - with no one year being remotely the same as the next of course. I think back to New Year’s Eve last year when we had a fantastic session because the conditions were absolutely perfect and where we were fishing can often produce fish late (or early?), and then I think about right now and there being so many reports of birds continuing to feed on bait on the open coast AND in the estuaries.

And I wonder what might happen this winter as muggins here keeps going because he’s a stubborn tit who so enjoys trying different stuff to see what might happen. I have had a few bass now in February and March on the open coast, but it’s hardly been epic numbers and if you mixed time put in with rewards then I am not sure there is a huge amount of logic to it. But when was a logical life that much fun? I live not far from a lot of potential fishing, I work for myself so I can work different hours to a lot of people, and I enjoy the simple act of getting out there for a bit of a go. Time spent by the water is good time in my opinion.

You know what I am getting at here though - the estuary stuff and the depths of winter potential. I am miles away from being an expert at this creature bait/finesse style fishing in the quieter waterways of our glorious corner of the world, but I have done enough of it this year to at least feel confident that when I head out, I am not doing too much “wrong” as such. It might turn out that bumping the bottom with a crab imitation style of lure was not what the bass wanted on that particular day or night, but if I go down this route and fish how I now know how, I reckon I’m in with a shout. If there are fish around.

When I had my mate Del staying for a few days last week and we got beaten up with awful conditions, when we fished a few different estuaries it was noticeable to see small baitfish spraying out of the water on regular occasions. Quite often this would also happen when we lifted our lures from the water to cast again. Around here I tend to see a lot of bird activity into October in the estuaries, but I don’t remember seeing so much still going on at this later time of year. We might be in the middle of a brief cold snap, but I don’t worry much about it. Get me some half-decent estuary type conditions and I reckon on seeing a few bass around for a good while.

But what’s going to happen as we move into that somewhat miserable January to the end of March time of year? I managed a few bass in the estuaries earlier this year when I’d never have traditionally even bothered with these waterways, but I am hoping to mix up more knowledge and experience this time around to see what happens. I have fished a lot of places this year that I had never fished before, but there are still numerous marks on a mental list that I have not even got to yet. Is winter the time to try these places or do I leave them until way further into next year?

I tend to trust that if I see mullet there’s a good chance there will be bass around as well, but I don’t fancy seeing mullet mooching around in the depths of winter in most of the estuaries I might fish. What about a few big bass hunting heads-down for crunchy, juicy shore crabs amongst the bladderwrack? As always it’s going to be fascinating to keep on at it and see what happens. Many of the places I fish are a pretty good walk so even if I blank it’s still a bit of exercise. You all have a good weekend, awesome that the Ashes has started again, come on England and Ireland especially this weekend in the rugby………….

I have seen a few anglers complaining online about the Berkley Sick X8 braid which I really like for some of my open coast fishing especially. We all seem to get different experiences with the different braids we use, but I wonder if that’s because an angler quite rightly goes for a spool of the 24lb Berkley Sick X8 braid - and quite naturally trusts that it’s a mainline which breaks at 24lbs. But I don’t think it is. It might say “Max Break 24lb” on the packet, but I wonder what “Max Break” actually means? I haven’t got to the bottom of it by the way, but to me I think of it as maxing out perhaps the one time at 24lbs on a proper line machine in laboratory settings. I am also guessing that no knots were put into the braid for testing.

So I really like Berkley Sick X8 for the rougher side of open coast fishing especially, but over a lot of fishing time with it I soon went up to the “Max Break 36lb” version for the open coast stuff. I choose to ignore the diameter claims on the packets and I know from using the braid a lot that the 36lb version is strong as hell and plenty thin enough for the sort of lure fishing I am asking of it. But I treat it like say a 25lb mainline. It’s bloody strong on a straight pull to a snagged lure, but it just doesn’t strike me as a true 36lb mainline. Nothing scientific in there, just what I feel about the line after a lot of real fishing time. It’s not the most subtle braid out there, but a 150m spool of the “Max Break 36lb” on something like a Penn Slammer IV 2500 is - for me - a great solution to the rough and tumble of the more hectic side of open coast bass fishing. I then treat the 24lb Berkley Sick X8 more like say a 15lb mainline. Yep, some of the braid labeling is frustrating as hell.

The main braids I have used this year for the creature bait stuff have been the dark green 22lb Sakura Sensibraid 12 braid (review here), bright green Sufix 131 in the 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1, grey Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power X8 in the PE#1/Max 20.2lb (recent thoughts here), and the white/purple Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PEX9 in the Max 25lb/PE#1.2. These are all what I think of as bloody good braids, and to me they are perfectly “regular” breaking strains or diameters for any lure fishing for bass I might do - open coast or estuary. I like that added safety factor and slightly less subtle nature of the 36lb (25lb to me as I said) Berkley Sick X8 for the rougher stuff, but all the braids I have been using for the creature bait fishing are more than tough enough to cope with the rougher stuff as well.

And I don’t recall thinking that I should be going lighter/thinner with my estuary braid, but you know how my brain works. One could argue that I don’t really need a roughly 20lb mainline for the more subtle stuff, but would a thinner mainline give me any of the potential advantages, or are these modern 8-strand braids already so thin that any differences would be marginal at best? I have dropped down to a 12lb YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader for this kind of bass fishing, but I can’t actually prove that going down this route has produced any more bass for me. I like to think that it probably has in those very calm and clear conditions we had all summer, but there is no concrete proof I can provide yet. I also haven’t once had any cause to regret dropping down to a 12lb/0.305mm leader I might add, and not once has the use of a brightly coloured braid mainline on a quiet estuary mark given me any cause to worry about putting bass off and so on. Food for thought or that little shit on my shoulder bending my ear?

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

When my mate Del was staying for a few days last week, the three of us were having a conversion about guess what? Obviously fishing, and specifically about the rather lovely bass that was Del’s first bass on a creature bait - check this blog post here. I was remarking on the fact that the first thing Del did when he picked a creature bait out of my lure box was to insert a glass rattle into it with that handy Z-Man Rattle-Snaker tool. Exactly as he would do for his outrageously good wrasse fishing he gets back home in the Isle of Scilly.

Del went and caught the one (fine) bass that particular session, and I blanked. So we were yapping away about fishing stuff, and my mate who happened to blank that particular calm and quiet night then came out with the fact that he had rather sneakily gone and superglued three glass rattles together and fixed them inside his MegaBass Sleeper Craw (on that particular calm and quiet night). He had been convinced that some extra “come and get me” clacking/rattling sound emanating from his creature bait would bring more bass in - but he blanked. He didn’t blank because I am a better angler I might add, far from it, but something had to be going on for me to catch a few and for him to catch nothing. I didn’t know that he had been fishing with three rattles in a creature bait that night - sneaky git! - but it all came out in the wash and we had a bloody good giggle about it.

You know how a few specific fishing sessions really stick in your head with the details of how you approached it and what transpired while you were fishing? I remember starting off with one of those brilliant Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits that night, indeed I caught my few bass that night on this specific lure - but I started off with one into which I had inserted a little glass rattle. I also distinctly remember fishing with it for a while and then changing it for one with no rattle in it because nothing was happening and it was almost eerily calm and quiet. I then pretty quickly went on to hook my first bass on a creature bait in the dark, so I naturally stuck with the same lure which had no rattle in it. And caught a few more.

So we’ve got one night where it seems that rattles in a creature bait didn’t seem to do it for the bass at all. Then we had that daytime session the other day in low light and fairly murky water when a rattle in a creature bait produced the one bass - and I was fishing a creature bait which I had not inserted a glass rattle into. And blanked. Then I had this session here back in the summer when I nailed a bass around the 6lb mark which I had spotted “tailing” in amongst the bladderwrack. Again it’s a session which really sticks in my head for various reasons, with one of them being that in very quiet and calm (daytime) conditions I didn’t realise that I had picked a Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' creature bait out of my lure box which had a rattle in it. It was only after I released the fish that I found out I had previously inserted a rattle into the successful lure.

So we’ve got a few examples of when a rattle in or not in a soft plastic bumped along the bottom seems to make a bit of a difference. I can’t prove anything of course, but like Del I am convinced that a rattle in a soft plastic when you’re wrasse fishing can make a good bit of difference. I will routinely insert a rattle into one of the two slots on the Savage Gear Gravity Sticks when fishing in murkier water for bass, but I have caught plenty of bass in slightly murkier water on soft plastics with and without a rattle inside them - so I don’t know what I really think about that.

“Logic” - if indeed there can be such a thing in fishing when we are trying to catch something which I believe behaves purely on instinct - says to me that I don’t need the supposed benefits of a bit of extra “come and get me” sound when it’s calm and clear (daytime or night time though?). I think back to when a couple of friends started hammering a lot of good bass on white senkos at night on the south coast of Ireland, and one lad in particular remains absolutely convinced that the addition of a rattle in the tail of his senko produced more bass for him. What did I do when this lad kindly got me into night lure fishing for bass like this? I inserted a glass rattle into my white senko and hammered a bunch of bass.

A rattle in a soft plastic that you’re working along the bottom makes a lot of sense to me for murkier water and/or when letting them trundle around in current. Whenever I have been fishing these deadly Savage Gear NED Dragontail Slug lures more recently in current, I have made sure to check that the pre-installed rattle is making a sound before I cast it out, or else I replace the rattle if it breaks. I believe it helps but again I can’t prove it. The pre-installed rattles in the lures do break quite easily, and I guess that is either because they are not the finest quality, or else it’s because the rattle is near the head of the lure - the lure naturally sits head down and I have been mostly bumping them over broken ground in current. I also think back to fishing very fast estuary current over in Ireland with the MegaBass XLayers, and I remember a few occasions when the bass would suddenly stop hitting your lure but your mates were still catching. So you check the lure and find the rattle has broken. Clip a fresh lure on with an intact rattle and you start catching again. Does the rattle inside the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless make a difference when I am bumping them over shallowish reefs on the open coast? And so on.

Go figure? I have no definitive answers as you can tell, and I would seriously welcome your feedback here in the comments section. If you are an England rugby supporter then like me you had a great weekend - what a game against the All Blacks, wow!! Dare I dream again? Well done Ireland, Wales gets a reprieve for a week before the All Blacks this weekend, and as for Scotland? Let’s not go there…………

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

With one of the principal aims of these few days being to find Del a bass or two on a creature bait. He was never going to struggle with bumping stuff along the bottom and then translating all those taps and knocks into when you get a bass hit and need to strike it. Wrasse fishing with plastics is his main fishing back home on the stunning Isles of Scilly, and if you know anything about wrassing on lures and creature baits for bass, well to me they are basically the same thing - except the types of locations and ground are different. So all we needed to do was get Del in front of a few bass up an estuary.

Which has been easier said than done when you’ve got these current conditions! Steam has literally been leaking out of my ears these past few days as I have tried to come up with logical bass fishing solutions because so many places I would have loved to take Del have been out. I went for a run early yesterday morning, and by the time I was back I had come up with what I hoped was a decent plan which took into account the strong, and getting much stronger, southerly winds with torrential rain later in the day.

I had told Del not to go buying loads of lures because I have got plenty here, so we jumped in the Epic Berlingo yesterday morning and headed out. I opened my lure box up and asked Del which creature bait he fancied the most, and immediately he went for one of those fantastic looking Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' lures. Why this particular one I asked? Because it’s his favourite wrasse lure by miles, and he is absolutely convinced that the larger than average “claws” help attract the wrasse that bit more with how much they flap around in the water. Interestingly when I nailed my first bass earlier this year on a lure that wasn’t the (killer) MegaBass Sleeper Craw, it was on the Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' (check here). It was also interesting that the first thing Del did when I gave him the lure from my box was to insert a rattle into it with one of those clever Z-Man Rattle-Snaker tools which he carries with him all the time for his wrassing back home (check here for some details). One of those fantastic size 3/0 Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hooks and a 5g Berkley Fusion cheb weight was the end gear to present the creature bait.

Where I had decided to take us fishing was very sheltered in the strong winds. A while later when we had moved around a corner which opened up some stunning and very quiet estuary ground, I heard the yelp you always want to hear - “I’m in”! I had rigged Del up with the Favorite Skyline '25 862M 8'6'' 8-24g lure rod (review to come, how the hell does this company make so many awesome lure rods?), and I could see straight away that it was a decent bass. I got down to the water’s edge and grabbed one of the darkest looking bass I have ever seen. Easily 5lb+, and as delighted as Del was with his first bass on a creature bait, I cannot tell you how thrilled I was in so many ways to see that fish come in. I can’t pretend that I would have been out fishing much with the conditions we have been getting these past few days, but we are out trying, and we managed to tick a big one off the list yesterday morning. Outfriggingstanding!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

With steam coming out of my ears I came up with what I hoped was a good solution. Del’s train was on time, so we got back home, wolfed some food down while saying hi to my lot, then we got into our waders, jumped in my Epic Berlingo, and off we went. Rods were already rigged up and I changed the handle over on one of the reels because Del fishes cack-handed. He lives on the stunning Isles of Scilly where they don’t have any bass fishing, so I had told him not to worry about lures and so on because I’ve got it all here.

I rigged us both up with what is becoming my go-to approach for estuary ground where you are working a bit of current for bass - a 7g Berkley Fusion cheb weight (weight to change according to depth and flow of course), an Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hook with keeper in size 3/0 to allow for the lure, and a Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug 10cm lure for both of us.

Had I made a decent call though? I explained to Del about the ground and how we might approach it, and about ten minutes later I got one of those utterly delightful hard taps which literally sings its way down the rod and into your hands. I shouted over to Del that I was into a bass, and literally as I did he struck into a bass himself and came up with the fish you can see here. Made my day? Made the month for me more like. I do love it when fishing works like this. What an evening of rugby as well…………….

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

When I went to Canada last year, the regulations were that you can only use barbless single hooks for the striped bass. I really like this - take away the element of choice and just get on with it. At times there we so many fish around it didn’t really matter if you missed the odd fish, but even in our fish-fever moments, I don’t recall ever thinking that a pair of those very good Mustad Kaiju single hooks in size 4/0 (with the barbs crushed) on a surface lure like the long-casting 120mm 20g Berkley DEX Strider wasn’t working highly effectively. It worked awesome in fact.

I am very happy to use the size 3/0 Mustad Kaiju single hooks when I turn to the Savage Gear Seekers or Surf Seekers in say the 23g, 28g, 30g, 35g or 40g sizes for our own bass. The masses of bass fishing I have done with single hooks on various surface and sub-surface hard lures caught me plenty of fish, but it also left me somewhat doubtful as to their unqualified success rates. My more recent feelings are that you need to use the biggest single hook you think you can get away with and then you stand a much better chance of hanging on to our bass when you fish with hard lures rigged like this.

I know that treble hooks are a necessary evil as such, but I just don’t like them very much. I don’t like them when I am trying to unhook a bass which might be twisting around, I don’t like how they are so indiscriminate with where they end up in the mouth or face or eyes or throat or gills of a fish, I don’t think they are as effective at hooking bass up and keeping them on as a big single hook, I seriously dislike treble hooks at night especially, and really good treble hooks are not at all cheap. If I am to use a few specific hard lures which I happen to really like, I know for example that they simply do not swim quite right if I swap the trebles for singles. I still think the IMA Komomo SF-125 is one of the best shallow-diving hard lures for example, but in my experience it needs the three treble hooks to swim correctly. I can’t be without the IMA Hound 125F Glide and for me it works perfectly with the middle treble removed. I love the long-casting and shallow-diving Savage Gear Gravity Shallow lures, and when they were coming to life I was able to push for only two treble hooks instead of three on the larger 11.5cm 20g size.

I am not trying in any way to tell you to stop using treble hooks by the way! I use them sometimes and I will continue to do so when required. I would urge you to crush all barbs on any treble or single hooks though, but again, that is completely your choice. And so it should be, even if I personally just can’t see the need for a barb on any hook we would use for our bass fishing. That’s me though, and it might well not be your thing. More and more people seem to want to tell other people what to do and what to think these days, so what happened to merely proffering a considered opinion and NOT getting all riled up when somebody doesn’t agree with us? The hippy thing never did it for me at all, but I do think that a bit more peace and love would go a long way these days!

What I do feel supremely confident using for our bass fishing though is soft plastics with a relatively big single hook in them. Whether that single hook be a regular J-hook or a weedless/Texas/offset hook, I don’t really care - it’s the single hookpoint on a bigger hook that fills me with confidence when I am bass fishing. Both from connecting with the bass point of view, and also from keeping the bass hooked up all the way in. We will never hook every hit we get, and some fish are always going to come off. It is my belief that my hookup ratios are better with the bigger (single) hooks in soft plastics, and also my fish retention rates. I can’t prove any of this by the way so it’s just a feeling, but isn’t confidence a massive part of our fishing?

Anybody starting to feel more confident about the England rugby team again? The kiss of death I know, but I am hoping it will be a good win against Fiji tomorrow and then a monster game against the All Blacks next weekend. The game of this weekend has to be France v South Africa tomorrow evening though. Does sport get any more physical than that clash promises to be? You all have a good weekend and may a few lovely bass smash your lures if you are out and about…………..

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Has anybody else been out and about either fishing or walking the dog or running and so on, and been struck how gloriously autumnal it really feels out there? I was out for a dog walk at 6.30 this morning and it could not have felt more like autumn if you tried. Rain in the air but so mild I was walking in a t-shirt, the leaves continue to fall from the trees and then swirl around in the strong onshore winds we have at the moment, and because this fishing thing consumes so many of for so much of the time, I was obviously thinking about where I might be fishing when it’s like this.

Which I am not doing right now because of a load of work I have on this end, but I am one of those anglers who obsessively keeps on the various fishing related resources/apps - winds, tides, swell, webcams etc. I was speaking to an angler I know a while back and I was quite taken aback when he told me how he wasn’t remotely interested in what was going on out there as regards conditions when he wasn’t able to go fishing. Because I am the exact opposite - I want to remain as well informed as possible. Even if I can’t actually go fishing, I would always argue that what is going on right now helps shape and influence what might be going on when you can go fishing. How about the simple mental exercises which revolve around imagining where might be very fishable when you can’t get out there or if the conditions are really challenging? Or do I quite simply need to find some help?!

I didn’t know way back then that a bit of nasty stuff was part and parcel of this kind of work, but I am a fast learner and I am very able to compartmentalise stuff and move on with my life. I have been called all manner of things from the internet and I have even had a few threats of physical harm directed at me, but it’s always the same with these sad, pathetic, lonely idiots putting stuff like this out there. When you meet the odd one of them in real life and actually call them out, they do nothing more than shrink away and try to avoid eye contact or having to speak with the real person they have been unpleasant to. The safety of a keyboard or a phone doesn’t half embolden weaker people.

