I am on the Z-Man mailing list, and the other day an email came through which I thought was really interesting. I hope it’s okay to copy and paste the email here on my blog today - if this blog post doesn’t exist at some point then Z-Man asked me to take it down! - because I can’t ignore the thoughts of industry people connected to such a forward-thinking company. If there is anything here which gets you thinking about paddletails and your own fishing then that to be honest was the point of this copy and paste. Bear in mind that I am not going to remove any references this blog post makes to v ..read more

If you have never heard of Gosen braids then I will forgive you your sins, but in fact I believe it’s only been Ben Field at the Art of Fishing who has been the sole “pusher” of these fine lines in the UK for a good while now. Ben knows his Japanese brands especially, and when he says to me that I need to check this stuff out, I take note. I have a bit of experience of a pink coloured Gosen 8-strand braid from a few years ago now, but recently I have been putting this bright green coloured Gosen Roots PEx8 braid in the PE#1.2/25lb version through its paces……………. I don’t have literally hundred ..read more

Like sun-starved, post-apocalyptic, underground dwellers we have been stumbling around out here in SW Portugal, amazed at this giant orb in the clear blue skies. I know as Brits we moan about our weather, but bloody hell we have had every right to with the winter and now spring we have had and are still getting. It’s been a great big bag of shite, and from the forecasts I have been keeping an eye on, none of us are exactly desperate to get back home to it…………. Please bear in mind that the photos here are from my phone! I fell in love with this south west tip of Portugal on literally my first ..read more

I have watched and photographed a hell of a lot of anglers connected to and often landing some serious fish. A serious tarpon or GT is obviously very different to what we would call a serious bass, but when you chase a specific fish you are obviously hoping that one day you might connect with whatever the fish of a lifetime might be of that particular species. What is always very noticeable from my point of view is when an angler hooks into a much better than average fish and they feel confident in their connection to it - which in turn means they are confident to pull hard and give themselves ..read more

One of the things about saltwater fishing which has always fascinated me is us as human beings needing to compute in our human brains where to go fishing on a given day or night. Our human brains are trying to outwit the natural world. Luck is always going to play a big part in fishing and I have never had a problem accepting that - it’s why I don’t compete or feel competitive with my fishing - but when you do go out and catch fish, to me there is a such a thrill that you have made the right call………… You will never know if it’s the best call you could have made because you can only fish one sp ..read more

In many respects I am most satisfied because I made the right call yesterday, but in reality it was only last week when I landed my first ever few bass from the shore in the UK in March. So does that actually mean that all my previous attempts at doing so were the wrong calls? Or can I allow myself to feel better about my many failures because the bass simply weren’t there yet? Whatever the case we went out fishing yesterday with a good bit of confidence because of the few small fish we saw last week, but I can’t pretend that I started covering the water yesterday and I’d end up catching a bas ..read more

Please note that I am not remotely looking for a different way to carry my lures with me when I am out fishing, but when something comes across my radar which I think that some of you might find useful, I’m going to tell you about it. My two Savage Gear washable lure boxes - one with vertical slots, one with horizontal slots - sit by my side in a lure bag thing which drains when I am deep-wading or fishing in the surf etc. I also really like that RBB Surf Supporter II lure bag in the surf especially (review here). So these simple and rather clever SuRPpa lure cases look like nothing more than ..read more

It might have gone all of 2lbs I reckon, but on Wednesday of this week I reckon I was the happiest and most elated angler in the UK! I did manage to land my first ever lure caught bass in March last year, but that was from an estuary and I really wanted to be able to say to myself that I have caught at least a UK bass on a lure from the open coast in every month of the year. I don’t know if the fact that the average water temps are higher than this time last year made a difference, but something had to have been a bit different this time around………….. Because I have tried to catch bass on a lur ..read more

I wanted to check out some new ground the other day, so I went fishing but knowing at the same time that I have never caught an open-coast bass in the UK in March. I also wanted to re-familiarise myself with a lure rod I had fished with a fair bit but to be honest had sort of forgotten about until that Glasgow Angling Centre show the other day when on the Sunday morning I spotted the exact rod on sale for the most ridiculous price. I will put a review of this rod up on here soon because it’s a bloody good rod which is now accessible to a lot more anglers because of the offer price………….. So of ..read more

Caveat - I wrote this review a few weeks ago, but out of the blue the other day the anti-reverse failed on this reel. Daiwa UK kindly repaired the reel for me and it’s all working fine now, but it obviously shouldn’t have happened and I don’t know why it did. Wear and tear is the obvious one, but this soon? I was going to completely rewrite this review to reflect what happened, but I had a bit of a think about it and I actually think it might be more useful if I left the review as it was. Not because I want to pull the wool over your eyes, rather what happened I hope goes somewhat towards illu ..read more