If you have been reading this blog for a while you might remember that cancer killed my dad nearly a year ago now. I miss him every single day and it breaks my bloody heart that his best friend in the world - my mum - who he was married to for 50 years is now on her own and doesn’t get to hang out with the love of her life. My parents were inseparable. I would guess that most of us here have lost family and friends to this bastard disease, or even had a brush with it ourselves…………… I don’t know if I have mentioned it here before, but back in February I took it upon myself to do the Couch to 5 ..read more

I know that the internet and social media especially has made fishing news as such a lot more instant and accessible, but I probably look at a lot of this stuff in a slightly different way to a lot of you here. Of course I love seeing a happy angler with a cracking fish, but what really fascinates me in terms of social media is how something like this bass lure fishing thing is evolving. I don’t think that the photography of fish or fishing has got any better with the advent of camera phones - sorry! - but I do think that you can almost chart the evolution of what I tend to think of as modern ..read more

I wasn’t remotely looking for a 9’6’’ lure rod around the 30-35g rating to play with, not with what I already have here with similar specs, and not after the stunning Major Craft Tidrift 9’6’’ 7-35g (review here) and the “I’m still trying to resist buying” APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g (review here). You know that I don’t exactly need a new lure rod, but because I can via my work, I ended up asking if I could please see this Penn Conflict Elite 962M 9’6’’ 6-32g rod for a bit of a thrashing………….. I am of the belief that this new range of £300+ Penn Conflict Elite lure rods is right ..read more

For a while now I have been pushing Savage Gear and now Pure Fishing to try and involve me a bit more within the trade side of the actual fishing tackle. Covid came along and completely messed up any plans we might have had back then, but to give Pure Fishing a lot of credit they properly really went for it earlier this week by putting on a tackle trade event at a hotel on Hayling Island on the south coast. It’s all very well somebody like me thinking about and helping to create bass fishing tackle with the various bods I work with, but for a long time now I have believed that there has to be ..read more

It’s my amazing wife’s 50th birthday today. She doesn’t read this blog so it’s all okay! I just dropped my youngest daughter off to get the ferry to school and she was remarking on the fact that she now has two parents who are 50 years old. Of course it sounds old when you are 16 like she is, but I was telling her that once you hit a ripe older age like this, you realise that actually it ain’t so bad at all if you are lucky with your health and so on. The odd dodgy knee aside, I am an incredibly lucky man to be with such an incredible girl for so long. Growing old disgracefully…………. My wife a ..read more

I get itches and I need to scratch them. For sure I fish the same locations time and time again when I believe the tides and conditions are right, but if fishing was nothing more than fishing the same few spots in the same way I’d have walked away a long time ago and done something else (Wash & Go adverts?!). What’s around the next headland or estuary bend or cliff or beach has always fascinated me, and with bass fishing especially I just love how the one species of fish demands so much of us as anglers if we choose to mix things up……………. So I set my alarm for 3.45am yesterday morning but ..read more

There’s a spot I have started fishing over the last couple of years. I have only ever seen one of three of us down there and the water is somewhat deeper than I might usually fish for bass. It’s around the mouth of an estuary so the water clarity can be very up and down with freshwater runoff in the system, plus the bigger tides seem to colour it up more as well. I am guessing that once you start bumping the bottom in what is often a strong run of current, you start to lose the influence of the freshwater…………… We’re not talking deep deep, but when I let my lures hit the bottom and start my ret ..read more

A friend of mine made a good call to get the hell away from our local stretch of coastline the other night, so we met up further west and made our way to what is an extensive stretch of reef where we have done pretty well during daylight hours when there’s a decent bit of bounce on. This was going to be the first time for me night fishing this ground though, but the conditions were nice and calm and clear on a flooding tide. It felt pretty good, not least that we weren’t fishing anywhere local which has been so quiet the last few weeks…………… When it got properly dark I soon got a shout on the r ..read more

In my opinion APIA makes fishing rods, and whilst this might sound blindingly obvious when of course they do, what I mean is that this rather amazing Japanese fishing tackle company makes lure fishing rods which so badly need to be fished with to properly appreciate them. The thing is that few anglers can or will spend nearly £400 on a lure fishing rod - quite understandably on a bunch of different levels - but frustratingly we are talking about one of the easiest and efficient rods you could ever hope to handle at any price. For sure an experienced angler is going to get a whole lot of good s ..read more

The other day I had a couple of fish in glorious warm weather when I was bumping the bottom in a strong run of current. I was fully togged up against the sun with my face mask, sunnies, cap and sun gloves, and the world felt good. Yesterday I went out for a quick session after hooking but dropping a nice bass a couple of days ago. It started off with loud cracks of thunder and heavy rain which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence holding a carbon pole, but within about twenty minutes the water was glassed off and it was even approaching feeling warm………… And then within another fifteen minute ..read more