I’ve been called this and that, and I have been accused of many things over the years. All connected with fishing I might add, which I find slightly ironic when you consider we go fishing because we enjoy it. It gives us pleasure to go fishing, and I have always found pleasure in the success of other anglers. My first thought when I go online is always to be nice. It’s so easy to be nice is it not? Celebrate anglers’ catches and enjoy discussing all things fishing. A smaller bass for a new lure angler might not seem that impressive to an expert for example, but whatever I do or have done in fishing, THE one thing I have always, always clung to is that we all start somewhere - and I pride myself on remembering what it feels like to be starting out. And then how easy it is to be put off by throwaway, unpleasant comments.

It’s no different if you have children - you learn very quickly how much positive influence you can have on their upbringing if you nurture and praise when it is needed and/or hopefully deserved. You also realise pretty quickly how easy it would be to crush your children with the wrong words or behaviour. For sure they then go on to become teenagers and obviously know way more than you, but that’s just part of growing up! You know what I mean here if you are a parent. You hold it within the palm of your hand to help shape your children for the better, but likewise you are able to do the direct opposite if that is the kind of person you are.

I am big and old and ugly enough to be able to take any of the crap that is dished out at me. When it happens I see it as no more than jealousy, but quite why anybody would be jealous of me and my life when I don’t feel remotely envious of anybody else has always been beyond me. I also will never understand how a true angler could possibly be jealous of another angler’s success. Surely good fish or good fishing is to be celebrated? Again, maybe I am a bit naive, but I am perfectly happy being me. Of course I wish that doing my job didn’t attract any nasty stuff, but it’s the way of the world and a few people just aren’t that nice I guess. I would rather people be unpleasant to me and hopefully leave other anglers alone though. I know the score and it’s been an unavoidable part of my life for a long time.

And I let most crap go without getting involved. I might be many things, but I like to think I am not stupid and I am also very observant. Way more than most people realise. I have been at this a long time now and I know way more anglers and angling trade people from all around the world than you can imagine. I also know and hear way more than you realise. I do what I can to stay away from as much toxicity as possible - like some of the Facebook fishing groups for example - but I am not stupid. I pick up on the unpleasant stuff and mostly I just move on and enjoy being alive and loving my amazing family.

From time to time though I am going to call something out, just like the other day when I sent some photos to a marketing person at Savage Gear and wrote a few words to go with them. I have put some of the photos up on here that were used, and yes, I used some of those photos on a blog post the other day so you might have seen them before. Fishing is a business like any other business, and this marketing person put the photos up on Instagram and Facebook, as was intended. Savage Gear and/or Pure Fishing need to do marketing to help sell products, just like a company like Apple markets to me and I buy too much of their gear!

I was tagged in the posts and then I saw this exact comment left on the Savage Gear UK Facebook feed: “Placing sponsored lures on pics no doubt”, along with what I presume is a laughing emoji (I don’t use or really understand emojis). Be rude to me, be unpleasant to me, I usually ignore all that kind of crap, but I don’t tend to feel like brushing off accusations of being dishonest. I have never even thought of changing lures in a photo to try and I guess claim that a fish was caught on a certain lure when in fact it was caught on something else. I have been accused of this a few times and I will not sit by and stand for it. Something as pathetic and dishonest as this would never even cross my mind. I have never seen it done and I would not work with anybody who either did it themselves or asked me to do it. I called the guy out and I don’t think he liked it very much.

Cue various claims from the person that it was meant to be tongue in cheek, that I was “angry” to call him out, and that he or she was surprised I acted so shocked. Here is one of their comments for example: “it was tongue in cheek but obviously hit a nerve ... you have a huge platform and are in a privileged position . As for being an idiot and growing up appreciate the constructive comments ..... by the way plenty of people switch lures for photos , being in the industry as long as you have im surprised you act so shocked......Anyway tongue in cheek”. I would polity suggest that learning to write and punctuate correctly would have helped get the points across a bit better, but hey ho.

If “plenty of people switch lures for photos” then I haven’t come across it, and I am screwed if I am going to take it quietly when I am accused of doing so myself. Sorry for such a protracted blog post this morning. I can take the crap because it’s like water off a duck’s back with me, but from time to time I think that some of the crap should be highlighted. I am old and experienced enough as I said earlier, but just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. If either of my two girls ever behaved like any of the keyboard warriors I get to experience myself - they simply would not anyway - I would come down on them like a ton of bricks…………….

I don’t know about you, but over a lot of fishing time I tend to come to various “conclusions” in my head that concern which rigging components seem to work best with specific lures. I really like the corkscrew-type weedless hook approach with the Gravity Stick soft plastics for example, and the same with the DoLive Stick. They just seem to look right in the water and a load of bass on these combinations obviously raises the confidence levels.

We all have our most trusted lures, and one paddletail which I always have in my lure box when I go out bass fishing these days is the Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad. You know that I work with Savage Gear who are owned by Pure Fishing these days, but I would hope that you also know from reading this blog that I go bass fishing with the gear I want to fish with because I trust in it. I may well have literally stumbled upon the Slender Scoop Shad on a Savage Gear press release, but I am so bloody glad I did. What was brought to market as a freshwater lure has become one of my go-to paddletails for bass fishing. You will be no different to me here with you trusting implicitly in certain lures.

I started off fishing these particular paddletails on belly-weighted weedless hooks, mainly the 6/0 ones we did for the Savage Gear Gravity Sticks which I like for the 13cm and 15cm Slender Scoop Shads (I tend to turn to the 4/0 hooks for the smaller 11cm size). I often fish them like this and I don’t think these particular paddletails swim right if you use no weight at all on them. Then I started to mess around with a cheb-rigged approach as you can see below, because I think that when you put the weight on the front of these Slender Scoop Shads, it changes the action to a more intense roll which I really like - and the bass obviously like as well which kinda helps! That weight at the front also opens up different techniques you can apply to the lure.

Then a friend finally convinced me to take the plunge with those rather clever Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig heads. You can check out the different sizes of these jig heads that I use with the different sizes of Slender Scoop Shads here if that helps. The cheb-rigged approach caught me a bunch of bass and it works really well, but the simple weedless jig head approach obviously simplifies things a bit, and I really, really like the way the Slender Scoop Shad swims on these specific Decoy Violence VJ-36 weedless jig heads.

Anyway, so I dropped what felt like a decent fish a couple of days ago on the 13cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on the 3/0 5g Decoy Violence VJ-36 jig head. It casts pretty well as a combination, it looks fantastic in the water, I can swim it way shallower than I initially realised you could with the right design of jig head, and if need be I can also fish it with a sink and draw or bump it along the bottom and so on. I feel really confident with this lure and jig head combination on the end of my mainline in certain situations, so when I dropped that fish and hooked no more, I went for a wander. With the same lure/jig head.

I was moving along a beach on an ebbing tide, with various rocks and areas of structure out in front of me. There was a bit of bounce on the water but I stayed well back from the edge without even really thinking about it. I definitely put this down to having done so much of this more finesse, estuary based fishing this year when a much quieter and more measured approach pays off big time. I noticed a small gully in between two big rocks, and a while ago I’d have most likely gone right down to the water’s edge and waded out a bit to get to where the gully was a bit deeper.

But I didn’t. I held way back and instinctively decided to put my first cast into what looked like the shallowest part of the gully very close to the shoreline. I had the same lure and jig head clipped on from earlier when I dropped that bass, and as a combination it’s pretty good for accurate casting. Sometimes your first cast on a different bit of ground does actually go exactly where you intend, and literally as the lure hit the shallow water and I turned the handle to tighten up, my rod tip slammed over and the bass you can see above hit me (thanks Dave for the phone photo!). There wasn’t much of a scrap because the bass was almost out of the water straight away with it being so shallow and so close to the shoreline, but what a buzz. Everything came together in a split-second and I know I’d have most likely never even known that bass was there say last year because I’d have probably got too close and spooked it without even realising. Never stop learning, that’s my thing completely. You all have a good weekend and enjoy the autumn internationals if rugby floats your boat. Come on England, and come on Ireland v The All Blacks tomorrow night from Chicago……………….

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Anyway, I was listening to an interesting podcast episode about striped bass fishing the other day. We obviously don’t have striped bass here in the UK, but I do find it interesting to learn more about how US and Canadian anglers chase these fine fish because they are often direct parallels as regards ground and techniques and so on. This particular angler in this podcast episode alluded to white being far and away his favourite lure colour - something I happen to agree with. We can never really prove what works the absolute best I suppose, but if you fish a lot you’re going to gravitate towards certain things. I really like white lures and I can talk myself into a white lure in many different bass fishing situations. The more bass I catch on white lures, the more I convince myself how well this colour works.

For some reason though I have pretty much convinced myself that when bass are feeding head-down, a darker shade of lure tends to work the best. My “theory” of course comes from nothing more scientific than a lot of fishing time and me catching more bass on the bottom on darker lure colours than brighter lure colours. Which in turn is surely self-perpetuating. If I think that I have a better chance of catching bass on the bottom with a darker lure colour, I am obviously going to clip on a darker lure colour when I am fishing like this. The more bass I catch on darker colour lures when I am fishing the bottom, the more I convince myself how well this approach works.

When I fish with creature baits I tend to clip on something with darker tones. My head tells me that the bass are rooting around that bit more deliberately and they are more likely to hit something which looks a bit more natural (I know, cotton candy hard lures!). I happen to have a packet of the brilliant Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' creature baits in a bright pearl colour that I must have bought on a whim some time ago, but I haven’t yet plucked up the courage to fish them where I would usually fish with the creature baits (surely it’s getting to the stage when I should be calling them crab lures or something like that?). I’m going to turn to the darker (more crab-like?) colours because I feel so confident with them.

This is the end gear I am currently using for the creature bait stuff

When I am fishing rough ground and I am bumping the bottom with a jig head weighted paddletail like the killer Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless, I am nearly always turning to the darker colours. But if I am swimming the lure more like I would a hard lure? Yep, I will often start with the (brighter) White Pearl Silver or the Khaki colours, then go from there. When we used to bump soft plastics on jig heads and smash a lot of bass on some specific Irish marks, the lure of choice was often the MegaBass XLayer in the Ayu colour. Why? Because it worked, but things obviously work a bit in reverse here. You pick a colour, it starts working, then you work backwards a bit because you have now convinced yourself that it’s the best colour - when you are the one who picked it out in the first place, not the fish!

I wasn’t going to go fishing the other day, but I literally stumbled across two packets of these Savage Gear NED Dragontail Slug lures which I am currently obsessing about because they are working so well. These two particular packets which I must have got from somebody within Savage Gear stood out so much because they were two colours which I would not have picked out if I was going to bump these lures along the bottom on a cheb rig. Then my brain starts bouncing.

I was on my own and I just felt seeing what might happen, rather than doing what I would more usually do on this particular mark - which is to bump these Savage Gear NED Dragontail Slugs along the bottom in a run of current. It’s been working well recently, and various darker colours of these lures have been producing bass. So I have naturally convinced myself that when I fish these lures like this - bumped along the bottom - the bass prefer the darker colours when the lure is tight to the sea bed. And yes, there might be some coincidence that before I found these two random packets of the lures, the only colours I owned were the darker ones. But hey, I am trying to think like a fish!

Yep, you guessed it, the bass I caught on this particular session came to the brighter coloured Savage Gear NED Dragontail Slugs, fished tight to the bottom. If I had blanked I would have naturally convinced myself that my “gambling” on the brighter colours when fishing this specific technique was the reason for the blank, but it didn’t work out like that. I guess what I am getting at is who the hell really knows? The experts might tell you that you have to fish a specific colour in a specific situation, but my own non-experty thinking is that if you asked a sample of one hundred bass anglers what lure colour they would turn to in different situations, you will end up with a frazzled brain! Take my heart attack pills and you too could dream about this sort of stuff every single night……………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

I’d love to talk a lot more with the designer of this specific Favorite Black Swan 772ML 7'7'' 4-18g lure rod, because as with all the Black Swan rods I have fished with - a good few now, check this review for example, or look here - every rod is subtly different in design and overall feel. Of course rods of different lengths and casting weights will be different I hear you say, but it’s more than that here. I get the sense that every single Black Swan rod I have fished with has been fully thought out as a distinct rod on its own, but also as part of a range. The 9’ 56g Black Swan isn’t just a longer 8’5’’ 56g for example, and the 9’ 36g rod isn’t simply a longer 8’5’’ 36g, and so on. I will admit to initially being slightly worried that this 7’7’’ long rod rated 4g to 18g might be just a touch too light in the tip, but I was miles off. If an 18g lure rod can be a weapon, then this thing is that.

A lightness of touch as you’d expect with the 4-18g rating, but wow this rod’s got some guts when you need to push a (lighter) lure out there into a bit of wind, or better still, present something like a creature bait somewhere very specific (check here for the sort of creature baits I am currently fishing with). Lighter in overall feel for sure, as indeed a rod rated 4-18g should be, but damn this rod is so sharp and precise and steely.

And the feel when you have calmer, quieter conditions is something else. I could honestly swear I felt a prawn giggling at my creature bait offering when I was bumping it along the bottom in the dark. It’s that sensitive. Feel is so subjective though, and I always wonder if most anglers realise how many factors can influence how much you can actually “feel” at the business end - wind, waves, depth, current etc. - however cheap or expensive your lure rod is. Give me perfect conditions for maximum feel and this stunning length of technical carbon is like a telephone with how much it can tranmit to you. So deft in the hand with a light spinning reel strapped to it - the previous generation Shimano Vanford C3000HG suits it well for example, combined weight a measly 275g - and if you take into account the 18g top end, I haven’t come across a situation where I can use a lure rod like this where I felt remotely undergunned. I am sure I could go over 18g if need be, but I have been a good boy with this rod. The new 2025 Favorite Skyline range of lure rods are deliberately a bit tippier than the Black Swan rods (reviews to come), so if you are after a lighter lure rod that reminds you action wise of a more powerful lure rod you might be more used to, then you need to see this incredible Favorite Black Swan 772ML 7'7'' 4-18g lure rod.

As much as I love this rod and have used it the most for bumping creature bait stuff along the bottom, it’s when you are actually working lures through the water that it truly comes alive in your hands. It’s an absolute peach for surface lures for example, with that (relative) power in the tip giving you so much control over a topwater like the deadly little 9cm/11g Savage Gear Pop Walker 2.0, and twitching 4.5’’ or 6’’ DoLive Sticks or both sizes of Gravity Stick Pintails around is incredible. So much control for a lighter rod. You know when you are fishing with a lure rod that feels so good you are literally grinning all the time? This is that sort of rod for me. That jolt from a bass hit when you are holding this rod is just awesome. Lure rods are always very personal things, but if you can show me what you think is a better light lure rod than this Favorite Black Swan 772ML 7'7'' 4-18g then I am all ears. Favorite is making some truly incredible fishing rods and I respect the hell out of them for their work……….

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

The other day I simply could not say no to an open coast session. I know I was in Ireland for a couple of weeks, but I always keep a close eye on the forecast and conditions for various areas I might fish around home. The forecast promised the first bit of bounce for a while, so I made the call to get up early and access a stretch of very good looking open coastline the moment the receding waters would let me get around to it. My sheepdog Storm is nearly 14 and I still take her fishing a lot, but on this mark I chose there’s a bit of a climb which she couldn’t get up even in her prime and I can’t really carry her plus a rod at the same time. So it was me, myself and I. And yes, I obviously took some early morning saltwater in the face as I pushed the ebb tide to try and access the ground as early as possible.

It did feel so good to find bounce and fizz and lovely green water with very little weed to mess things up. A S/SE wind made the presentation of certain lures a bit tricks on some parts of the mark, but I settled on the larger Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless to keep me down in the water a bit, and soon enough I got one of those wonderful hits which you can’t really miss. I don’t really like dead-lifting a bass on something as fragile as a modern lure rod, but I couldn’t get down to the water’s edge and as carefully as I could I lifted a bass around the 4.5lb mark up the rocks and into a rockpool for unhooking. Damn that felt good!

I kept on moving around to cover different bits of ground, expecting more fish with the conditions, but for some reason not finding any more until later on as the tide began to really strip right out. As much as possible I turn to soft plastics for my bass fishing for various reasons, and especially because I far prefer the simplicity of the single (barbless) hook. But where I was now standing felt like hard lure territory, so I clipped on a lure I haven’t fished with for a while but which I am still convinced hooked me my biggest ever bass over in Ireland a good few years ago - the IMA Nabarone 125F. That particular bass still haunts me from time to time, and especially because a mate had his trebles straightened out on another bass during the same session.

Anyway, so I clipped on the exact IMA Nabarone 125F you can see above. I would normally remove the middle treble from any hard lure which carries three of them - barbs are obviously always crushed - but there seems to be a select few hard lures which I don’t think swim quite correctly when you remove a treble and/or change over to singles. The IMA Nabarone 125F is one of those lures for me, but obviously I can’t prove if any potential modifications do actually make a difference. It’s only a feeling I get.

I got nailed on my second or third cast with the lure, almost right beneath my feet. I got the bass to me and into a rockpool for unhooking, but I could see that the lure was way down the throat of the fish. Even with barbless hooks I knew it was going to be a tricky unhooking, but I gave it a (gentle) go. The rear treble had got entangled with the gills though, and when a load of that thicker blood started coming out of the gills I took the immediate decision to do the humane thing and dispatch the bass. I will always return bass whenever possible, but at the end of the day as anglers we stick hooks in fish for our enjoyment - and it ain’t always going to work out for the fish. However much we try to mitigate against it. I haven’t fished a diving hard lure like this for a while and this happens.

When I got home I weighed the bass at 3lbs dead, and when I gutted it I found a single shore crab in the stomach as you can see above. Don’t shoot me for putting a photo up like this please, it’s part and parcel of taking fish to eat if you choose to do so, or if you need to because you can’t return the fish. My wife and youngest girl had a fantastic supper out of this fine fish, and guess what I was thinking while they were eating the bass and I was eating some delicious leftover chicken curry my awesome wife had made the day before? Two open coast bass I have seen gutted or gutted myself in the last week or so, and both contained a shore crab. More plans are germinating in my already addled brain……………

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

And when you start fishing with the various TPE soft plastic lures, you might have noticed that you can’t get a corkscrew (which sits on a typical weedless hook) into them, plus you can’t mix them with other lures, they are naturally buoyant etc. Either you say sod this and leave these types of lures alone, or else you recognise the value of them for wrasse fishing especially, plus more and more bass fishing scenarios which I am kinda stumbling upon - so you look for terminal gear which can help you present them the right way. I obviously can’t prove it, but it makes me feel so confident that a creature bait such as the Nikko Craw 3.2inch for example is naturally sitting bolt-upright on the bottom, waving its claws, and saying “come and eat me if you dare” to a hungry bass. And they do often dare to!

