I haven’t flown to Ireland for a long time now, but because the timings of the various ferries are a bit all over the place I am flying from Bristol to Dublin on Friday for the rather excellent Irish Spring Angling Fair 2024 at Ardaire Springs Angling Centre just outside of Waterford on the south coast of Ireland. Yep, in their mighty wisdom they have gone and asked me back! For me it’s a quick in and out visit to my favourite country on earth - no chance to actually go fishing! - but anytime I get to spend a few days in Ireland is something to savour………….. This is the third year for the Iris ..read more

Back in early 2022 when I found out that you could get weedless hooks with somewhat heavier belly-weights than I was used to, it was mainly the Berkley Fusion19 Weight Swimbait Hooks which I ended up using the most. My understanding is that these rather good hooks are now discontinued though. If you look around and you will be able to find various heavier belly-weight weedless hooks, and a while back at that huge Big One Show I came across an alternative from the Italian brand OMTD though. Called the Big Swimbait Weighted Hook, I got some to try…………… If I don’t need more than 2g or 3g belly-we ..read more

Short one today. Ben from the Art of Fishing messaged me to say that he was putting on a bit of a Savage Gear sale on his website - check it out here. I am rather pleased to see some of the Gravity Stick clam packs nice and cheap, plus the single Slender Scoop Shads are on offer as well. Rods, hooks, measuring mat, metals etc. Don’t shoot the messenger! 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 continu ..read more

The word nice is a bit of a copout when it comes to describing a fishing rod, but this thing does happen to be a seriously nice rod which is a bit of a steal at the price. It’s thanks completely to a lad called Jake Scholgler who put me onto this rather lovely HTO Nebula IKA Hunter 2.65m lure rod, because I wasn’t aware of its existence until Jake put one into my hands at the Glasgow Angling Centre open weekend the other day (check out Jake’s YouTube channel here where he shows you how to make lures). Jake also works closely with HTO, and I know that with all the lure rods the company does, he ..read more

Via my work I probably get to see and try more lure fishing tackle than most anglers, plus I have been working in fishing for a very long time now. Perhaps then I should be a bit more blase and cynical about the whole thing, but I’m not. Almost every single thing in fishing fascinates more than it ever did, but one of the things that really wrecks my head is trying a new lure out because it interest me - then catching a good fish on it…………. Just like the other day. I am sorry to bang on about that good bass I lucked out with in March, but it’s still slightly freaking me out how that fish hit ..read more

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