I am a complete photo snob, but most of us carry mobile phones which are handy little video cameras, and video clips are obviously pretty useful for a bit of how to etc.

In case you hadn’t guessed by now, if there is one thing that fishing does for me and I assume many of you reading this, it’s how the brain keeps churning away with the endless questions this utterly fascinating sport continues to throw up. Yesterday morning and then this morning are but more examples of different things happening or not happening as I might have expected, whilst obviously having accepted a long, long time ago that we can’t ever come close to knowing it all in fishing. Why for example could we not get any interest from fish on the edges of bladderwrack when it was dark, but as night turned into first light things started to happen. Were the fish not there in the dark because the bait wasn’t? Were we using the wrong lures and/or the wrong colours? Should we have been somewhere different when it was actually dark and then moved to this spot as it started getting light? See what I mean?

Anyway, I digress. It is highly likely that the majority of us here have these smartphones which not only take photos but are also mini video cameras which live in our pockets or rucksacks. I use my iPhone a bit as a stills camera when I am out and about with my family, but I very rarely use it as a video camera. The lad I work very closely with at Savage Gear put up a brief (mobile phone) video clip on Facebook of one of our Gravity Stick Pintail lures the other day, being retrieved with this spin-stop kind of retrieve that I talked about here on a blog post from last week - and it got me almost remembering that I also have a mobile phone/video camera in my rucksack when I’m fishing and perhaps I should actually use it a bit to shoot some simple video clips (please note that I am starting to affiliate link now to these new Gravity Stick soft plastics because they are starting to appear in shops and on websites, and as always I am eternally grateful if you choose to buy any of your fishing tackle like this, but please do all you can to support your local tackle shop).

So we were fishing yesterday morning and the water was lovely and clear. Mark had landed a nice fish at first light on the khaki coloured Gravity Stick Pulsetail rigged weedless/weightless, and when it got a bit lighter he landed a 5lb+ angry bass on the silent version of the IMA Salt Skimmer which produces a lot of fish for him. Scorcese I am very obviously not, but I thought it would be a bit of fun to shoot a slow motion video clip of this chunky fish being released, for no other reason than I love seeing bass swim away so obviously unharmed and in such good health. I think back to the days when I presented my first TV series for some very obscure satellite channel and the cameras and tripods and sound tools were so bloody heavy I used to feel awful asking the guys if they would mind walking a couple of miles that way because I thought we might catch a few fish. Now we walk around with these mobile phones which can work quite well as video cameras and most video footage these days never goes anywhere but online anyway, and even then I wonder how many people are watching YouTube on anything other than a relatively small mobile phone or tablet or laptop.

As regards the above video I must once again reiterate that it’s my two brother who have all the talent when it comes to filming and editing and so on, but I asked Mark yesterday morning if he wouldn’t mind having a few casts with this new Gravity Stick Pintail which I had on my rod in the white colour, and then could he please use this spin-stop retrieve which is proving to be rather deadly, and I would film it in slow motion on my iPhone. Yep, the short clip above is not exactly epic, but from a showing that “this is how I am starting to fish this particular lure a lot now” thing, a few seconds of simple slow motion video is saying a whole lot more than the many thousands of words with which I could quite easily use to waffle on about it. If you watch from the start of the video above when Mark is putting a few fairly quick turns on the reel to get the Pintail swimming with an S-curve kind of action, it’s when he suddenly stops (spin-stop) the lure which seems to be when a bass is most likely to hit it. Rather like many other lures working well on the drop I might add, indeed my best bass from this morning came on a 28g Seeker which I was fishing with that spin-stop retrieve in slightly deeper water - and the fish hit me when the lure was on the drop. We’re not exactly talking about any life changing video work here, but it does get me thinking more about how we might more easily show some of the stuff we do.

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