As an aside to this specific Eagle Claw hook I want to tell you about, I got out fishing the other day for the first time since getting back home from my guiding work in Ireland. Catching that first bass after guiding other anglers is always such a buzz, and even more of a buzz was the fact that this this beautifully marked bass smashed my Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug fished exactly as I would a regular (crab imitation) creature bait. Not bumping the lure in current like I have been recently - they slay like this! - but deliberately working it along the bottom (outside of current) like I would a creature bait. The fish above hit the lure so hard I saw my braid moving through the water almost before I registered that there was a bass on the end!

Anyway, thanks to a friend I came across these awesome Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hooks recently, as per the photo above. I don’t know which came first (photo above), the similar Z-Man ZWG Worm Hook - photo below - or this Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L12 Weedless hook, but you will notice that they both have a sort of moulder keeper not far from the eye of the hook which really helps securely hold these TPE soft plastic lures in place. I have fished with both types of hooks a good bit now, and whilst I really like the Z-Man ZWG Worm Hook (a mate has caught a lot of good bass on them with the creature baits), I do prefer this Eagle Claw version. I think that where the moulded keeper sits on the Eagle Claw hook is a bit more efficient and easier to work with, and the overall shape of the hook holds different soft plastics in place so well. The points on both hooks are really good, but there is just something about the “Lazer Sharp” Eagle Claw version which really does it for me. For the most part I have been using these hooks in size 3/0 because they fit the Nikko Craw 3.2inch and Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' creature baits so well, plus the 10cm Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug which I find myself using more and more. I hope it goes without saying that these hooks also work well with your more regular soft plastics, but they are obviously going to rip up more easily when you remove the lure from the hook.

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Yep, I feel my older age this morning with it being a grand total of thirty two years since Coroner released any new music. Where on earth did all those years go? I have had their incredible new album “Dissonance Theory” on repeat through my headphones since I got downstairs a good few hours ago now, damn it feels good to have these guys back. Whatever your musical persuasion, if you truly love music then you will know the emotions I am feeling right now. One of my favourite ever bands are back, and they are back with an absolute banger of a new album.

Oh, and what has to be just about THE best band who are currently playing music on this earth have just released a ridiculously catchy and perfectly glorious new song, check the video below. I am trying to work out some dates so I can catch the mighty Portuguese band Gaerea live in London next month. This is what the long hair is for!! You all have a good weekend, from an aging lover of awesome metal………………

I choose to return the bass I catch myself, but if I ate fish I can assure you that I would be taking the odd one to eat. Our anglers were keen to have bass for supper with both John and his wife being such good cooks. In due course the “right” size bass of about 3lbs was caught and dispatched, to go with another bass about the same size we had taken the day before. When the food came out for supper it looked so good even I was tempted to have a go at some fish!

Anyway, of most interest to me was that the single thing in the stomach of the open coast bass was a shore crab. I guess that something like a sandeel is going to digest faster than a crab, but where this particular bass was caught was nowhere near any estuaries, and the fish itself definitely had the colouration you tend to see on the open coast. Yet it had still been feeding on crab at some point (John was telling me that some pollack they caught from the boat and took to eat earlier in the year had been stuffed full of crab). I am not going to suggest the obvious as regards lure types, but I have been thinking about it for a while and I have been fully intending to experiment with things if and when I get in amongst a bunch of fish. I’d be interested to see what might happen at night for example when I am fishing a gentle surf on a beach…………

It’s not every day that you get to witness proper bass smashing bait off the top, but thanks to a very good call by John Quinlan, that is what we found the other day. We rocked up to find big swirls on the surface, with what looked like some properly big bass way out back almost coming clean out of the water at times. There is obviously a part of me that initially thinks wow, I need to get in on it myself, but you are so wrapped up in the excitement of other anglers catching good bass and all the associated banter that it’s honestly as much fun to be around it and helping people get involved. I’d rather be doing this type of work than not, and to do it requires that we don’t fish.

Our anglers have caught some good bass on a load of different lures and techniques, but it was fun from my point of view to be able to bring a few of the new colours of Savage Gear Seekers and Surf Seekers (Green Mackerel, Pearl Silver, Silver/Black Mullet) and then see them getting smashed by numbers of fish. I am not saying that the new colours produced more bass, but it’s always fun when something a bit different works so well.

We are very lucky to get a lot of repeat anglers who come and fish with us year after year, and I find it really interesting how they switch onto the different stuff that works so well out here. We are constantly moving around and fishing different kinds of water, and whilst John and I obviously carry a good selection of lures plus spare rods and reels etc., our anglers tend to come fully kitted out with gear they have adapted and refined over the years. At one point yesterday that all time classic hard lure - the IMA Hound 125F Glide - was working well in the water conditions we found, and our anglers were carrying them for example.

I did get shown up at one point yesterday, but I never claim to be an expert and we did have a bloody good giggle about it. At one point, one of our anglers asked me if it would be worth switching over to the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125, a lure which I seriously love - but I just didn’t quite fancy it in the particular conditions we were fishing. So I said nope, let’s stick with the Seeker for the time being, but then another of our anglers went and hooked up right next to me. I asked him what lure he was using, and as you can guess it was the Sandeel Pencil 125! He is a complete wizard with this lure which kinda helps, so I turned to the first angler and said something along the lines of “er, I knew the Sandeel Pencil would work in these conditions, let’s change!” Tongue firmly in cheek of course. As serious as we are about trying to find the best fishing for our anglers, if we don’t collectively have a bloody good time and laugh loads then what’s the point?

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

When we pulled into the massive Cork harbour it was in fact a day much like it is here in Cornwall this morning - low cloud, drizzle, good bit of breeze blowing, welcome to Ireland! We got ourselves up to Kilkee on the west coast and fell upon the local fish population. I had been told about catching thornback rays and bull huss about twenty five miles up the huge Shannon estuary, so with some element of doubt we all headed way up river to fish. It was almost silly the numbers of fish we caught up there. There was a massive swell on the open coast so we tucked away inside the bay at Kilkee and caught plenty of decent pollack. The locals said the mullet were uncatchable, so a friend of mine set up a ledger rig with bread and hooked up within about five seconds of casting out. I fell in love with Ireland on that trip and I continue to look forward to going over as much as possible.

What I should be doing right now instead of writing this blog post is driving up to the ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare. Then I would be doing the long drive from Rosslare to where I do my co-guiding work around Waterville in Kerry. But for what I am pretty sure is the first time in more than 25+ years of taking various ferries to Ireland, the crossing has been cancelled because of the forecast. As you can imagine I have done a hell of a lot of crossings over the years, from flat calm to seriously bouncy, but I can’t remember ever getting cancelled. Until today!

I am now booked on the ferry for tomorrow, but I have my doubts whether that one will sail. Whatever the case, when the ferry next goes, I hope to be on it. Somewhat frustratingly I was getting regular updates from Kerry yesterday, with reports of some cracking bass fishing on tiny tides and difficult conditions. For sure the weather they are currently getting is hardly ideal, but the beauty about that part of the world is that there is nearly always a viable option to go fishing and be in with a shout of fish. If and when I get over there I can’t wait to work again with John and Lynn and the anglers who come to fish with us. You all have a good weekend, here’s me hoping that the next post I put up will be from my favourite country on earth……………

I have been living here in SE Cornwall for more than 15 years now (in the SW since I was 19), and I particularly love the open coast fishing from say October through to the middle of January. If I can get fishable conditions on either the north or south (open) coasts of Cornwall then I feel confident of some good bass fishing on lures. But I think back to a winter not that long ago when November and December were completely unfishable on any open coast bass marks I know of due to incessant storms and filthy brown water full of weed all over the place. Of course I tried, but it was a waste of time. You roll with it because as saltwater anglers we are totally beholden to weather and tides and so on, but it doesn’t stop you getting massively frustrated!

Then I think back to one of the most enjoyable open coast bass sessions of last year - which was on New Year’s Eve. “Perfect conditions” is very different to us all with where we tend to do most of our fishing, but last winter threw up a good bit of what I tend to look for on different parts of the open coast. I like to think I have a fairly good handle on the bass fishing I tend to do out on the coast, and whilst I will blank as much as the next angler, I think I know enough about what to look for with conditions and tides when the weather gets colder. I accept that I might live in a part of the UK where we can get some good winter bass fishing at times, but I chose to make this part of the world my home many moons ago because fishing is such a huge part of my life. I am mightily stubborn by nature and my wife and I continue to work hard to keep our heads above water and live somewhere we both adore.

So I know that if you give me the “right” conditions, I can get some good lure fishing for bass out on the coast at times of the year when perhaps a number of other bass anglers’ gear is gathering dust with the wait for spring…………………

But is the open coast where the most potential is for targeting bass all year round on lures? That winter when I completely lost November and December to awful open coast conditions, well I know that I didn’t once even think of targeting any of the estuaries in Devon or Cornwall. November and December in the estuaries, for bass, on lures? Winter flounder fishing was never my thing when I was bait fishing, so my knowledge of some of the well known estuaries for that species is limited at best, but I think it’s been proved beyond doubt by a few forward-thinking and highly skilled bass anglers (if you are reading this then you know who you are) that in some of the rather more “unique waterways”, there is definitely the chance to legitimately target bass on lures all year round. If you get the conditions.

Every winter I hear of big bass coming to say cod or flounder anglers in an estuary system such as the massive River Tamar, but up until relatively recently I didn’t really think that it was feasible to chase bass like this on lures during the colder months. A north coast skipper I used to know landed a 12lb+ bass on flounder gear in the depths of winter a good few years ago from a well known estuary, but I didn’t really think of connecting a fish like that with the lure fishing methods I was using.

You know where this is going I guess, but more so than simply saying “fish creature baits” during the colder months, isn’t it a case that we can learn and adapt? Surely we need to analyse and recognise that if we want to be stubborn and try to catch bass on lures when it was previously thought impossible, we need to modify our tactics to target fish which more than likely are not behaving like they might be right now when there’s a good chance your local estuary is full of bait and the bass are chasing them. I had a stack of bass the other day on my own and they ranged from about a pound to maybe 3.5lbs. You know me, I am not remotely trying to boast, rather that when an estuary mark I know produces bass fishing like that, I know there is a lot of bait around - and there most likely isn’t going to be in the depths of winter. So if I am going to keep on trying to catch bass year round, surely I’d be a bit daft NOT to modify my tactics and indeed locations and try to find those bass which might be slowly mooching around on the hunt for a year round food source such as crabs or small flatfish? What I do know for sure is that it’s going to be eternally interesting trying to find out what is actually possible………………..

Check this blog post here for how I am rigging my creature baits at the moment

I was kindly given a couple of spools of this braid to try by a friend in the trade, so I loaded a 150m spool of this 12-strand, dark green Sakura Sensibraid 12 in the 22lbs (10kg/0.12mm) version onto a previous generation Shimano Vanford C3000HG spinning reel back in March of this year - and it’s had a hammering since then. I gave the other spool to a friend and I was interested to watch him give the stuff a (successful) battering on a few open coast sessions we did together, mainly because I have fished with this braid almost exclusively for so much of the estuary based bass fishing I have been doing this year. A hell of a lot of it if that is any help, so the braid’s had a lot of water and fish time.

And it continues to perform absolutely flawlessly. We are talking about an expensive 12-strand mainline which I think feels every bit as good as the price suggests. How a braid feels I accept is hardly the acid test, but damn it’s some smooth stuff when you load it onto a spinning reel and take it out fishing. I only ever use the FG knot to secure my braid to my leader, so I am not the person to ask about any other lesser leader knots and how they work with this particular Sakura Sensibraid 12. For the bass fishing I have been doing and the few creature baits and so on that I have snagged up and often got back, this is a strong and very reliable mainline. I have been fishing mainly with the 12lb and 16lb YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader for my estuary stuff, and with the FG knot I like to think I know what a strong mainline actually is.

For sure there has been a bit of colour loss over about the six months I have been fishing with this braid, but that is perfectly normal. I wouldn’t expect any line management issues on a spinning reel like the Shimano Vanford C3000HG I have got this Sakura Sensibraid 12 on, even when casting light lures into lively headwinds at times - and there haven’t been. I can’t sit here and tell you that this Sakura Sensibraid 12 is better than say Sufix 131 or this Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8 braid which I have gone back to (check this blog post here, it’s easily as good as I remember!), not with my lack of technical knowledge - but it’s bloody good and I have absolute trust in it. When it comes to fishing tackle I base my thoughts and opinions on real fishing time that I spend with the gear. I don’t speculate and I believe in forming my own opinions. If you are after a high-end, bloody lovely dark green 12-strand braid to load onto a modern spinning reel, I would urge you to put this Sakura Sensibraid 12 on your list of mainlines to think about. You all have a good weekend, come on the Red Roses, you girls are awesome!

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So I naturally began to take a much closer look at the numerous estuaries I have here at home. Living in Cornwall gives me access to so much water, but pretty quickly I realised that bumping lures at the mouths of the numerous estuaries wasn’t always going to cut it for various topographical reasons. Bumping soft plastics on the ebb tide where I used to spend so long fishing for congers, cod and thornback rays wasn’t really going to work in 100’ of water at the mouth of the huge River Tamar for example. Especially considering that for the many thousands of hours I spent fishing that particular mark, I never saw one bass landed!

And to be honest the whole estuary size thing freaked me out a bit. I know the open coast can look daunting as well, but I find it a easier and more logical to think about the open coast in terms of reefs and beaches and boulder fields and so on. Go walking around a massive expanse of estuary though and where on earth do you start if you want to try and catch bass? Personally I believe one of the best ways to go about it is to literally break an estuary down in your head. Don’t think of it as one single expanse of water.

Don’t think of it as one single expanse of water if that makes sense. An estuary will often have as many localised features as a stretch of open coast, but when you think about it as a whole, I tend to find it pretty daunting, and especially at high water when the ground is covered with water. You can fairly easily find a likely looking bit of reef out on the coast, but now give me a huge inland waterway and where on earth do I find accessible current or areas of bladderwrack or drop-offs and pinch-points etc.? Once I stopped thinking about estuaries as a whole and instead started to break them down into more logical little areas, it all started to make much more sense and my catch rates began to reflect this.

And I continue to do this. As I alluded to the other day, the recent and very sudden change from summer to autumn forced me to go back to the drawing board. I used my experience though to deliberately not just go on Google Earth and start frying my brain by looking at massive expanses of water just because they might be sheltered from a certain wind direction. Nope, what I did was to literally sit down and go through my head. Where have I looked before which might have the sort of ground which could hold bass? Was there somewhere I had looked at in the past but almost dismissed because it didn’t look expansive enough? I come back to the whole creature bait thing once again because it is teaching me to really concentrate on very specific little areas and trust that they can hold bass, instead of wildly flinging lures around in as much water as possible in the hope that a bass swims by. And it worked again.

I asked this question on my Facebook page the other day: “Does anybody else sometimes get slightly freaked out by the size of some of our estuaries, in terms of where do you go looking for bass in them? So much water, how do you narrow it down? I have been targeting bass in estuaries almost from the start of obsessing about these amazing fish, but with what I keep stumbling upon I often feel like I am still at day one”.

And I got this brilliant answer from a very kind angler who has managed to condense a lot of thinking into a really useful nugget of information that I think is so helpful (big thank you!): “Falmouth Estuary can feel overwhelming Henry at first because of its size, but it's actually a fantastic Bass fishery if you break it down into smaller target areas. I tend to focus on features that funnel bait - creek mouths, channel edges, and areas where tidal flow is concentrated. On a flooding tide, bass often push right up into the shallows chasing sand eels and sprats, especially around weed beds and rocky margins. On the ebb, I'll work the drop offs and deeper channels where they wait for food to be carried past. Early mornings and evenings can be magic here, particularly in calm clear conditions. Lures that imitate local baitfish work well here, but soft plastics fished slowly can be deadly when the water's a bit murky. The key is to move, observe, and fish the tide - the estuary's size becomes less daunting when you think of it as a series of smaller, fishable zones”.

Put this sort of thinking into practice and I would hope that learning how to fish big estuaries becomes somewhat easier and less daunting…………….

I am sure that with a lot more time spent around this particular area, bass will come out at very close quarters on the creature bait stuff especially, but in fact this area is fishing a bit differently to how I envisaged when I was checking it out on Google Earth. Which proves yet again that as good as internet based fishing research can be, nothing beats feet on the ground and checking an area out in real life. A nice bit of current over relatively shallow water and what seems to be a pretty rough bottom obviously holds a few bass when that water is moving, and if there is one thing I do love in bass fishing, it’s bumping lures in flow. I love how different it is to say banging out a Seeker in a big surf. I love the finesse required in flow, and I seriously love those hits. Every single hit has to be analysed and reacted to literally on the spot, and when that rod goes over it’s awesome.

So the other day I wandered off a bit to see how far up into the current line I could get. Second cast and I snagged and lost the only 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug I had with me, so I thought what the hell, why not bump a creature bait down what was a decent bit of water moving through. I was fishing with a 7g cheb weight and it felt good as it trundled on down, so I dug around in that fantastic little HTO Double Latch 20.5cm lure box I carry with me all the time now when I am estuary fishing like that, and came up with one of the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4’’. I went for this because those 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slugs have a rattle in them and they have done really well for me recently. When we used to fish the regular 4’5’’ MegaBass XLayers over in Ireland (these lures also have a rattle inside them) in some strong estuary currents, over a lot of time and fish, a few of us came to the conclusion that the sound of the rattle did make a difference as the lure was bumping along the bottom down the current.

Check this blog post here for my current approach to this creature bait fishing.

Remember when I talked about that rather clever little Z-Man Rattle-Snaker tool? When I want to get a rattle into a soft plastic, this is what I use, and I picked out that Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4’’ because I had previously put a rattle inside it. I rigged up again after my snag-up, and cast the lure up into the current. It hit the bottom and I was having to gently bump it along with the current to try and avoid the snags, then I got one of those gentle but totally unmistakable bass hits. I gave it a second to feel the hit again, then I set the hook home. The bass felt solid from the off, but it required no line from my reel and I was really pleased to see a proper autumn bruiser sliding up the bladderwrack in no time at all. I rarely measure or weigh any of my bass, but this thing was so chunky I was interested to see how long it was.

