I know we obsess about the changeable weather in this country, but this is getting ridiculous. I don’t like it for bass fishing at all.

The other day I had a couple of fish in glorious warm weather when I was bumping the bottom in a strong run of current. I was fully togged up against the sun with my face mask, sunnies, cap and sun gloves, and the world felt good. Yesterday I went out for a quick session after hooking but dropping a nice bass a couple of days ago. It started off with loud cracks of thunder and heavy rain which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence holding a carbon pole, but within about twenty minutes the water was glassed off and it was even approaching feeling warm…………

And then within another fifteen minutes or so the wind had picked up so strong that I was literally struggling to stand up and cast anything into it. The rain was driving into my face and doing its level best to find any weakness in my waterproofs, and for all that Storm is a sheepdog and is up for anything, even she was looking at me with a slightly quizzical face. I could hardly feel my hands they had got so cold and I will admit to thinking sod this and heading back to my Epic Berlingo and the luxury of the heater switch.

We all obsess about the weather in this country, but what the sodding hell is going on at the moment? If there is one thing that I believe will negatively affect the bass fishing it’s very changeable weather, and down here the weather and the fishing feels just like that at the moment - extremely changeable. One moment you think it’s really getting going but the weather does a complete three sixty and the fishing feels back to square one again the next time. Some of these photos here are from a session when I got literally every single factor that I would have liked coming together - tide size, wind direction, swell direction, water clarity, light levels, you name it, and I was running down the cliffs to get at it. My mate had even caught a mackerel at a different spot a couple of hours beforehand and confidence was high with a bit of bait like that around - but we blanked. I’d have put a lot of money on a good session as well.

I will talk about that little orange thing I am wearing around my waist at some point soon. It’s a Spinlock ALTO and I think it could be interesting for some of our fishing. To quote from the Spinlock website: "Designed for a wide range of water sports the ALTO is an inflatable flotation device worn around the waist. Manually operated, the inflatable tube is released from the waist pack and then supports the user under the arms and around the chest". This Spinlock ALTO is very much a buoyancy aid and NOT an auto-inflate lifejacket - "a buoyancy aid assists a person who can tread water with enough additional buoyancy to help keep them afloat", taken from the Spinlock Facebook page. When I get a re-arming kit for the ALTO and also when the water warms up, I will jump in with it and inflate it and see how it helps keep me afloat with and without waders and/or neoprene leggings and so on.

Anybody else finding their bass fishing very up and down at the moment? I sincerely hope that you are finding more consistency to your fishing than I currently am around here. I hear snippets of good reports from time to time but this constantly changing weather and conditions I believe is not doing us many favours. Early April and it felt like things were suddenly getting going, but now it feels like we are almost waiting for things to sort of kick off again……………..