Back home this evening, water started to look really good on our last day of guiding, found a few fish

I am jumping on the Rosslare to Pembroke ferry this morning after staying the night with a friend and his family on the south coast of Ireland. I left Kerry at around midday on Sunday with all my guiding work done for the year. Always sad to leave Ireland and some truly fantastic people I know and work with and get to call friends, but obviously glad to be getting back home to see my family. Also leaving with a sense of frustration that the weather played a certain amount of havoc with the fishing we were able/not able to put our lads onto at times…………

But what can you do except work hard and have a lot of fun doing so? What the photo above doesn’t quite show is how severe the weather was when I shot it, tucked away behind the back of my Epic Berlingo on a 200-600mm lens because the rain was just mad. Look at how the angler is literally leaning back into a lashing north west gale as both rain hits his back but also spray from the tops of the waves - but he’s still laughing. Okay, laughing a bit at what can sometimes be the absurdity of what we all love to do and how much we want to catch fish, but that smile on his face in amongst that kind of weather says it all to me. Fishing - when it's good it's awesome, and when it's tough it's still bloody good fun. I would hope that the anglers who fish with us out here feel the same.

And then look at the same angler smiling away with a beautiful bass he caught on our last day when the weather behaved and the dropping swell and clearing water enabled us to access some marks we had not been able to fish but had so badly wanted to. If you know this lad then you will know what lure he caught this bass on from very shallow, rough as hell ground - yep, the SG Sandeel Pencil 125. Damn this bloke is good with this lure, but then he is so supremely confident when he is fishing with it because he has caught loads of bass on it before and he knows how much shallow ground he can effectively cover with this simple looking missile of a little hard lure. Confidence is surely such a big part of lure fishing.

Here is another of our lads with a chunky autumn bass he nailed on the SG Seeker on the last day, another lethally effective lure which we turn to a lot out here because it keeps working again and again. Michael is a very good bass angler and is more than adept at choosing what lures he needs to fish with in different locations, and on this particular mark he found this bass at serious range - hence the Seeker. It’s the first time I have seen the rather sexy looking, limited edition, cork-handle Major Craft Custom Seabass 9’6’’ 7-35g lure rod. I do love a cork handle and once again I take my hat off to the lovely people at TackleWave UK for bringing a lure rod like this to the UK market. Wow. I haven’t linked to this particular lure rod because I believe they were all sold very quickly. If you want a lure rod with a similar action then take a look at this review of mine and check out the rather stunning Major Craft Tidrift 9’6’’ 962ML 7-35g.

I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to doing some actual fishing myself once I get back home. I never, ever mind not fishing when I am doing this guiding work with John Quinlan, but of course I do love getting back to the actual fishing afterwards. On a slightly selfish note I am really pleased and relieved that I got through an intense period of work like this without any heart related issues, indeed I am feeling stronger every day. I know how lucky I am to still be here and I do not intend to waste the rest of whatever life I get to live. I was gutted to see England knocked out of the Rugby World Cup, but I never expected us to get to the semis and I was shocked at how close we ran the mighty Boks. With how badly we have been playing I so wanted Ireland to win the World Cup, but yet again the title’s going to go to a southern hemisphere side and November 22nd 2003 is feeling even longer ago! I need to hook a bass……………

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