My mate Andy kindly held this 68cm bass for me so I could get a few shots in some filthy weather, but the photos I got do no justice to what incredible shape this bass was in. Somewhat different in colour and around the shoulders from what I would expect to see out on the open coast, it sometimes feels like the bigger estuary and open coast bass are almost like different species of fish. A very new location to me which is fishing a bit differently to how I imagined it might, and when a bass like this turns up so early into my experience with this area? Big confidence boost to keep on fishing it and learning about the place, and as I do so it’s throwing up a number of questions to which I have few answers to yet……………

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

A good few years ago a few of us fished a daytime estuary session in Dungarvan harbour on the south coast of Ireland. There were most likely four of us fishing, and we’d have been bumping Fiiish Black Minnows, MegaBass XLayers, and other similar lures (on jig heads) in a good run of current around the last couple of hours of the ebb on a spring tide. We were casting onto what I guess is sand or mud, with no snags that I ever remember, and when the bass fishing was on it was simply incredible. As it was that particular day. We absolutely smashed them. Good bass after good bass came to what I call tend to call “bumping” - a simple technique where you literally Czech-nymph (it’s from fly fishing, Google it) your soft plastic on a jig head down a run of current and basically let the current do the (bumping) work for you. It’s up to you whether you do a bit of gentle sink and draw on the lure, but in enough current and over a clean bottom, there’s more than enough action on the lure for you to simply maintain contact and then react to a hit. The hits are generally fantastic, and the scraps from decent fish are amazing in the strong current. I absolutely love bass fishing like this.

So we’re buzzing, and because the weather and tides are essentially the same that night, we make a plan to do exactly the same thing when it was dark. Which we did. Expectations were through the roof because the fishing during the day had been so incredible. The corresponding night tides could not come fast enough, and we were almost beyond ready…………..

And we blanked, and I mean properly blanked. From one of the best bass sessions you could ever hope to have during the day, to not even the hint of a hit on the same tides and weather, but in the dark. Same lures, same techniques, same anglers, same location, and we blanked. Both those Irish sessions have stuck in my head ever since. The first one for the quality of the fishing, and the second one because we had to have done something very wrong to have blanked. I refused to believe that so many (daytime) bass were suddenly doing a no-show just because it was dark, and I remain convinced to this day that the bass were actually there that night, but they were feeding differently - and we simply weren’t switched onto it.

I fished a session fairly recently in a Cornish estuary where Mark and I did really well during the day via bumping these Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures in current. I am starting to obsess about these lures which I think are a more than viable (and definitely cheaper) alternative to the lethal MegaBass XLayer (what I really want to find out next is how these Dragon Tail Slug lures might work where I’d be more normally fishing a creature bait, because they sit bolt-upright etc.). I want specific things from soft plastics which I am going to bump in estuary based current, and those things I want will change depending on the depth and makeup of the bottom and so on. Anyway, we had a bunch of bass on cheb-rigged 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures - during the day. Some nice fish as well.

So we made a plan to fish the corresponding tide that night. Same weather, very similar tide size, we were buzzing. We obviously fished the same techniques which had worked for us earlier that day, but the fishing wasn’t nearly as good. I had one nice bass - thank you Mark for holding the fish so I could get a few photos - and dropped one, and Mark also landed one. I know that no two sessions are going to fish the same, but once again that marked difference to day and night fishing specifically in estuary based current had reared its head.

Which obviously gets me thinking. If the bass were feeding on something which happened to be on the bottom during the day - crabs, prawns, sprat etc.? - then was the food source they had come in for at night either something different, or was the food source itself doing something different and perhaps not on the bottom or moving so close to it? I hear some anglers say that when bass are on they will hit anything, and I know what they mean at times. But when the bass are feeding in a specific way and we the anglers aren’t presenting the right type of lure at the right depth or in the right way? Bloody hell I’d love to be able to think like a fish because there is SO much I don’t know about all this. You all have a good weekend, good luck to the rather awesome Red Roses, you girls are something else! Our eldest girl is 21 today which I can’t quite believe……………..

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

From memory I was probably fishing with something like PowerPro braid at the time, so to go from something which was relatively agricultural (but bloody strong) to something so different and refined was a big step for me. I don’t need a new mainline for my lure fishing by the way, not with how much I rate the premium Sufix 131 and cheaper Berkley Sick X8 braids especially, but I have fished for extended periods with so many different braids over the years - and I got to thinking that it might be interesting to go back to the first 8-strand I tried to see if it really is as good as I remember.

Because from memory I never had anything close to a single issue with this Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8 braid way back when. I absolutely loved the stuff and I fished with it for a long length of time. I have now fished with a bunch of different Varivas braids over the years, but something about the first one I tried has always been there for me. There is now an incredible array of 8-strand, 12/13-strand and even 16-strand braids on the market for such a wide range of prices, but if your first experience of something different is a really good one then I’d suggest that something about it is always going to sit in your head.

I can’t remember what this Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8 braid cost when I first tried it, but it was never a cheap mainline, and at around £45 for a 150m spool of it, it’s definitely not a cheap mainline now! I remember how well it lasts though, and I am very much into reversing the braid on my spinning reel after a year or so of use to get more fishing time with it. I have been fishing with it a few times already, caught a bunch of bass, and so far this Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE X8 braid is easily as good as I remember. I will report back in due course…………………

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So I had to give the itch a bit of a scratch. If I had been planning to go fishing I thought my local coastline would be too big, and the north coast webcams were looking pretty damn hectic. I was being a good boy and getting on with some work, but the estuary-based itch kept itching away. So I gave and hit the road. I really wanted to see if where I was thinking about would be fishable on strongish westerly winds, and also whether there might be a few bass about. Can I call it work if I demand of myself that I give that Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug soft plastic a proper go? Product research and testing and all that.

And lo and frigging behold if firstly the place I had been thinking about didn’t look more than fishable in some testy conditions, and secondly I went and missed a solid hit on about my third cast with the lure. I had cheb rigged it on a Berkley Fusion 7g cheb weight and one of these rather interesting Eagle Claw Trokkar Magworm TK125 3/0 weedless hooks which has a really good “keeper” system that holds these TPE soft plastics in place so well. It looked like the right sort of area to try a creature bait, but I wanted to see how this 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug would react when fished in a similar way. I also fancy these things being twitched about on a lighter cheb weight perhaps.

A while later and I got one of those unmissable whacks and bass on. I guessed the fish at about 3.5lbs, but I wasn’t bothered about the size or the length because I was way more interested in the catching of a bass at a new mark in tricky conditions, and on a new (to me) lure. It’s very early days of course, but I needed that jolt of confidence to persist with the lure - and I got it. Now I can relax and see how the lure performs in different situations and on different setups. Help! You all have a good weekend…………

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

And this lad was hammering a lot of good wrasse, so I naturally asked him what lure and setup he was using. First off I was a touch taken aback that he was wrasse fishing with that awesome Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod, especially considering the often vertical/up and down nature of this type of lure fishing - but the rod was eating this kind of fishing up with no worries at all. As for the lure? Here’s me working with Savage Gear/Pure Fishing, but apart from some samples of a larger US version, I hadn’t seen the 10cm Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug soft plastic he was fishing on a simple but highly effective cheb rig.

There are three sizes of these Savage Gear Dragon Tail Slug lures, a 7.2cm, an 8.8cm and a 10cm. They are made from a TPE plastic - like the MegaBass Sleeper Craw, Nikko craw, Z-Man lures etc. - which means that you cannot mix them with other soft plastics. What this material does give you is buoyancy (they sit nice and upright, perfect for a bass to inhale them!), plus they have an inbuilt glass rattle which I guess you can easily remove if you want to, but I really like this feature. I asked to see the 10cm size because that was the version this lad was smashing the wrasse on. As with wrasse fishing with the Z-Man lures, soft plastics like these really last well when you get in amongst a lot of “chompy” fish. Not such a problem with bass of course, but if I can get a longer life from my lures then so much the better.

Check this blog post here for my current approach to this creature bait fishing

I am many miles away from being a bass fishing creature bait expert, but I do now feel completely confident that I am doing nothing wrong if I fish these kinds of lures in what I think are the right areas. It’s time to experiment a bit more though, because I really enjoy this side of fishing. I managed to recently get that all important jolt of confidence that creature baits work well at night, but I want to try branching out a bit and see how different lures might work when I work them along the bottom in the same sort of areas. Gotta be worth twitching around as well?

Why you might ask? Because who knows what might or might not produce a few more or bigger fish. You sure as hell won’t ever know if you don’t give it a proper go, and I am always perfectly happy to take a gamble with my fishing to see if I can further my knowledge and confidence. There are a lot of very good anglers out there catching plenty of bass over similar ground, but they aren’t fishing with creature baits (which I am convinced are working as crab imitations). You know as well as I do though that where there are shore crabs, there are also a lot of other food sources for fish like our bass. Surely it can’t hurt to try and imitate something else and see how that might or might not work for me? Chasing different options, you know that’s me all over, and I don’t believe in standing still and doing the same thing over and over again. I do love a good play, so let’s see what happens. What I do know is that I can almost justify going fishing like this as “work”! Gotta test different stuff out, you know how it is……………..

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So I was out fishing with a friend the other night, and because I have done so little of the night stuff, I had obviously not previously noticed that this lad was fishing with the red light from his (awesome, review here) Fenix HM65R ShadowMaster headlamp permanently turned on. And I mean on, like I used to bait fish at night when for the most part my headlamp would be permanently illuminated and most likely pointing at the rod tips etc. This lad Dave catches a lot of bass at night, including an absolute cracker of 78cms a week or so ago on a paddletail which he has designed himself and is going to start selling soon (check out Labrax Mafia on Facebook or Instagram, anybody who physically makes their own soft plastics AND then catches their largest ever bass on one gets my respect in a major way).

Anyway, because I am always interested in how other anglers go about their fishing, I naturally asked the question: “Dave, do you always fish with your headlamp turned on when you are targeting bass on lures in the dark”? To which the answer was basically “yes, but only the red light”. “Do you think it spooks the fish?” was obviously my next question - “no, not at all” was the reply - and as much as I have always believed and been led to believe that any unnecessary light on the water at night is going to spook bass in shallower water especially, I simply cannot argue with the numbers and sizes of bass Dave catches in the dark when he is fishing with one of the four different red light settings on his Fenix HM65R ShadowMaster headlamp permanently turned on (usually setting 2 or 3 if that helps, with 1 being the dimmest and 4 being the brightest red light settings).

I am not here to tell you that it’s suddenly the right thing to do to leave the red light on your headlamp on all the time when you are lure fishing for bass at night, but it doesn’t half make life a whole lot easier to fish like this! Plus a red light is so good for retaining your night vision as well. When it comes down from on high that any kind of light spooks bass at night, I must admit that I have always wondered how on earth we actually know that for a fact. Of course it makes sense that on a dark and lonely stretch of coastline or estuary, the introduction of a foreign light source shining on the (dark) water might well spook some of the fish, but does it really? Is there a difference with how fish react to white and red lights? Note that Dave does not fish with his white light on at all, but he does keep his red light on and he catches loads of bass at night. As in all things fishing, you need confidence, and he feels fully confident fishing like this. I for one can’t really argue against it because of what he consistently catches.

I think back to when I was doing a lot of night fishing with lures myself and I almost prided myself on as little light coming from me and my headlamp as possible. There is a particular rock on a particular reef that I would often wade out to in the pitch black with no light of any sort to guide me, and tripping up then face-planting in the cold water on a December night ain’t the most fun you can have when you’re out fishing!

What this approach does is remind me how good that incredible Fenix HM65R ShadowMaster headlamp is (review here). As much as I am a fan of the amazing little Nitecore NU25 headlamps - I use this one here for dog walking and/or running in the dark, and this one here lives permanently in my fishing rucksack, lock mode engaged so the buttons can’t be pressed accidentally - the one red light setting on the NU25 isn’t much good for anything other than changing a lure or perhaps bringing a bass to hand. I don’t much like wandering around the rocks on the Nitecore NU25’s red light, and I certainly don’t like wading out over dodgy ground with it in the dark.

If I am to at least give Dave’s “red light permanently on” a good go, then it has to be the Fenix HM65R ShadowMaster headlamp and its brilliant and very adjustable red light options. The battery life is fantastic and I am pretty good at keeping an eye on how much battery is actually left - press down once on the red light button when the light is off and not in button lock mode - but what I will probably do is buy one of these spare Fenix rechargeable batteries that I can charge directly over USB-C and then keep it in my rucksack for emergencies. I am all for making life easier, but the only way I can gain the confidence to fish with a red light on all the time is to go out and try it and (hopefully) catch a few bass like this. Red light fever, thank you Venom, if you know, you know………………

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This is not a tale of an epic bass fishing session by the way, but it really got me thinking about how every single hit or bite I am getting on these creature baits seems to be subtly different. Winding into a bass on a hard lure is awesome, but it’s more often than not very easy to connect with them - keep winding! Gauging when to strike and trying not to miss the hit from a bass which has chosen to feed head-down and inhale your crab imitation lure calls for split-second analysis, self-control, and then a reaction. Too swift to react and you miss the fish. Too slow and the fish might well eject the lure. And so on. It’s a challenge, and I really enjoy the directness to the end process if that makes sense.

So I was kneeling well back from the water to cast over some rafts of bladderwrack, then when I had fished that bit I would gently drag my creature bait over the top of the bladderwrack to drop down to the bottom again and keep fishing. I was rigged up with what has become a go-to setup for this type of lighter, ninja-style estuary fishing - the awesome Favorite Black Swan 8’5’’ 24g rod, a very lightweight Shimano Vanford 2500 or C3000 spinning reel, Sakura Sensibraid 12 braid (review to come, loving this stuff), 12lb YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader, and one of those smaller Size 1 (20lb) BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clips I was telling you about the other day. I find myself turning to those amazing Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits a lot of the time now, rigged as per this recent blog post here with a 7g Berkley Fusion cheb weight and a 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook. Sorry for all the details, but I am getting a number of questions about this creature bait fishing for bass and it’s easier if I tell you what I am fishing with and then you can make up your own mind.

Into the ebb tide and I slowly creep my lure across the top of some bladderwrack, then concentrate on keeping a tight line to the lure as it comes off the weed and drops to the bottom in some very shallow water. Literally as I feel the creature bait hit the bottom again, there is almost instantly a very sharp “tap” from a bass. Your head instantly tells you to strike because you have had a hit, but if you strike right now I will lay money on you missing the fish (I know this because I have done this a few times!). So the grownup, mature me (??) hangs fire and waits for what I hope will be another tap and then the fish starts to move away with the lure - this is what seems to be the most normal type of hit on these lures, but in reality they are all subtly different.

So I am coiled and ready, but after that initial, sharp “tap”, there is nothing more. What I do see a couple of seconds later though is my braid starting to move to my left. I say something like “you sneaky git” in my head, point the rod at the bass, and strike hard. That gorgeous Black Swan hoops right over and a few inches of braid come off the reel. Because I am fishing with a 12lb leader I have set the drag on the reel a touch lighter than I would if I was fishing normally for bass. I know this lure rod very well and it felt like a decent fish, but with where the fish was starting to come towards me via the pressure I was applying, it went straight into a great big raft of bladderwrack. Sometimes you come straight through this, but this time it all went properly solid, and by the time I had straight-pulled to try and free the fish from the weed, all I got back was my end gear with a load of weed on it. No more bass! You are never going to win them all of course, but I’d have liked to see that one. You all have a good weekend and I hope your fishing is more successful than mine was this morning………………

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So when a friend first showed me the BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clips (£3.99 for 10), last year I think it was, I did a bit of a double-take. It was 99% the same clip I had drawn and tried to get made with Savage Gear. I have heard rumblings about some “political” stuff that went on, but the main thing now was that the lure clip I was after actually existed in the real world. So I obviously bought some to try out, and to be honest I haven’t really looked back since.

Did I need a new lure clip when the ones I had been using were doing me just fine? Not really, but the “genuinely fascinated by lure fishing tackle” part of me just likes the slightly more thoughtful shape to the (more expensive) BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clips. I like the way the narrower top of the lure clip suggests to me that it slightly better holds the leader knot in place when you’re fishing, and I like the look of the movement I get when using weedless hooks or jig heads. Does any of this make a blind bit of difference when I am out fishing? Most likely not, but an iPhone doesn’t make actual, old fashioned phone calls any better than the first mobile phone I ever owned. We like what we like though and we can change things up. The size I fish with nearly all the time are the ones which are most similar to the Breakaway Mini Link clips - the Size 2 (31lb) BKK Fast Snap-41, as per the photo above.

I hadn’t bothered buying any of the smaller Size 1 (20lb) BKK clips until this friend showed them to me the other day when we were creeping around an estuary with the creature baits. Again I must ask myself the question - did I need to scale down slightly with a lure clip when bass fishing like this, and again the answer is most likely no. But I do kinda like the idea of these smaller Size 1 clips for the more subtle approach. These smaller Size 1 BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clips don’t play particularly nice with the larger weedless hooks, jig heads and hard lures that a lot of us turn to for a lot of our bass fishing, but when you are scaling down they are rather nice and neat. As per the photo above.

I make no apologies for always bass fishing with a lure clip by the way. From time to time I have tried going down the route of cutting and re-tying my lures and/or hooks on when I change lures over, but it’s a complete pain in the backside and I can’t be doing with it. I haven’t had a single experience yet in lure fishing for bass that has led me to believe that a decent, lightweight lure clip is having any negative effect at all on how the lures are working and ultimately appealing to the fish. So it’s lure clips on the end of my leader for me, and yes, I have also experimented with using no leader and fishing braid straight through to my lure clip. This also is not for me and I would suggest that a fluorocarbon or indeed monofilament leader is in no way a weak point in your setup if you know how to tie a proper FG knot. So there you have it!

Another newish lure clip I am also starting to like is the HTO Pear Link (£1.99 for 10), as per the photo above. Again I have had no issues when fishing with it, but there is something about the BKK clips which appeal to me a bit more. Another paperclip style lure clip which is strong as hell is the Seadra Speed Lure Clip in the 25lb size. They work well but ideally I’d prefer a smidgen more room for the hook or jig head or hard lure to move around. I can’t really justify spending a bit more money on these BKK Fast Snap-41 lure clips, but I like them, I lose very few of them, and I know they work.

