Are you confident that a lure can sometimes be fished very effectively without you doing anything to it at all?

I find the guiding work I do over in Ireland fascinating on so many different levels. John and I are often asking our anglers to fish with certain lures or types of lures, and to follow on from a lure selection, we will often suggest how we might fish that particular lure if we were fishing ourselves. If we need to show how we would do it then of course we do, but I can’t make an angler fish a lure how I would, and when I am the viewer as such I can sort of be the “perfect angler” because I am not actually doing it myself……………

And to trust that in some situations some lures or types of lures can literally be left alone to be fished by current or waves or depth takes a lot of confidence if you haven’t done it before. I understand completely the urge to wind something in and also to want that feeling of something going on at the end of your line as your lure does its thing. It’s completely natural and I notice all the time with this guiding work how some anglers are more comfortable with certain types of lures and locations, indeed I would suggest that a big part of the reason why people come fishing with us over in Kerry is to experience something different to what they might experience back home.

If you know the general area we fish in Kerry then you will know that we are sometimes fishing areas where there is a lot of current combined with shallow water. A lot of saltwater anglers have never fished or indeed targeted bass in areas like these, so it’s my job as a guide and as somebody who spends a large part of their working life “translating” fishing to other anglers to try my best to make these anglers feel as comfortable and confident as possible. One lad who regularly comes fishing with us really stands out here, and it’s because he has done so much fly fishing for salmon which in turn means that he completely understands and trusts putting his fly out to let it swing in current. As that current swings his fly line and fly around, it’s the current which is working the fly - and it’s the job of the angler to maintain contact and set the hook when required.

I distinctly remember talking this lad through dead-drifting a DoLive Stick in the current we were about to fish in Kerry one day - “cast out and across, catch up to the lure make sure your mainline is tight, follow the angle of the line with your rod tip, do absolutely nothing to your DoLive until you come towards the inside of the current where it can be worth a couple of lift-ups and drop-downs, then reel in a repeat” - and he caught a bunch of fish by trusting the method and doing absolutely nothing to his lure until he felt a bass smash it. The lure was being worked by the current.

I know the internal battle which we might have to fight in a situation like this - we want to do something to the lure because surely it isn’t working properly if we don’t. Turning the reel handle when lure fishing feels as natural as a politician talking crap on the TV, but just as a politician should perhaps resist the urge to have a drinks party when the rest of the country is in lockdown, there are various times when I would urge an angler to resist doing anything to your lure other than maintain contact. It does of course help rather a lot when you are fishing a slightly alien feeling method if a fish jumps on the end nice and quickly because you then get that all important jolt of confidence that doing nothing can actually work, and in a guided fishing situation that your guide isn’t actually talking a load of rubbish when he says do nothing to your lure!

Then from my working so much in bass fishing point of view, the fact that our new smaller size of Gravity Stick Pintail soft plastic did so well out in Kerry when dead-drifted in fast current out in Kerry seriously made me happy. By no means has the killer DoLive Stick suddenly become a bad lure to me because I am working with Savage Gear, but seeing good bass coming in on lures which I had so much input into bringing to market continues to be an incredible thrill. We finished in darkness one evening out there so I didn’t have enough light to take the photo, but I did have a bit of a proud dad moment when I saw the four rods on John’s rod racks, each rigged with a Pintail 120 on the 4/0 belly-weight hooks which come in the packets. The Slender Scoop Shads continue to interest me more and more the more I fish with them in all manner of different locations and conditions, indeed the best bass of our recent Kerry trip was landed on the 13cm version rigged on the 6/0 belly-weight hook which is made for our original Gravity Sticks - and swung in a fast current with the angler doing nothing to the lure other than to hold on when the bass nailed him!

It obviously isn’t just about current though, but if you find water which is fast and shallow enough to literally work your lures for you then matching the size and weight and type of lure to the speed of the current really does help. What about stopping a lure on the retrieve and letting it drop, like with a spin-stop on a Surf Seeker or the Sandeel Pencil, or allowing the Gravity Stick Pulsetail to fish on the drop at night like I know Marc Cowling of South Devon Bass Guide really likes to do? How about casting out in deeper water and letting something like the Fiiish Black Minnow or our Savage Minnow fish on the drop and naturally swing back towards you on the angle? The lure is “fishing” as it does this. Have a look at one of our recent Savage Gear videos below where I catch a couple of pollack towards the end of the film using exactly this method - it works!

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