Heading home today

I’ve just said goodbye to our second group of anglers and I’m just writing this blog post before packing my Epic Berlingo up and heading for home. I’m staying with a friend about an hour away from the ferry tonight, then tomorrow morning I get the Irish Ferries crossing to Pembroke Dock and drive down to Cornwall - with the awesome Test cricket on the radio of course! Sport doesn’t get much better than what is going on between England and Australia at the moment…………

We’ve had a blast out here, but for the most part the bass fishing has been pretty tough. Our anglers have fished hard and John and I have worked our socks off to try and find fish, but at times the bass have eluded us and sometimes there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it but put your thinking cap on and come up with a plan. The one thing as always though is that we had a blast with all our anglers, and I hope that they would say the same thing - lots of fishing, plenty of very good food, a lovely place to stay, a truly magical part of the world to spend time in, and a hell of a lot of laughing. With a few fine fish thrown in.

What woke me up this morning was thinking about the bass which a lad called John hooked during our last session yesterday afternoon/early evening. I know it’s going to haunt him for a while that the fish went through a load of weed and ended up throwing the hook. I saw the hit and the bend in the rod and I know it was a proper fish which could have done the decent thing and bloody stayed on! He then had an almighty swirl on a surface lure literally just as we were about to walk away from the mark and get the lads back for their lobster thermidor supper……….

You know how good it is to get home after time away, and especially when you love living somewhere as much as I do. My family though has been literally spread around the world recently so it’s going to be extra special to see them and catch up. My 18 year old girl drove herself (help!) to the Isle of Wight recently to teach dinghy sailing for much of the summer, so I won’t see her for a while longer. My wife has been leading a school trip to France and she will get home just before me, and then my 16 year old girl will be starting the very long journey back from New Zealand at the weekend. She has been over 11,000 miles away from us for three weeks seeing her best friend who emigrated back there a couple of years ago. We said that after our daughter’s GCSEs we would get her down to New Zealand so it gave her something to really look forward to with all that boring revision and multiple exams. It’s a hell of a long way and she did the three flights on her own, but she has been having an absolute blast and because she’s a running nutter she has also kept up with all her endurance training and even fitted in a couple of New Zealand Park Runs! It’s going to be so good to see her and hear all about it.

Anyway, I had better pack up and be on my way. You all have a good weekend and I will catch up with you next week. Itching to do some fishing………….