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I love a lovely bit of spring and summer weather here in the UK, but of course it forces the angler to do what is required to try and catch the fish they are after. What would be the point of me flogging what feels like a dead horse out on the (flat) coastline when I can turn to more viable alternatives? There are so many estuaries in the south west and I don’t know nearly enough about most of them for a start. Why estuaries you might ask? I don’t subscribe to fishing “rules” as such, but what I have noticed over a good few years is that estuary bass fishing is almost like another pastime when I compare it to my open coast bass fishing. The same fish but oh so different how the different types of water can fish in various conditions.

It did feel good to track the weather, check a few webcams, and then chuck a couple of the more regular washable lure boxes into this new Westin W4 Super Finesse lure bag that I am trying out to see if it’s anywhere close to a viable alternative to the HPA Chest Pack (which I can’t live without but which I have basically given up trying to find in stock). It’s very early days with this Westin bag, and I had to make a couple of simple modifications to get it to work for me, but it’s interesting so far. Anyway, out come the more regular hard and soft lures and off I head to pick up a friend and take a look at conditions around Whitsand here in south east Cornwall.

Now I was aware that it properly chucked it down during the night as we headed out first thing in the morning, but what we found out there was something else. The coastline around here can colour up pretty fast with hectic onshore conditions, indeed bass fishing the open coast here in south east Cornwall can be a real juggling act between what we had, what we currently have, and what is coming. Get it right and it can fish really well, but get it wrong and you’re left looking elsewhere. I had never seen quite what we found though, and I am still slightly kicking myself for not taking any photos to show you what the sea looked like.

What I guess went and happened is that there was so much intense rain in a short spell overnight that it literally picked up all the dust and debris that has been accumulating over such a prolonged dry spell, and this then ran down the cliffs and straight into the sea. No absorbing any rainwater into the soil because it’s been so dry, and what we found was the most intense and defined line of intense brown water I have ever seen out there in about fourteen years of living and fishing around here. When I checked later in the day there were numerous reports of local flooding. I don’t mind pushing coloured water when it feels worth it, but there was no way anybody in their right mind was going to fish lures in that kind of filth.

So we moved a good distance along the coast to a mark I had not fished for a couple of years but which looked a bit clearer. The water wasn’t ideal but we decided to give it a go, and pretty quickly Dave landed a small bass on the drop. Hopes had increased but that was it and nothing more was landed from a few hours of fishing increasingly coloured water in lovely bouncy sea conditions. Casting and swimming/bumping/sink and drawing with more regular lures such as my beloved Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless on that ridiculously good Favorite Black Swan 852H 8'5'' 16-56g lure rod (review here) felt so different to creeping creature baits along the bottom on the somewhat lighter-feeling Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g (review here), but after a few minutes it felt so normal all over again. I love how lure fishing for bass is forcing me to keep learning and adapting, but I do love it when the sea splashes up around you and you can literally taste the fizz and excitement. Roll on autumn and winter and all the fishing this time of year can give us addicted nutters!

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Check this blog post here for how I am rigging my creature baits at the moment

The other day I alluded to how I began to notice how much more “grabby” that MegaBass Sleeper Craw is when you drag it across the top of some exposed bladderwrack. Killer lure, I would never say otherwise, but I do find that a cheb weight setup to a weedless hook doesn’t “grab” the bladderwrack nearly as much so your chances of then being able to drop a weed-free lure off the end of the bladderwrack are greater. Marginal it might be, but I remember saying to a mate that I was convinced it was going to make a difference one day.

And it did the other day. The photo above shows the sort of ground over which this particular bass came from. The weed in the immediate foreground is where the edge of the water was. I cast my cheb-rigged Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature bait to roughly the start of the arrow at the rear of the photo. I then fished it along the bottom to where the arrow starts to cross the bladderwrack. My lure now comes across the top of that ridge of bladderwrack without “grabbing” any of the weed and/or catching any little bits and pieces. Of course it’s not a guarantee that you will never “grab” a bit of weed when you drag your lure across the top of floating bladderwrack, but I have found that my chances are better when I don’t have the Sleeper Craw on - which might not make a difference for you of course.

Because everything is going on so close to me - kneeling down, trying not to break a natural horizon - I can see my creature bait coming gently across the top of the bladderwrack as I turn the reel handle. When my lure reaches basically where the tip of the red arrow is, I stop winding and allow the lure to drop back into the water. Off the edge of the bladderwrack my lure tumbles, and as it heads towards the bottom in some very shallow water, I suddenly get a very sharp “tap” which I can feel so well through the rod and into my hands. I don’t strike, and instead I drop the rod a bit to give the bass a touch of slack, then I do strike hard as my braid suddenly starts to knife through the water to the left. Fish on! I don’t know exactly how far out I did actually hook this bass, but it can’t have been much more than a rod and half length from where I was kneeling down. The more I do this type of more finesse based estuary fishing for bass, the more I am finding out about where these incredible fish might well be on the hunt. I find the whole thing eternally fascinating. You all have a good weekend…………

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So as per my most recent blog post, this mate of mine went out and caught his first bass on a creature bait (all 65cms of it!!), and it happened to be at night. He then went out the next night and caught a few more. So now he’s got that confidence you so badly need when you are trying a different technique or lure or location and so on. He now trusts that he really can catch bass with a happy lobster on the end of his leader, and he also knows that what I believe are crab imitation lures also work well at night. I myself am very confident that these lures work in the right (daytime) situations, but I hadn’t yet tried one at night, indeed my night fishing efforts since my heart attack have been very minimal for various reasons I won’t bore you with.

So over last weekend we arranged to meet up and give it a crack in the dark. I wandered down to stand slightly back from the water’s edge because even though there was no light, it was very calm and still and any bass did not need me splashing around in the shallows. I clipped on one of those Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits rigged on a 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook with a 7g Berkley Fusion cheb weight (not all cheb weights are born equal, more to come), and I said to myself that this setup was not coming off until I caught a bass. It’s great to see other people doing it, but you need to do it yourself to truly, truly believe and not go changing lures after a few minutes.

Check this blog post here for how I am rigging my creature baits at the moment

So when I heard a bass or two come pretty quickly to a couple of the lads, I was obviously heartened to know there were fish around. But I still hadn’t done it myself. Then the mind starts playing tricks. There are obviously fish around, but I haven’t caught one yet. Is it because I am not using the right lure or technique? Do I change to something like the white Savage Gear Gravity Stick Pulsetail because I have had loads of bass on these lures at night and therefore I feel supremely confident using it? It would be so easy to change what I had set out to do because I didn’t have that vital shot of confidence yet, but I had promised myself my creature bait setup wasn’t coming off until I caught. Stay with it Henry!

And then I did. Catch that is. I got that tap, tap, give it a second and kinda go with it slightly, tap, bang, strike, bass on! One bass comes to hand and it is all I need to instantly trust that these lures work at night. One bass on my rod on a type of lure I hadn’t fished with in the dark, and it works. I did end up landing a few more bass, indeed at one point I released a chunky fish of about 4lbs, cast back out, and literally got hit on the drop by what felt like a better fish which then threw the hook. A good few years ago I badly needed to get the confidence that lure fishing for bass worked in the dark, and here I was in the middle of a late summer night, chasing that all important jolt of confidence once again. I was in bed by about 2am but my brain was bouncing away and it took me ages to get to sleep. Those few bass in the dark on the happy lobsters have got me thinking about so much more that I can do………….

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

We had a howling east wind and I had to take a punt on a location I know for walking and family picnics, but I don’t really know for bass fishing. The main aim though was to show this lad what I am currently doing with these lures so he could then take it to some of the ground he fishes and knows. I explained a bit about how I rig these lures up - check my blog post from a couple of days ago (10% off everything at Veals Mail Order this Bank Holiday weekend, use the code SUMMER10 at checkout) and how I got about fishing them over the sort of ground he was going to end up using them.

I was also able to give this friend a few creature baits, hooks and cheb weights so that he could at least have a crack before committing to buying a load of stuff himself. I had planned to go fishing myself on Wednesday evening but ended up staying at home to help my wife out who had a small operation on her left arm a few days ago. This lad sent me a message to say he was heading out fishing, and did creature baits work at night? I replied back to say good luck, sorry I couldn’t join him, and that I haven’t yet used creature baits/happy lobsters in the dark but I know a few good anglers who have and who have done very well on them.

I woke up early yesterday morning to take Storm for a walk and then head out for a run, and I saw a message from the night before on my phone. My wife and I had been making plum jam - and no, it’s not a euphemism, we genuinely were making jam, what radical lives we lead in our older age! - and my phone had obviously been on silent and I hadn’t heard my mate’s call coming in.

You know when you see a message alert and you hope that when you open it you are going to hear something exciting? That was me yesterday morning when I saw the WhatsApp alert, and what I got was a very excited night time video from this lad to say that he had gone and landed his first ever bass on a creature bait, and it was in the dark as well. He kindly sent me a photo of the fish and then a still from the video to show the lure right down the gob of the bass. We spoke after my run yesterday morning and I got all the details. This lad’s first bass on a happy lobster went a cracking 65cms, and it hit him so close in amongst a load of bladderwrack. He was seriously bouncing, and to be honest so was I. Frigging made up for the bloke because I know how much the whole thing means to him, and I know he can now fish these lures with full confidence and start really finding out if they do make a difference to his fishing. You all have a good weekend, here’s me hoping that any of you here who head out fishing over the Bank Holiday catch a bunch of fish and have a blast doing so……………..

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Don’t want to read all this?! Go here.

I am a no more than a lure fishing junkie who really enjoys trying new stuff and experimenting with gear. I was never going to simply stand still and fish the MegaBass Sleeper Craw as my only creature bait, not with the numerous options I began to stumble upon as I disappeared down this particular rabbit hole. It’s a clever lure which is pretty expensive, and there are far better bass anglers than me who know a lot more about how to fish it for (sea) bass and who have caught many more bass like this than I quite possibly ever will. The Sleeper Craw is a very clever RTF (Ready To Fish) lure which makes the whole creature bait or crab imitation thing a good bit easier with how you can open up the packet - don’t mix them with other lures! - and clip or tie one on and cast it out. No weights or hooks needed because the lure is complete on its own.

So once I had caught a few bass on the Sleeper Craw (with a big thank you to Marc Cowling for so kindly helping to get me onto my first few bass like this back in the winter), I had gained the necessary confidence that yep, the lures worked. You can read all you want, you can watch endless YouTube videos, you know they work - but you need to catch fish on them yourself. There is no shortcut that I am aware of to get me to the stage where I am not constantly wanting to change a lure because I haven’t caught on it so I haven’t got enough confidence in it. I am no Sleeper Craw expert in any way, shape or form I might add, but I have fished it a fair bit now and I think I have loosely got to grips with its strengths and weaknesses.

Then I started buying a few different Z-Man creature baits - again, do not mix them with other lures - and rigging them on a few different weedless jig heads I either had here already or managed to track down and buy (the BKK Silent Chaser EWG Round jig Head is SUCH a good jig head, I really hope that one day they will be readily available off the shelf in the UK). Rightly or wrongly I am currently of the opinion that it cannot hurt to fish with creature baits that are naturally buoyant and therefore sit upright and “wave” their claws around on the right setup. The MegaBass Sleeper Craw does this, and so do the Z-Man craws if you rig them right. I talked about the first bass I caught on a creature bait that wasn’t the Sleeper Craw in this blog post here back in May.

So I carried on with various weedless jig heads and Z-Man creature baits and continued to catch a few fish from different marks and so on. Admittedly via my limited time and experience with this type of bass fishing, I can’t see anything wrong with rigging creature baits on weedless jig heads and bumping them around - if you can find decent jig heads with the right size heads and hooks and which allow the lures to sit upright. Not always that easy here in the UK because I guess the demand hasn’t previously been there in our saltwater world, which in turn got me thinking about other ways of doing it.

One of the nicest blokes in the UK fishing tackle trade very kindly sent me out of the blue an assorted colour packet of four of their new Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits the other day. I had seen them online but this was the first time seeing them in the flesh, and they looked rather nice - don’t mix them with other lures though, there’s a theme here! As I was going through a few different hooks and jig heads to see which might fit this new (to me) Nikko Craw 3.2inch the best, I got to thinking why not try the cheb rig with the creature baits? The hook which I had here already and upon which the Nikko Craw 3.2inch looked like it sat the best was a 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook. But of course it needs a bit of weight to get it all working properly, and a cheb weight made sense. Plenty of different hooks and jig heads and so on are going to work with this particular creature bait of course, but I could only go looking for what I had here at home.

The only way to scratch an itch is to go out fishing and test your ideas out. The first time I fished with one of these Nikko Craw 3.2inch creature baits I got hit so hard but I struck too early and missed the bass like a complete tit. I subsequently landed my first bass on this new creature bait rigged on a cheb weight rig, and then a few more, including one this morning which slammed it. In some respects it’s fairly early days, but the more I fish these types of (buoyant) lures on cheb weights and weedless hooks, the more I am convinced that it picks up less weed as I move it along the bottom, I can feel a bit more along the bottom than with the (ever so slightly dead-feeling) Sleeper Craw, and when you need to reel your lure in over some rafts of bladderwrack to perhaps drop it back down into a big hole or gully in the weed, without a doubt the cheb weight or weedless jig head setup doesn’t get caught up nearly as much as the Sleeper Craw does when doing this.

I can always come back to them because I have a couple here, but I have not been carrying any Sleeper Craw lures with for a while now when I go out bass fishing like this. It’s a great lure, but I am not sold on the hooks which are not easy to sharpen and of course you can’t change them because they are a fixed part of the lure. I feel completely confident in the approach I am currently taking, but please bear in mind that this blog post is as of August 2025 and I am always going to try and improve my approach. The two main creature baits I currently carry with me in one of those rather good and less than £6 HTO Double Latch 20.5cm lure boxes are listed below. With what I have seen and caught on these Nikko Craw 3.2 inch creature baits so far, I am beginning to think they might be rather bloody special. Of course I bought a few more packets once I started catching on them, and I know it’s early days, but I’m sold.

I grabbed this from the “My Go-To Bass Fishing Lures” page on this website:

The two creature baits I am fishing with the most now are the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ and the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4''. These lures are both made from a buoyant TPU soft plastic so they sit upright when you are working them along the bottom (do not mix these lures with other soft plastics in your lure box, you also can’t screw a corkscrew into them).

Through a lot of trial and error I have come around to a cheb weight/weedless hook setup because it works so well with creature baits, but the right weedless jig head is also very good. My go-to weedless hook for the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ is the 2/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook and then the 3/0 Seadra T120 Weedless worm hook for the slightly larger Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4''. I then attach one of the Berkley Fusion cheb weights to these hooks, generally a 5g, 7g or 10g depending on the ground and depth and conditions etc.

If you prefer the simplicity of an all-in-one weedless jig head then the 2/0 7g Seadra weedless jig head fits the Nikko Craw 3.2’’ very well. This jig head also fits the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' but in a perfect world I’d prefer a slightly larger hook.

If it helps, I worked out a few basic costs per cheb-rigged lure setup, I went with the prices from Veals Mail Order. It’s exactly what I am currently fishing with, and yes, of course you have to buy the packets of lures, hooks and cheb weights to make this work, but I hope it might be of some help. See you down the rabbit hole……………

• Nikko Craw 3.2'', £8.99 for 4 lures = £2.25 per lure

• Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'', £5.99 for 6 lures = £1.50 per lure

• Seadra T210 weedless hooks, £4.49 for 10 x 2/0 hooks = £0.45 per hook

• Berkley Fusion Cheers, Cheb weights, £2.99 for 5 x 7g or 10g = £0.60 per weight

Nikko Craw 3.2 inch, one rigged lure total = £3.30

Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'', one rigged lure total = £2.55

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

So you get to thinking. Where can I tuck out of the way of a strong easterly wind in an estuary because I am not going to fish my coastline when it’s so calm and clear? An idea popped into my head straight away, but it’s somewhere I have fished a bit before and I am more interested in expanding my knowledge and trying something a bit different. So I did a bit more thinking - steam coming from my ears etc. - and I began to think about a specific area where I have fished a few times but never got to grips with it at all. I had only fished one tiny bit of a big area of ground, and if my head was right I was pretty sure we’d be able to tuck out of the east winds and present various lures properly.

It’s a lovely area for a good dog walk so I know the paths pretty well, but I had never quite appreciated just how much good looking ground there actually was. I hadn’t “seen” it quite right. I am not saying that this whole creature bait/crab imitation thing is the second coming of christ, but there is one undeniable advantage to my bass fishing that obsessing about it has produced - new marks, or different parts of marks I already know. The more I fish like this, the more I go looking for suitable, out of the way locations. Creature baits and how they seem to be working the best is causing me to see ground in a whole different light. Why you might ask? Because I am seeing and learning about bass behaviour I hadn’t really appreciated before, and it’s producing fish.

I asked the lads who were up for Sunday if they fancied a bit of a punt and they all agreed let’s go for it. Our choices were limited anyway with the strong east winds, but nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. When we got there I deliberately chose to ignore a little weedy point I had fished a few times before and instead took a foot path I knew because I remembered seeing a large area of just the right kind of bladderwrack setup I had noticed on a previous dog walk with my wife a few weeks earlier - and yes, I am also obsessing about bladderwrack “setups”. Areas of bladderwrack are not at all the same I am finding, more to come, I am obsessing about bladderwrack now, I need help!

Anyway, once I got off the path and down to water-level, I finally “saw” what I had had an inkling about. I was seeing it differently only because the more I fish for bass like this, the more I am erring towards certain specifics. Again, more to come as I keep on learning. It was my mistake that the time I had arranged to meet there could have actually been an hour or so earlier judging by the water level, but I crouched down and moved along the bank to fish into a shadow-line while keeping well back from the water.

I caught precisely one small bass yesterday morning about ten minutes into starting fishing, but when that small bass launched itself onto my creature bait seriously less than a rod-length from the water’s edge, I know that I yelped with excitement. Dave had a couple of small bass as well, so whilst it wasn’t exactly an epic session, what it did do was prove to me that firstly there was a hell of a lot more to this area than I had initially thought, and secondly that even on a howling east wind it’s more than fishable with the subtle stuff. Someone asked me how long I had been into fishing the other day, so I worked it out. I am 52 years old, I started fishing when I was 7, so that’s 45 years at this fishing thing for me so far - and I love it more and in different ways the older I am lucky enough to get…………….

