Anybody else literally feeling sick with excitement about the (fishing) year to come?

I’d love to go back to when I went fishing for the first time aged seven years old and be able to watch my face when that float went under and I literally launched into that little wild brown trout. Perhaps we should gloss over the fact that the poor fish went sailing over my head into the bracken behind me, because what I would really love to see was the look on my face. Are there any telltale signs on the face of a person for whom fishing is going to become a lifelong obsession? Why does fishing consume some people but not others? I think fishing is the best thing ever and I can’t work out why everybody doesn’t do it - I am very glad they don’t of course! - but surely this “burden” is meant to get a bit easier as you get older and wiser? Sod that!

There are many, many bass anglers out there with far more experience than me, but I do like to think that I have been obsessed with chucking lures at these magnificent fish for long enough now to at least be fairly experienced. I have fished for bass in the UK, Ireland, Morocco, France and Portugal. I know and have been lucky enough to have fished and fish with some incredible anglers. It doesn’t catch me more fish, but I am obviously fascinated by lure fishing tackle and there can’t be many anglers who have used as much different gear as me. It doesn’t make me any more knowledgeable than the next angler, but I do really enjoy communicating with you guys about what I learn. I live in an outstanding part of the world, and over nearly fourteen years now around here I have discovered far more and varied bass fishing than I could have imagined.

And I have been lucky enough to catch a few bass this month, and I will keep on trying in March as well. But you and I both know that in the UK this time of year is hardly what we would call the bass fishing season. Nope, we have got the proper “season” as such to come. Nobody is going to try and claim that bass stocks are in rude health, but we will be out there trying our hearts out as usual. I don’t know about you but I accept that during the fishing year there will be times when my interest and desire to fish a hell of lot peaks and dips a bit. It’s the way it is, and I also know that every single year I look forward to what is to come even more than I did the year before. I genuinely feel a bit sick because I am so excited about the year ahead.

For sure we will all be trying to catch more and bigger bass by simple virtue of going fishing, but that is not the primary motivator for me at all. There are any number of different locations I might fish a fair bit and know fairly well through the course of the fishing year, and I will continue to fish them, but what really, really drives me is when I think about how much I am not doing and how much I need to keep on learning. So many places to keep working out and attacking differently to how I might have before, so many places I want to fish but haven’t done so yet, so many parts of Devon and Cornwall alone that I haven’t even seen yet, and so many different ways to fish for these spiky predators that I am not even doing yet. All this stuff excites me more than ever and I would imagine that you feel the same way. Bring it on as they say.

I will be at The Big One fishing show in Farnborough next weekend with Savage Gear and I hope that I might get to see some of you there. I have no idea what to expect, but I gather the organisers are looking to include more lure fishing into this event so it should be a fun couple of days. I do enjoy fishing shows because I get to spend time talking to other anglers about all things fishing. Enjoy the Six Nations this weekend. I think I might spend next week reviewing three of the fascinating new APIA Foojin’RS lure rods which I have been spending time with. I accept that this might put some of you off so please forgive me if that’s the case, but it seems that enough of us here are interested in the fishing tackle side of things whether we are looking to buy new stuff or not - and especially at a time of year when for most bass anglers it’s not even worth having a go. Or is it though? You all have a good weekend.