Thanks to some photography work I did last year with a couple of the Favorite lads, I got early access to these three specific 9’ long Black Swan rods we are going to talk about today - the 9’ 902M 6-24g, 9’ 902MH 10-36g, and the 902H 16-56g. I am not privy to why Favorite chose to release the shorter 8’5’’ versions of these rods before the 9’ ones, but it was interesting for me because I got to fish with the three 8’5’’ rods first, then I could compare the slightly longer rods when I got my hands on them. If you have already pulled the trigger on one or more of the shorter 8’5’’ Black Swans then you have got yourself some serious gear. If you haven’t got one but might be thinking about it, there are some subtle differences between the different rod lengths, and I think it makes for some interesting rods. These longer 9’ rods all have slightly longer handle lengths if that helps.

Let’s look at the Black Swan 9’ 902M 6-24g first then (read my review of the shorter 852M 6-24g here). It’s just ridiculous how good that rod is, and as I have begun to obsess about moving further up estuaries and fishing a lot with creature baits and other such lures I might work along the bottom or along the edges, I like the rod even more. This longer 9’ version is just as good for the lighter side of lure fishing if that is any help, but somewhat surprisingly perhaps, pushing the 6-24g design up to the 9’ length has seen the Favorite designer Ivan make the rod feel a touch more together if that makes sense. A slightly more powerful tip and the rod feels so much like one complete length of carbon with how it so seamlessly blends into itself. I love it.

This Black Swan 9’ 902M 6-24g is still very much an incredible lighter lure rod, but I personally feel a touch more comfortable pushing this thing a bit harder out on the open coast especially. If the heaviest lure you might fish is the regular Xorus Patchinko surface lure and the coastline you fish doesn’t need pretty bouncy conditions to get it going then I would suggest that this Black Swan 9’ 902M 6-24g could easily be THE one lure rod you need. Literally feed its lightness and responsiveness with a Shimano 2500 or C3000 spinning reel and you will have a setup that to me is as good as it gets. One of the really lightweight and more expensive 4000 or C5000 Shimano reels from the Vanford or Vanquish ranges also feel awesome on this rod. Casting and twitching the DoLive Sticks around on this rod honestly makes me giggle every single time I do it. It’s so bloody sharp and responsive and you can feel that bit more steeliness in the tip over the shorter 8’5’’ version. I can punch both sizes of my Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletails and Pulsetails around with such precision - they absolutely fly! - and I can really feel that unique kick from the Slender Scoop Shad paddletails when I swim them on this rod. Then I go and lose myself up a quiet estuary and there is little more I can imagine wanting from a lure rod. I do turn to the shorter 8’5’’ version of this rod more for the lighter estuary stuff I increasingly find myself doing - mainly because a slightly shorter rod is a touch easier for the ninja-fishing - but I’d be sorely tempted by the longer 9’ 902M 6-24g if I could get away with 24g lures and under for the bulk of my bass fishing. Which, let’s be honest, I can. I have used this rod in some pretty bouncy open coast conditions and it always surprises me how capable this thing is. A staggeringly good fishing rod which by rights should cost far more.

Now let’s get into the Black Swan 902MH 10-36g which perhaps we can call a more “standard” lure rod with how it’s rated up to 36g. There is nothing remotely standard about how this thing fishes though. I was already smitten with the shorter 852MH 10-36g (review here), but something about this slightly longer 9’ version sits even better with me and how I would use a lure rod like this. I have fished with a hell of a lot of 9’ long lure rods rated around the 30-35g mark, and I genuinely can’t think of one I prefer to this Favorite Black Swan 902MH 10-36g. Take everything that the shorter version can do but add a touch more power as the mid-section blends into the tip.

This rod can still do from light to fairly powerful - I can hit the 35g Surf Seeker as physically hard as I can hit a lure on this rod with not a hint of feeling like I need to hold back - but for some reason those extra few inches of high-end carbon fibre have slightly tightened up an already very sharp and responsive rod in that 852MH 10-36g. I’d happily take either, but tie me down and I’m going for this longer 902MH 10-36g. I have fished the heavier Penn Slammer IV 2500 spinning reel a good bit on this rod and as an outfit it feels great, but with how light these Black Swan rods are I can’t ignore how good the lighter Shimano reels do feel on these things. If there is a better lure rod that shares similar specs for literally any money out there then I haven’t come across it yet - bearing in mind yet again that we all like different things. I still don’t know how Favorite can sell a rod like this for a smidgen under £300 in the UK.

And now we can finish on the daddy of these three rods, the Black Swan 902H 16-56g. Tie me down and tickle me with creature baits and I would still say that the most impressive lure rod I have ever fished with is the shorter version of this 9’ Black Swan, the shorter 852H 16-56g (review here). Not because I always need a lure rod that is as capable of fishing 50g+ lures as it genuinely is a 12g lure, rather than overall the Black Swan 852H 16-56g is utterly ridiculous as a lure fishing rod. The slight feel of an increase in overall power with this longer Black Swan 902H 16-56g makes it feel slightly less accomplished to me if we are talking about a freak of a rod that genuinely can fish the 4.5’’ or 6’’ DoLive Sticks (rigged as per this blog post here) as well as a 40g or 50g casting jig - but as a rod that embraces the rough stuff and laughs at big boulder fields and masses of fizz? Give me this Black Swan 902H 16-56g over the more expensive Shimano Exsence Genos 9’ 48g rod any day of the week.

I have to laugh when something like the Savage Gear Slap Walker 125 or the Xorus Patchinko fly out on this Black Swan 902H 16-56g, and when those seas get hectic and I am bumping something like my beloved (both sizes of the) Savage Gear Sandeel Weedless V2 along and over rough ground, it’s something else. The feedback I get is as much as I can envisage feeling, helped massively by a tip that doesn’t bounce around and a lot of power throughout the rod. Plenty of power, but not nearly too much power to bite back at you. A somewhat easier and smoother feeling lure rod than that Genos 48g rod which has done me so proud, I love this cannon-type Black Swan 902H 16-56g - but the shorter 8’5’’ version is SO bloody good and versatile that if money were no object I’d like to own both! You all have a good weekend. Drink lots of water and cover up or slap on that Factor 50 sunscreen. How incredible is this weather?

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

I drove to the Isle of Wight yesterday and saw my two girls for the first time in a month or so - they are both teaching sailing down here and staying with my in-laws - and whilst they probably won’t have realised, I did give them an extra tight hug when I caught up with them both. We don’t sit around and constantly analyse what could have happened a couple of years, but we also don’t ignore it. I am a massively proud dad of two truly awesome girls, a massively lucky husband to an amazing wife, and I really am rather glad that every single thing went my way on the morning of 8th August 2023 and that I still get to do this living thing for what I hope is a good while longer. You all have a good weekend……..

I like how BKK have gone outside of the normal box with their design of these BKK Titan Rider hooks, and the “Super Slide coating of the hook enhances penetration capability and reduces friction to the minimum level”. I do like how these hooks resist rusting very well and also how they literally slide through soft plastic lures very easily. Which in turn to me means that when a fish hits your lure there is very little impediment from the lure moving out of the way to allow the point of the hook to bang home. The eye of these hooks is big enough to allow for a corkscrew/hitch hiker as well as the sort of paperclip-style lure clip I use. The points are razor sharp and keep their points well, and the design of these hooks makes for easy sharpening if required (I will ask again, how many of you regularly check your hookpoints and then sharpen them up if required?).

Okay, so these non belly-weight BKK Titan Rider weedless hooks are not the cheapest you can find - £6.99 for 3 x 5/0 or 4 x 4/0 etc. - but with how few weedless hooks I actually lose I can live with that to get such a good quality hook on the end of my line. These BKK Titan Rider hooks are what I would call “big” hooks, as in the deeper/wider design and size of them means that I am perfectly happy to use say a 5/0 Titan Rider as an equivalent for say the 6/0 Savage Gear weedless corkscrew hook. And so on, 4/0 for a 3/0 etc. I like the little soft-touch sleeve on the hook which definitely helps keep your soft plastic flush in place for repeated casting. I think the BKK Titan Riders are awesome weedless hooks.

So now we come to the belly-weighted version, the BKK Titan Diver weedless hooks. Same design as the Rider but with a belly-weight and also a spinning blade attached to a little clip on the bottom of the weight - which I remove. I see no reason why these blades would not add a bit of attraction to the setup, but I feel just fine unclipping them from the belly-weight. Anything to try and snag less weed or add any more wind resistance etc. As above I love the design of these hooks, but I’d like the option of some heavier weights for certain situations. I could always wrap some wire around the hook to add more weight, but you get my drift. These belly-weight Titan Diver hooks as they come work really well, but you know how much I am a fan of options. I am not in a position to complain when our own Savage Gear belly-weighted weedless hooks only come with a 2g weight on the 4/0 and a 3g weight on the 6/0, but it’s not for a lack of pushing my end to try and get more options! And to be fair, the more I fish with really good weedless jig heads like those Decoy Violence VJ-36 ones, the more comfortable I am with turning over to them if I need a heavier weight.

One thing I don’t particularly love about both these hooks is the actual corkscrew or hitch hiker that are come secured to the eye of the hook in the packet. The bit that you screw into the nose of your soft plastic to secure it to the actual hook, call it whatever you will. There is nothing wrong with these specific corkscrews I might add, rather that once you have used a corkscrew with a centering pin, I don’t like going back to one without if that makes sense. You will notice that our Savage Gear weedless corkscrew hooks come with corkscrews which use that centering pin design - I first saw this design on some Owner weedless hooks I think it was. You can’t buy these Savage Gear corkscrews separately though, so I buy these (centering pin design) Seadra corkscrews here and use them on these BKK Titan Rider and Titan Diver hooks. A bit pernickety perhaps, but I know what I like.

As I said earlier on, you can find cheaper weedless hooks out there, but I like these things. I have never seen a hint of these BKK hooks starting to bend out on any of the bass I have hooked and pulled hard on them, and if you need particularly large weedless hooks then the non belly-weight Titan Riders go up to a massive 18/0 size! I guess you would have to buy the much bigger sizes direct from the US perhaps, because the largest size I tend to see here in the UK is about a 5/0 - which is just fine for me and my bass fishing.

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

One thing I deliberately choose to do with my fishing is mix things up a bit to try and find out more about specific marks. Not that far from where I blogged about the other day, I have deliberately tried different sizes of tides and found out that there don’t seem to be any fish moving around on the smaller neaps. So on Sunday morning I came up with a different plan for somewhere I don’t mind at all on really small tides, but what the places do have in common is that they are quiet. Banging lures out in a strong run of current or a hectic bit of surf is so different to areas where the bass and mullet are potentially going to be mooching around the shoreline sometimes less than a rod length out from the bank. It’s why I am continually searching for potential ninja-style estuary fishing spots in areas that do not see people and dogs and noise and so on. I think it makes a huge difference. The further you walk and all that?

Anyway, so on Saturday morning Mark and I ourselves almost crab-crawling along the bank of an estuary, a good distance back from the water’s edge. It’s so interesting how much more you see when it’s calm and there is nothing to disturb how the fish want to move around. Stand up suddenly and it becomes apparent what was mooching around and just how close in those fish can be when they spook, and whilst the majority of them do tend to be mullet, where there are mullet I trust that there will also be some bass.

I suddenly saw some fish tailing in amongst the gaps in the bladderwrack. And what is tailing I hear you ask? I first came across the term when I started to photograph saltwater fly fishing for bonefish in places like the Bamahas and Venezuela and so on. Bonefish nose down feeding on prawns and crabs and so on, in water so skinny (shallow) that their tales stick out of the water. When that sunlight catches those tails it’s something else, as per the photo above which I shot on a remote island in the Bahamas many moons ago.

And on Saturday morning as I was hanging right back from some very calm and quiet water, I saw a few tails sticking out of the water and moving around. They looked like mullet which were head-down and rooting around on the bottom which produces those telltale scrapes in the mud as per the photo above, but I also had a suspicion that one of the tails might well be a bass. You know when you see a few mullet moving around but something just looks a bit different? It was like that.

I continue to carry a couple of those very clever MegaBass Sleeper Craw creature baits with me, but because I can control the size of the lure and/or the hook, the weight of the jig head, and the sharpness of the hookpoint that much easier, I find myself turning to the separate creature bait/crab imitation and separate weedless jig head more and more. I really like the Z-Man Turbo CrawZ 4'' creature bait with how it works around a decent size 3/0 or 4/0 weedless hook, Z-Man lures last and last, the colours are good, and on the right setup it sits bolt upright and those “claws” I believe look pretty irresistible to a hungry bass. The setup in the photo above is what worked in the paragraph below.

So I cast out beyond the tailing fish and let the lure settle on the bottom in water that can’t have been more than a foot deep. As I started that gentle sort of shuffle/pause/tap retrieve along the bottom towards the edge of the bladderwrack and the tailing fish, it suddenly happened. If lure fishing for bass is so much about the hit, then the hit from a fish which is feeding head-down and which you need to gauge how to deal with in a split-second is electric. Very easy to miss - as per me yesterday afternoon when a bass started to pull the lure away and I struck too early - but so wonderfully satisfying when you choose to strike and your rod goes over and stays over. Which it did on Saturday morning, and the bass turned out to be around the 6lb mark. A perfect start to a day which produced a bit of a damp squib finish to the Lions tour.

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Then via work I began to spend a lot of time around fly fishing, and if you speak to any decent fly angler who fishes in rivers especially, they sure as hell are playing more of the ninja game. I can remember a day on a very remote saltwater flat in the middle of the Indian Ocean when a client was brought back to the mother ship to change (the colour of) his shirt because the giant trevally kept turning away from the fly at the last moment. A fish synonymous with all out aggression, yet they might well refuse if something isn’t quite right in their eyes I guess. The bloke changed his shirt and caught fish.

So what makes our bass any different to trout or GTs or bonefish or carp? I grant you that there are loads of times when we are bass fishing and where we stand to fish or what we wear isn’t going to make any difference at all. But what if you are fishing a mark where the bass are going to be potentially mooching around really, really close in? If launching baits to the horizon is where you come from - me included - then you might never have given a second thought to bass being a perfectly normal fish and potentially spooking if something isn’t quite right. Depends where and how you fish does it not?

I didn’t shoot many photos the other day when I suggested to a couple of mates that we fish the location I talked about the other day - at a very different state of the tide though to see what might happen - and something jumped out at me on a few of the photos. What do you notice above with the two photos side by side? Both the lads here are what I would call bloody good bass anglers, but one of them caught and one of them didn’t. I know it’s only a couple of moments in time, but Mark with the bass you can see on this blog post chooses to really hang back from the water’s edge or use the cover of trees whenever possible. He caught. One fishing session on a brand new mark doesn’t prove a whole lot, I accept that, but I also landed a bass on one of the Z-Man creature baits earlier in the session, and I was very deliberately hanging right back from the water’s edge.

Earlier on I had been literally stroking the back of a 5lb+ mullet with my rod tip until it obviously went and spooked, then I suddenly saw a proper bass mooching around - which then spooked. I took that as a sign I was way too close to the water and I backed away. A little while later I hooked and landed a bass almost ridiculously close to the bank on one of the Z-Man creature baits. The photos of Mark’s fish here don’t do it any justice at all because of the angle I had to shoot with the sun and the background, but it was chunky as hell and I’d have given it perhaps nudging 7lb. The Sleeper Craw doing its thing yet again, and what a buzz to see a bass of this size coming out of a brand new mark which I believe has some serious potential and which I am going to enjoy learning way more about. You all have a good weekend, here’s to a 3-0 Lions series!!!

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.

Anyway, I had no idea if this area might hold a few fish or when it might or might not fish in a typical tidal cycle, so I chose to try and find a way down around half way down the ebb tide on what was a bigger tide than I would usually prefer for an estuary session. Once I eventually managed to get down to the banks of the estuary - follow Storm and hope that if she can get down then so can I! - I made sure to keep right back from the water’s edge and have a good look for any signs of moving fish.

And sure enough as my eyes adjusted I started to see some big mullet moving around in some very shallow water - and if there are mullet around then I fancy there being a few bass as well. I crept down a touch closer to the water and managed to spot more good mullet mooching around, with a bunch of them looking around the 5lb mark at least. I grabbed a MegaBass Sleeper Craw from one of those HTO Double Latch Box 20.5cm lure boxes I was talking about the other day, and clipped it on.

A while later and the current is starting to slow right down and I am seeing more and more signs of decent mullet moving around in the shallows, often with their tails and dorsal fins right out of the water as they continue to almost spook themselves. Of course I am looking to see if I can see any of those telltale spiky dorsal fins, but to be honest the angle of the light is making it very hard to see a huge amount unless the fish are very close in and almost motionless.

Then out of the blue and when I am not far off lifting the crab imitation lure out of the water to cast again, a bass that I’d have given as easily 6lb+ charged in after my lure, very nearly engulfed it, but then suddenly turned away. Either the fish saw me and didn’t like what it saw, or else it shied off hitting the lure because it would have literally beached itself if it had done so. My heart skipped a few beats as you can imagine, indeed I woke up this morning with such a strong mental image of that dark back on the fish rushing in at my lure. First time at a brand new mark and the signs are good. Not that good for my heart I might add, but you can’t have it all!

I fished on for a while then went for a wander. I found a nice little patch of bladderwrack and in the murkier water I saw movement from a fish that looked a bit different to how you’d expect a mullet to do its thing. Out went the Sleeper Craw beyond the fish movement, and as I bumped the lure gently back I suddenly got that hard hit which I then gave a tiny bit of time and slack to before hitting the fish on the next hard bump. My rod tip goes over, it bangs a couple of times but I don’t think it’s a particularly big bass, then everything suddenly goes horribly slack.

We all know that not all fish are going to stick, but I am pretty sure I did everything right and I’d have expected to properly connect with that bass. One thing I am very aware of with these very clever (but not cheap!) MegaBass Sleeper Craw lures is that the hooks aren’t exactly great - yes, I know they were originally designed for freshwater fishing - and that the shape of the actual lure doesn’t make for particularly easy sharpening (come on, how many of you ever sharpen your treble and single hooks for lure fishing?). I do I might add, and I make sure to regularly sharpen the single hooks on the few Sleeper Craws that I own. Do yourself a favour and buy a hook sharpener!

So I naturally checked the hookpoint on the lure which didn’t stick into that bass, and it wasn’t very sharp at all. I know that I sharpen these lures on a regular basis, but I guess that the one I happened to pick out of my lure box the other day needed some touching up again and I had bloody missed it. I don’t actually know whether the less than ideal hookpoint was the cause of my dropped bass, but one naturally looks for a reason. What I do know is that the various weedless jig heads I am using with some of the Z-Man soft plastics have better hookpoints from the off, and the hookpoints on these jig heads are much easier to keep properly sharp. I do love how easy it is to clip on a ready to fish crab imitation lure with the MegaBass Sleeper Craw, but the quality of the hooks has got me thinking a bit………………

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I do like to carry maybe two or three different breaking strains or diameters of leader material with me when I go fishing. Some of you might deem this somewhat unnecessary, but I do believe in varying the diameters or breaking strains of my leaders depending on where I might be fishing and the conditions and so on. I am not that keen on swapping the essentials in and out of my waterproof fishing rucksack because I know I will end up forgetting something vital at some point, so I like to carry the various leader materials with me.

So if I was to carry say three spools of this YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader in my rucksack - maybe 12lbs (0.305mm) for the lighter estuary stuff, 16lb (0.346mm) or 20lb (0.378mm) for the regular stuff, and 25lb (0.443mm) for the heavier/rougher work - then it actually adds up to a good bit of line I am never going to need for the one session. This particular YGK Nitlon DFC fluorocarbon leader comes on 100m spools which are not exactly small and which take up a bit of room in my rucksack. Plus a bit more weight to carry when I am already always carrying some fairly heavy camera gear and assorted bits and pieces.

I really like that Sufix Advance fluorocarbon as well, and when I first started fishing with it I found some really small little 50m spools like you can see above (the lure is the Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless 10cm 16g, for scale). The very good Varivas Sea Bass Shock Leader fluorocarbon also comes on tiny little spools which are easier to carry and take up less room in a rucksack or a wader pocket or however you might carry this sort of gear. Same for the really good Savage Gear Semi-Soft fluorocarbon below. I have gone looking though and I can’t find those little 50m Sufix Advance spools in stock.

I know it’s not exactly scientific, but leader materials that I happen to like are all about feel and trust to me. I have to like how the stuff feels when I have secured it to my braid with an FG knot - I err towards a stiffer feeling fluorocarbon - and of course it has to knot well to my lure clip. I then need to build up a good feeling of trust in whatever leader it is via a lot of fishing time with it. If you can tie a proper FG knot and you regularly check and/or change your leader when required, a leader is quite simply not a weak point. I have repeatedly tried fishing braid straight through to my lure clip and I know that plenty of anglers fish like this - but it’s not for me. I want that short length of leader at the end of my braid. If you ever worry about your leader when you’ve got a decent fish on then I would politely suggest that you need to learn how to tie a proper FG knot and then trust completely in it.

So along with a few other leaders, I really like this YGK Nitlon DFC leader all over again. But of course I don’t need 100m spools of it when I go out fishing, indeed I rarely find myself needing to change a leader when I am actually fishing so in truth I only need a small bit of the different diameters I might want to carry with me. Anybody got a clever idea how I might decant say 10m or 20m of the leaders I want with me onto smaller spools - as in what could I use as a smaller spool to decant onto? I could of course reuse the (small) empty or nearly empty spools of the Sufix Advance I have here, but can anybody point me in the direction of something I might buy on something like Amazon which could do a similar job for me? You all have a good weekend, can’t wait for the second Lions test match tomorrow morning, and how awesome is the Test cricket against India at the moment? It’s not far off two years since my heart attack, and for so many reasons I am so bloody happy to still be here! Top of the list being family of course………..

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Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Death, Entombed, Obituary, Deicide etc. - and Ozzy Osbourne. These bands plus numerous others in the heavier genres were and still are the soundtrack to my life. The first three Ozzy Osbourne albums remain bonafide classics in my mind (go and listen to the track Crazy Train for example - All Aboard!), and of course anybody with any interest in the darker/heavier side of music is going to worship the numerous Black Sabbath releases which basically laid the platform for heavy metal and the many different genres which would follow. Ozzy Osbourne is gone but will never be forgotten. Paranoid and other such awesome tracks will be on repeat for the day.

So I am going to get my excuses in nice and early here! I hadn’t been fishing for a couple of weeks because of my guiding work in Ireland, so I was properly itching to connect with a bass myself. Being around other anglers catching fish is always a buzz, but when you aren’t doing it yourself I do think you can lose a small bit of “edge” with the close-quarters stuff especially, when you aren’t simply winding a lure in and a fish grabs it. Or doesn’t. The need to gauge what’s going on in a split-second and then react the right way, that to me is a skill which is earnt over time and with experience. Time away from it might dull the senses ever so slightly, and when you mix in a dose of overexcitement because you haven’t done it for a while? Excuses, excuses!

The number of mullet we were seeing was almost ridiculous. So many fish moving around in some very shallow water, but the angle of what light there was was not making it very easy at all to see into the water and properly identify if any of the fish could be bass. We keep presenting those creature baits and you hope that one of the many moving fish is indeed a bass which then chooses to smash your lure. There are obviously various ways in which you could target an upper-estuary based scenario like what I am presenting to you here, but I do think these crab imitation type soft plastics are so effective with how you can fish them so effectively so close to the water’s edge or bladderwrack and so on. Top of the ease of use tree may well be the MegaBass Sleeper Craw, but I do think that some of the Z-Man creature baits rigged on certain specific jig heads are just as effective AND you get a bit more feedback when you are working this sort of setup along the bottom.

And then I suddenly see movement from a fish which isn’t moving like any of the many mullet we have been seeing. Nothing scientific here, just that things suddenly looked different. I made sure to gently cast my Z-Man creature bait out beyond this movement and let it settle. As I then gently dragged the lure along the bottom and went to pause it, I got that unmistakable “whack” on the rod tip - and like a bloody tit I went and hit it straight away. And missed the fish. In less than a split-second I knew that I had messed it up. A few weeks ago I’d have taken that “whack”, dropped a touch of slack to the fish, and waited for the next and hopefully more positive hit - which is when I’d have hit the hit and most likely connected with the bass. Not this time though! Nope, my timing was slightly off and I messed up my one proper chance.

A little while later I had a good angle on the water and I watched as a small bass charged in on my lure but then turned away at the last moment and buggered off. I did spend a good bit of time giggling at how mullet are so spooky they end up spooking themselves, but I didn’t get another chance at a bass and my blanking was completely down to me and my mistakes. One thing I do know though is that the Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod is ridiculous as a lighter lure for bass fishing (review here). You don’t know how many different lure rods I get to try through the course of my work, and as much as there are some very lovely lighter lure rods out there and often for a lot more money, I keep coming back to how awesome this Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g is. I loved it when I reviewed it more than a year ago, but I love it even more now. If you want a damn good taste at how good this particular rod is, but for far less money, check out the incredible Favorite Totem 842M 8'4'' 6-24g lure rod (review here). Let’s be honest though, I’d have missed that one good bite with whatever lure rod I had been fishing with! Swine fish? Tit of an angler more like!

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Because I have a few here, I tend to use the Savage Gear washable lure boxes. I pushed for these to become available, and I pushed specifically for the two types - vertical and horizontal slots. If these specific lure boxes are out of stock you can find an alternative horizontal slot box here, then have a look here for various vertical slot options. I did buy one of the (way too expensive) Meiho Reversible Lure Tray 180V lure boxes a while back (as per the photo below), purely to see what it was like when compared to the ones I usually use - and I far prefer the cheaper boxes to be honest. I find the Meiho type latches quite annoying to open and close when you’ve got a lure rod trapped under one of your armpits and you’re waist-deep in water. One trick with these types of lure boxes is to get the sandpaper out and give them a good rub down to make them a lot easier to hold in wet conditions.

So unless something much better comes along I am pretty much sorted for the two lure boxes I might usually carry for your typical bass fishing session. As you know though, with how amazing these wonderful fish are, the word “typical” seems to be less and less apt in my mind. The whole scaling down to offer smaller lures is one avenue that increasingly interests me, and if you read this blog on a regular basis you’ll have picked up how much this creature bait/crab imitation stuff is haunting my dreams. What started with a couple of the MegaBass Sleeper Craw creature bait lures has morphed into a larger collection of soft plastics (no way!), jig heads, weedless hooks and skirts - which in turn got me looking around for a specific lure box or two to store this gear in.

Why don’t you just empty your washable boxes out Henry and use them? I can’t be bothered to be honest, not with how cheap most of these lure boxes are, and with the Z-Man soft plastics, some specific Savage Gear stuff, and the MegaBass Sleeper Craw, you are dealing with TPU-type plastic materials which can’t be mixed with other lures, and which can also cause damage to some lure boxes. Z-Man tends to advise that you store their soft plastics in the original packets, but after speaking to a few people I was steered towards a specific type of lure box which seems to resist any TPU related damage.

So first off I bought a couple of the IMA Lurecase 3010 lure boxes, as per the photo above. I like how the lures I might use for much of my estuary fishing sit in these boxes with the dividers, and so far I have seen no damage to the box or any of the lures when I store any of the TPU soft plastics. Note that I don’t mix the MegaBass, Savage Gear or Z-Man lures with each other. IMA obviously don’t make these lure boxes because you can find the same boxes with the names of various tackle companies on them, but I happened to buy a couple of IMA ones.

Then I found a cheaper and potentially even better variation on this type of lure box above the other day, in the shape of the HTO Double Latch Box 20.5cm. Again I assume that some company makes this box for HTO and other tackle companies, but I have only seen this specific “Double Latch Box” from HTO so far, so this is the one I have. I note that the (plastic) materials used in this box feel exactly the same as in the IMA Lurecase 3010 lure box above, but I do like the way this HTO box is divided up into more and slightly smaller compartments. The way the lid opens from either side or can come right off if need be is pretty clever, and I deliberately left the exact box you can see in the photo above on my desk for a couple of weeks when I went to do my recent guiding work in Ireland - and there has been no visible damage to the box or the TPU soft plastic lures. There is a larger 25.5cm version of this lure box, but I haven’t seen it yet because I don’t think it would fit into my HPA Chest Pack. There you go then, you all have a good weekend, roll on 11am tomorrow morning for the 1st Lions Test match against Australia……………….

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In between listening to various cricket and rugby podcasts on the long drive home, I was obviously analysing how the last couple of weeks have gone with our anglers. It’s a genuine pleasure to hang out with good people and help them catch a few fish in a great part of the world, and of course John and I are always thinking about the actual fishing and how we might better their chances. The one thing that really stood out to me is how the bass were definitely dialled in on small bait - mainly sandeels it seems - and how you needed to match the hatch or size to be in with the best shout.

You know how I will back a Gravity Stick or a 13cm or 15cm Slender Scoop Shad to catch me bass in so many different situations for example, and you can never ignore how deadly something like the regular Xorus Patchinko or the IMA Hound Glide lures are - but for the most part they just weren’t cutting it. Okay, so the bass were mainly on the small side, but we have all caught plenty of small bass on regular or bigger lures and it’s not as if they can’t hook up on them.

Which is not to say that the lures which many of us trust so much have suddenly become rubbish! My understanding is that when there are large concentrations of bait around which the bass have obviously switched onto, your best bet is to try and at least imitate the rough dimensions of it to stand the best chance of catching a few. It definitely happened a few weeks back when I was out fishing, check here. I know the experts say that bass will hit literally anything when they are on it, but I don’t agree this is always the case. If the fish are on it, and “it” happens to be small sandeels, are they going to just smash a larger size “it” which the angler has presented to them? I stayed with a friend on the south coast of Ireland on Monday night, and he was telling me how that even with a massive shoal of busting tuna in front of you off the south coast of Spain, if your “it” isn’t the size of the “it” which they are feeding on, AND that your “it” isn’t dropping at the right speed (leader diameter), those crazy fish ain’t going to hit your lure just because they are in front of you and feeding.

So why do we presume that bass are going to hit almost anything we put in front of them? I happen to believe that bass refuse our lures way more than we think they do, and my thinking this is partly borne out by a few anglers I know who have done basic underwater filming which has shown large numbers of bass simply refusing what was being put right in front of them. Just because the fish are there doesn’t mean that they are going to automatically nail your lure. Sometimes this may be the case, but how often do you deliberately change the actual size and/or profile of your lure, instead of just changing your lure to something different but still about the same size?

Without a doubt the bass we found in Kerry wanted smaller lures, but the unavoidable fact is that most of us ain’t carrying somewhat smaller lures a lot of the time. What if you need to cover a lot of water as well? The plethora of smaller paddletails and so on can be really handy, but trying to cover plenty of water on a very shallow reef or reach some current in an estuary isn’t always possible with a much lighter and smaller lures - which is why we keep coming back to the little Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90. Yes I work with Pure Fishing/Savage Gear, but when they find me surplus to requirements I can assure you that I will bang on about these amazing lures just the same. I wish the largest 150 had not been discontinued, but as much as I like it I find myself using the 125 and 90 sizes way more.

I am sure there are other lures out there that can do a similar thing - small, slender profile, casts a mile, swims very shallow, good colours - but for the time being when I or we need to cover a lot of water with a much smaller lure, it’s the little Sandeel Pencil 90 we turn to. So many times we suggest to our anglers that they should think about clipping on this specific little lure out in Kerry, and I always make sure to carry a few with me to be able to hand out if somebody hasn’t got one. I didn’t get any advance warning that the grownups were going to discontinue the 150 size Sandeel Pencil, but if I ever hear of the 125 or 90 sizes going the way of the dodo in the future, I’m going to buy as many as I can find and then trust that I’ll be long gone before running out of them!

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For some unknown reason, the bay in which we do a good chunk of our fishing was almost devoid of sandeels last year. I have talked about it a lot with John Quinlan, but the intricacies of the natural world and how things work is beyond what we think we know when stuff doesn’t happen as you have almost come to expect it to. The signs have been much better this year, and although most of the bass our anglers caught were not big, there were good numbers of fish around and even the pollack stocks seemed healthier than last year. We had a day on the boat with our anglers in the second group and at one point John and I could hardly keep up with the numbers of pollack being hooked.

What has been very noticeable is how the bass we have been catching have for the most part been showing a marked preference for the smaller lures - which I guess is down to them being preoccupied with the small sandeels which are around here at the moment. The little Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90 has once again been catching a lot of bass, as has the smaller 11cm Slender Scoop Shad rigged on the 4/0 belly-weight weedless hook we made for the smaller 120mm size Gravity Sticks. I also got one of our lads to clip on the deadly little Berkley Dex Strider 90 surface lure the other evening and it was almost silly how eager the bass were to launch into it. I know how well this little missile of a surface lure has done on big bass for a friend of mine who is abroad at the moment guiding for salmon. Good hooks as well which I like to see, and it was the larger 120 version of the Berkley Dex Strider which caught me so many striped bass out in Canada last summer.

The last day with our second group was spent doing something very different. We headed for the hills to go fishing for wild brown trout on a truly spectacular lake nestled far away from any main roads. What a truly glorious day. Is there a prettier fish than a wild brown trout? As always I am going to miss this glorious part of the world, but I am back here in October to do some more guiding work with John. Very interested to see how the season develops out here. I will be getting back to a quiet home because my two girls have gone to the Isle of Wight to teach dinghy sailing for a month, and my wife is leading a school trip to France. Just me and Storm then for a few days. Fishing, running, dog walking and work, preferably in that order! Catch up soon, I need to pack my Epic Berlingo up and hit the road………….

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For some reason there was a distinct lack of signs of bait last year in this (massive) bay, but it all feels far more normal in 2025 with plenty of gannets, terns and cormorants working away. We have had a bunch of bass with our lads, and whilst they have been on the smaller side of what you’d ideally love to see, there are fish around and you can only catch what’s in front of you. If that bass of a lifetime turns up like it did for Paul a few years ago out here, so be it, but judging by the smiles and laughter, I go back again to something I firmly stand by - catching fish in a glorious place is more than enough if the act of fishing is truly your thing.

There seems to be a lot of small sandeels around, and almost as per usual out here it’s been the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil that has caught a bunch of the bass - but in the smaller 90mm size. It’s a frigging missile of a little lure that covers so much (shallow) water so effectively, and with the small bait around, it seems to be that imitating something a bit smaller is key. The lads have also had a good few fish on various (smaller) surface lures which is always cool to see. The smaller 10cm/12g Westin Sandy Andy has also produced a few fish, and again it has to be something to do with matching the hatch. I hadn’t seen this specific size of Sandy Andy before and it’s an impressive looking little sandeel imitation.

We had an interesting first morning with our anglers when for some reason the fish were only feeding in a very tight area on a mark where you might more usually find the fish spread out. A couple of the lads found some ragworm on their hooks when they got their lures back, and to catch those fish they had to be fishing tight to the bottom at range with something like a 20g or 30g casting jig. Once you get past the rocks in close it’s basically sand out in front, but is there a ragworm bed out there that can hold the fish at times? Always learning!

Yesterday we got the lads out on the boat and they caught a load of pollack. I would usually trust something like the Fiiish Crazy Sandeel (best pollack lure ever?) to do the business, along with say the Savage Gear Sandeel or other paddletail/jig head combinations, but we didn’t have any of the Crazy Sandeels between us. Steve had brought along some interesting looking Seadra Strike Eye Slow Jigs in the 80g size which John and I thought might be a bit too heavy for the depth of water we were fishing, but wow these slow jigs did the damage in a serious way. I was surprised how well such a relatively heavy jig could be fished in some fairly shallow water at times, and by miles yesterday those Seadra Strike Eye Slow Jig 80g were the most successful pollack lures. Steve had some spare ones and kindly handed them out for the other lads to fish with. I hadn’t seen these particular slow jigs before, but I was glad to see them rigged with really good hooks out of the packet. Nice one Steve! Hope you’re all catching a few fish wherever you are…………….

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I have got a lot to get on with before our first group of anglers arrives later this afternoon, and as per usual I will do my best to keep you posted from here in Kerry. You all have a good weekend.

Which as you know seriously makes my day. There are plenty of really good soft plastic paddletails out there and I am not trying to claim that the Gravity Stick version sits at the top of the tree. But I also can’t argue with the bass that these things have produced and continue to produce. I get the fact that you can only ever catch on whatever lure you are actually fishing with at the time, but we can say that about any lure out there. For the first time in my fishing life I got to help design and bring to market a range of soft plastics that are perfect for a lot of my bass fishing, so of course I am going to use them. If you read this blog then you will know that my own largest shore caught bass to date came on a white Gravity Stick Paddletail.

But a bigger buzz to me is when other anglers choose to buy specific lures in which I have had a strong involvement - and they go and catch good fish on them. It’s so kind when anglers contact me to tell me about their successes - thank you! From the photos of these rather special bass that I have seen, it looks like it was the wakasagi colour Gravity Stick Paddletail rigged on a belly-weight weedless hook that did the damage. The 11lb 3oz bass is a proper lump. I am off to Ireland tomorrow for a couple of weeks of guiding work so I will do my best to keep this blog updated with our exploits…………

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In a word, yes! I am not at all privy to how Westin are going at the “SBass” lure fishing market, but I have to take my hat off to them for launching a “budget” lure rod like this. There are also two longer 9’6’’ SBass rods in this W2 range, rated 9-35g and 12-42g, plus a rather interesting 4-piece travel version at 9’ 9-35g. Just because a lure rod around the £100 mark might be 9’ long and around the 35g rating does not make them all the same though, but something’s going on out there. As with that Sakura rod, this new Westin W2 SBass 9' 9-35g is a cracker.

The handle length on this Westin rod is closer to being the right length for me and how I like to fish when compared to the Sakura rod, and I recognise the shape of the Seaguide SXOHLSG premium Guides. We used Seaguide guides on those roughly £150 Savage Gear SGS5 rods, and I really like them. Braid just goes out so well through these guides. I also like the Seaguide XVS reelseat that Westin has used on this rod.

I have learnt a fair amount about what you can and can’t get into a lure rod blank at different price points. When you find a good rod at around this £100 price, you can actually get a hell of a lot of good stuff - as with this particular rod - but the one thing you don’t quite tend to get is the level of subtlety in the tip that you can find when you spend around £50 more on something really good like like our new Savage Gear SG4 Defiance rods or the awesome Favorite Totem range of rods. This isn’t remotely a complaint I might add, because material costs are what they are and the likes of Westin are creating to a specific price point here. I give the company a lot of credit because it does feel like they have got as much subtlety into the tip on this W2 SBass 9’ 9-35g rod as they could for the price - but £50 more on exactly the right rod does buy you a touch more. Just like you get more with my Epic Berlingo over say an Audi! It’s unavoidable, and note the words “right rod”. For the money, this thing is a peach.

It’s a bloody good lure fishing rod when you start fishing with lures from say 14g and upwards. For sure you can cast a 9g lure on this 9-35g lure, but then you could technically also cast a 9g lure on an 8oz beachcaster if you needed to. If the equivalent Sakura is a weapon, then this particular Westin rod does have a touch more precision when you start cycling through the different lures. Get it in your hands, strap a spinning reel to it, and go out fishing. I can bang the 35g Seeker an absolute mile on this rod, but it also makes a hell of a good fist at fishing something like either of the Gravity Stick Paddletails on a weedless hook with no belly-weight (something I don’t do enough of I might add). A surface lure like the very long-casting Savage Gear Slap Walker 125 goes out a mile and fishes very effectively at range, but I also want my 9-35g rod to bump the smaller Savage Minnow Weedless 10cm/16g around.

And this Westin W2 SBass 9' 9-35g does it pretty damn well. If you want to spend no more than £100 on a lure fishing rod that will potentially do all of your bass, wrasse and pollack fishing, AND you need the rod to grow with you as you branch out into different techniques, then you need to see this thing. I know I have said it a bit recently, but it genuinely is incredible how good a proper lure rod can be these days for very sensible money. You all have a good weekend. I am grabbing my passport and heading up to Essex to do some TNT Sports fishing commentary with their Andy Ford at the massive Penn Crouch Open competition on Sunday……………….

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When it came to designing the Savage Gear Gravity Sticks with Mads over in Denmark, I obviously said that the DoLive Stick was a soft plastic I fished with a lot and it had to have influenced my thinking in some way. We deliberately stayed away from trying to replicate the DoLive Stick with our Gravity Stick Pintail, but of course I was after a twitchbait style soft plastic lure and I think we did a pretty good job. I don’t get access to any sales figures, and my guess has always been that it goes Paddletail, Pulsetail, Pintail in order of popularity. I reckon that would mirror soft plastic sales in general for (sea) bass fishing here in the UK and Ireland - paddletails continue to reign supreme when it comes to soft plastics.

But I do love a twitchbait style soft plastic at certain times, indeed I will never forget it when I was messing around with different retrieves on the Gravity Stick Pintail (rigged weightless), and I discovered how you could fast-wind it to produce a sort of strong S-curve in the water. Then you stop the lure and it drops in a really good looking way, and about the first time I tried this in anger a really chunky bass smashed it. As per above. Some specific fish stick so long in the memory.

So I was out on the open coast the other day - this blog post here - and Dave got me thinking about rigging some of these smaller twitchbaits a bit differently all over again. Believe me, I have messed around with Pintails and DoLive Sticks and all manner of different rigging options, but for whatever reason I know I have spent the least amount of time messing around with a bit of weight at the front of the lure. I guess this is down to most of the belly-weight hooks I have used having their little bit of added weight towards the rear end of the hook, but with how incredibly well the little 4.5’’ size DoLive Stick cuts through a headwind when you add a bit of weight to the front like on the photo above - it flies, and it’s so stable in bouncy conditions - it’s got me thinking all over again.

If you take either of the Gravity Stick Pintails (photo above), now rig it with its respective belly-weight 6/0 or 4/0 weedless hook, then stick one of the insert weights in the precut slot just above the actual “tail” (photo below). It’s incredible how well this lure now casts and cuts into the wind, but now I am going to take these Pintails and try rigging them with the belly-weight towards the front of the hook. I don’t know if you are aware, but it’s possible to squeeze the little belly-weights with a pair of pliers and change the position of them on the actual hook. I must have tried this at some point already, but sometimes something or someone comes along and helps to get you thinking about something all over again. You know how I love messing around with stuff…………….

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Then I speak to and start learning a bit about the bass fishing around say the Morecambe Bay area where I was over the weekend, and I realise that local bass anglers are never going to bash stuff out into a raging surf. They have got some incredible bass fishing, and I kept hearing how smoothounds are almost a plague-fish because there are so many of them these days!, but from what little I saw it could not be more different than most of the bass fishing I might do around me. The local anglers are fishing some fascinating ground, but it’s very different from what I would mostly experience.

And it’s why I always slightly caveat what I read and learn from other anglers. Damn right I want to learn as much about bass fishing as possible, but we obviously have no choice than to base our learnings and understanding upon where we fish the most ourselves. There are some very good anglers out there, and some of them choose to kindly share a lot of information via social media, magazine articles, books, blogs, podcasts, guiding and so on, but for all the amazing information we can increasingly access these days, that information is always going to be somewhat localised. It has to be. We learn from what we do. Speculation in my opinion is not helpful information.

There will always be localised things going on which might be somewhat unique to specific areas. Some anglers travel around and will take those methods and try them in different areas, indeed it has always fascinated me how fishing techniques and information “travel” as such. I would hope that any of you kind people who read this blog will have worked out a long time ago that my bass fishing “knowledge” has to be based mostly upon where I go fishing myself. For sure I might get around more than most anglers because of my work, and I get to fish with a wide range of anglers as well - which in turn I hope helps to broaden my outlooks - but for all my loving fishing for bass in the surf for example, I would have a pretty good guess that a lot of you here will have never targeted bass like this because you don’t have any surf beaches nearby.

The UK might well be a pretty small country on a global scale, but even with this one amazing species of fish there is an incredible amount of regional diversity when it comes to terrain and methods and so on. I had no idea for example that a lure I tend to use mainly as a surf fishing lure - the Savage Gear Seeker or Surf Seeker - is in fact one of the best selling bass lures in the very impressive Gerry’s Fishing tackle shop in Morecambe, an area that doesn’t have any surf beaches like I might do here in Cornwall. Same lure then, and the same target species, but very different terrains, indeed the little bit I saw reminded me a bit of how a lot of the Scandinavians go about their coastal sea trout fishing - covering as much shallow water as possible because the fish could be so spread out in such a massive area (I also dread to think how scary and dangerous it would be to get caught out on a rapidly flooding tide in Morecambe Bay if you don’t know what you are doing).

Judging by the lures on the shelves in Gerry’s, the Savage Gear Sandeel V2 and the Westin Sandy Andy are also seriously popular with local anglers up there, and white is definitely the most popular colour. There are numerous estuaries which drain into the massive Morecambe Bay, and from a good few conversations it sounds like targeting bass in these often muddy estuary mouths throws up a lot of good bass to local anglers. I can easily find the need for a 9’6’’ or 10’ lure rod rated up to around 45g for when open coast conditions get a bit hectic on my local coastline for example, but I can’t see much need or traction for rods like that where I have just spent the weekend. If there is one thing I love to do it’s to spend time talking to different anglers around the country or the world, and wow it doesn’t half get the brain bouncing away with ideas for techniques and lures and so on…………….

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I work from home, and whilst I love where I live and I am very comfortable with my own company, I do rather love getting out and about and yapping with anglers. I enjoy getting to put faces to names, and I love talking about how different anglers go about their fishing in different parts of the country or indeed the world. I am always going to slightly struggle with the whole “come and meet and talk to Henry Gilbey” thing, but the single biggest advantage to putting my head above the parapet is getting the chance to interact with so many different people. Hope to see you on Saturday!

As and when the mark is fishing, for some reason I seem to lose the bass for a while and then find them again when I can access specific bits of water. But it simply wasn’t happening, and I wondered if the fish we had caught earlier might be it for the tide. I could hardly complain with the fish we had caught earlier, but I also just didn’t accept that any bass which had been around had suddenly done a proper runner. Not when the conditions were so good and we had the shape of waves we wanted and so on. Nope, the fish were somewhere, and it was up to us to find them.

A little while later I suddenly saw a few fish tails flipping out of some white water and naturally assumed it was mullet. I didn’t radio Dave for that very reason, but a few minutes later I then saw a lot of tails and whole fish flipping out of the white water - and it definitely wasn’t mullet! I can’t remember the last time I saw bass feeding like this, and with where they were it looked like the fish had corralled a bunch of bait into an area of fizzing white water. I got on the radio to Dave and told him what I was seeing. We could get a lure out to where the busting bass were, but whatever we began to offer to the fish was not being smashed.

I changed over from my larger 13cm/33g Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless and clipped on the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 in the sandeel colour. I knew it was fairly shallow where the bass were doing their thing on the bait because I kept smashing into submerged rocks with the Sandeel V2 Weedless. My thinking was that the reason they weren’t smashing our lures was perhaps because the bass were dialled in a smaller bait species. I know the Sandeel Pencil 125 is not a seriously small lure length wise, but it’s a narrower profile and to my eyes doesn’t look “big” in the water. A few casts later, once I had worked out how to get the lure in amongst the feeding bass with the angle of the wind and a lot of rocks, I hooked up and landed a bass. I kept casting the Sandeel Pencil 125 but got no more fish, so I changed down to the smaller Sandeel Pencil 90 but still caught no more.

I then thought about a slower, slightly more subtle approach where I could hold a lure a bit longer in that fizzy water, so I changed tack and rigged up a 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick on one of the 6/0 Savage Gear weedless corkscrew hooks (no belly-weight, just how I like the 6’’ DoLive Stick if the conditions allow). Because this soft plastic casts so well I was still able to get the lure to the bass which we continued to see busting out of the water on bait, but things didn’t change. I was getting a few plucks and bangs on the lure, but the fish were not committing, and I like to think I was fishing the 6’’ DoLive Stick okay.

It was Dave who went through his rucksack full of tricks and came up with the solution. All credit to the bloke, and although it might not sound like much of a difference at all, once he switched over to the slightly smaller 4.5’’ size OSP DoLive Stick, he was into more bass straight away. Were the bass quite simply so dialled in on a specific bait source/size that they weren’t interested in anything that wasn’t similar to it? I have a lot of good history with the regular 6’’ size DoLive Stick, and I guess that because it’s done so well for me over the years I haven’t given the smaller 4.5’’ size that much time.

I wasn’t carrying any with me but Dave was kind enough to sort me out with a lure and a rather interesting size 4/0 BKK Armor-Point Permalock Weighted weedless hook. We are not competing with each other and to be honest I don’t want to fish with anglers who might fish like that anyway. What you can’t see in the photo above is the insert weight in the front of the soft plastic, as per the photo below. Really clever, and it was definitely helping the smaller and lighter 4.5’’ DoLive Stick get out there and grip in/fish effectively in the relatively bouncy conditions.

We both caught a few more bass but then lost the fish again as the bait obviously moved or perhaps got literally wiped out by the rather hungry bass, so we put our heads together and decided to move a bit and see if we could find the fish again. Which we did, and then we smashed ‘em. Plenty of bass busting on bait again. I love all kinds of lure fishing for bass and I fully expect to be obsessing about yet another way to catch them in a totally different environment at some point, but there is something I love so much about fishing soft plastics in bouncy open coast conditions and getting that “tap, bang” on the rod tip. I know a surface lure take is incredible, but that feeling you get down the braid, into the rod, and down into your arms when a bass smashes a lure which you are deliberately twitching around does it for me every single time. One of the last bass landed before we had to get out of there with a rapidly flooding tide was a cracking 65cms fish for Dave in the photo below. Talk about bouncing. Bouncing conditions, bouncing braid, and bouncing bank balance as I buy yet more gear which I didn’t know I needed!

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So I quickly dumped my rucksack back down and went to cast at the bass. My heart rate has jumped right up the moment I saw the bass, but I reckon I can handle it! With the direction of the estuary, the bass was heading up into what had become a fairly fresh bit of breeze. I clipped on one of those MegaBass Sleeper Craw lures and whacked it a good bit ahead of the bass which I could see as clear as day doing its thing. I wasn’t breaking a natural horizon, I was dressed in dull coloured clothing, and I hoped that I was in fact blending into some trees behind me. I managed to twitch then pause the Sleeper Craw into a good position but the bass kept on moving.

If I want to catch this fish then I also need to keep moving whilst trying my best not to sink too much further into some fairly soft mud. Because my lure box sits at my side and is so easy to access - as per this recent blog post - it was very simple to change over to something completely different and keep an eye on the fish. I clipped on the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletail 120 rigged on one of those rather lovely BKK Titan Rider Worm Hooks in size 5/0, as per the photo above. I’d have liked to go with a smaller paddletail and hook, but I knew I would not be able to get the lure ahead of the bass with the wind that was blowing smack into my face. The combination above absolutely flies.

But the bass wasn’t bloody interested. By now I am a true, mud-covered, ninja bass angler. Sod anything else that might be mooching around, because I’ve got this fish on my radar and it’s not getting away. I have managed not to spook the fish yet, and it still looks like the bass is sometimes turning on some kind of food source. I guess it has to be crabs or shrimps, so without taking my eyes off the fish I access my lure box and change over to the combination that has worked pretty well for me over the last few weeks, a Z-Man ProCrawZ 3.5'' creature bait/crab imitation on a BKK Silent Chaser EWG Round Head 3/0 7g jig head. I’d have gone with something smaller and lighter if I could have punched it ahead of the fish into the wind, but with me hanging back to try and not spook the fish, I didn’t want to mess a cast up and land on top of the bass.

And then I got that “tap” which was the bass turning on the lure and I guess perhaps flanking it with its gill plate before inhaling it? I was absolutely primed and ready to set the hook when it felt like I should strike. Let’s not talk about the speed at which my heart was racing but I wonder if I could access the data on my Apple Watch just for a laugh! I am a mature 52 year old man whose youngest daughter finished her A-Levels the day before. I guess I could call myself a grownup. Yet here I am, covered in mud, shaking like a leaf, ridiculously overexcited, and willing a single, rather lovely bass to fully commit to my soft plastic lure.

But it doesn’t. Off it suddenly sods upriver at a speed I can no longer chase, even if I am nearly a ninja. Somewhat dejected, I wander back to my bag, look around for any more fish, fail, then start the long walk back. I am finding this exploratory bass fishing so bloody interesting, but with that firm rejection yesterday I am left wondering if it’s much good for my mental and physical wellbeing to be seeing the odd bass to try and catch! If the wind hadn’t been up I’d have scaled down my approach and I wonder if that might have worked in what was some pretty clear water. Now it’s got me thinking about how I might better present some of the smaller creature baits and paddletails when I need to punch them into a bit of breeze and potentially get ahead of a moving bass. Swine fish!

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I am not privy to any of the sales figures of any of the Pure Fishing brands (Savage Gear, Penn, Berkley, ABU etc.) so there is nothing but speculation and opinion contained within this blog post today. I don't know which rods or which rod lengths sell better or worse than others for example. If an angler contacts me to ask about my thoughts on what might be the most applicable lure rod length for them and their bass fishing, firstly I work on my own and I sadly don’t have the time to engage in a raft of messages, and secondly I am often going to suggest that a lure rod around 9’ long is a pretty good bet to cover a lot of the sort of lure fishing they might end up doing. Purely because that is what I think, which might be different to what another angler thinks of course.

One thing I have always been interested in is how a specific type of fishing such as this bass lure thing develops and grows or potentially contracts of course. If I was any good at statistics I could probably chart the different average rod lengths being used by anglers who feature in my vast photo library for example. I can see a lot of what might be classed as “shorter” lure rods being used as I was really getting into lure fishing and things like surf fishing hadn’t really entered my world, then without a doubt there seem to be more rods around the 9’6’’ length appearing. Take a look at my photos of bass fishing from the last couple of years and you are going to see a much wider range of overall rod lengths being used. Which in turn mirrors how varied my own bass fishing has become over time.

We started working on the new range of Savage Gear SG8 lure rods over two years ago now and even in that time I think that a few things have changed a bit. The SG8 9’ 44g is probably my most used rod from the new range for example, but a couple of years ago I wasn’t obsessing about starting to spend time trying to deftly present a crab imitation lure almost below my rod tip in ninja fishing mode. I think that something a bit lighter and preferably a touch shorter is more efficient for situations like these, but that’s just me. I am no more right or wrong than the next angler.

And so on and so forth as the individual angler delves further into this world. They might well stick with one form of bass fishing which requires only the one lure rod, or they might end up down the road to a full blown addiction and end up finding out that their 9’6’’ 35g rod which has served them so well isn’t that handy if they end up trying to cast and swim a 3’’ long paddletail on a lightweight jig head AND you need to fight your way through trees and undergrowth to get to your mark where you might fish like this. Horses for courses and all that, and you know how I obsess about the one lure rod to kinda do it all - which, let’s face it, might well not be possible if you embrace as much variety as possible. What is that “all” for you though?

Disclosure - If you buy anything using links found around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you anymore to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.