I was so excited about this one particular bass this morning that I nearly wet myself, and I even donated it a bit of line

At about 4lbs or so this particular bass I caught this morning was obviously not going to threaten any record books, but it was the how which did it for me so damn much that I didn’t realise my drag wasn’t quite tight enough, plus I seriously nearly wet myself with excitement at what happened. Fishing eh? Does the addiction just keep on getting worse? Mark and I had a bunch of smaller bass out as far as we could put 23g and 28g Savage Gear Seekers (we saw feeding birds), and interestingly enough I couldn’t get many fish on the 19g Sandeel Pencil which I trust so much. For some reason the bass were obviously feeding that bit deeper down, and for the most part it was putting a bunch of spin-stops on the Seeker during the retrieve which was doing the trick, with the bass either hitting the lures on the drop or as you turned the handle to continue winding………………

So I got to thinking, indeed the amount of time my head thinks about all things fishing can’t really be entirely normal, but I guess going fishing and working in fishing is my life in some respects. Anyway, I told you the other day about these new soft plastics I have been working on with Savage Gear, and for a fair amount of the process from ideas to nearly in the shops it’s been me with various samples getting out there and trying different things with them. From the start I wanted a system of soft lures which we could fish on weedless hooks, but a while back I was stroking one of the Gravity Stick Pintail lures here at my desk and because of stuff we are thinking about for the future of this “family” of lures, I wondered what the lure would be like rigged on a swimming kind of jig head. I managed to get it onto one of the jig heads from the Savage Gear Sandeel range and off I went for a dog walk combined with testing a few lures out.

I obviously can’t talk about future ideas and stuff we are working on, but suffice to say the Pintail rigged on a pointy/swimming kind of jig head and then ripped through the water looks bloody awesome. I can’t pretend that when Mads and I started working on this Gravity Stick Pintail that “ripping” it on a jig head was top of our list of where we needed to get to, but damn this thing looked good - the heavy, fatter tail goes into a really intense sort of S-Curve when you rip it on a jig head, so I then rigged another Pintail on one of our #6/0 Weedless hooks with a belly-weight (as per the photo above). I could get the same sort of action when I ripped it, albeit it’s swimming somewhat shallower than when on a heavier jig head. It was not our intention, but the action it most reminds me of when you rip the Pintail like this is the killer Fiiish Crazy Sandeel and how it “shimmers” when you give it a rip.

So we’re catching a bunch of smallish bass this morning out as far as we can get our Seekers, and I got to thinking whether there might be the odd better bass around, wasn’t it interesting how the bass this morning were responding so well to us putting spin-stops in our Seeker retrieves. In my lure box I had a white Gravity Stick Pintail rigged on one of our #6/0 Weedless hooks (as per above albeit that’s a Green Silver UV Pintail), and I had put a rattle in the slot which sits behind the hook. No belly-weight, no weight insert, naked if you like. I have obviously fished these Pintail lures a lot now, and for much of the time I am fishing them like I’d fish the DoLive Stick (twitch, twitch, pause, twitch etc.), albeit a bit slower because I think the Pintail responds better like this.

There is almost nothing in fishing I enjoy more than trying something a bit different and then catching a fish, and for me the best time to try new stuff is when you’ve got a bunch of fish around. I was able to change between the Seeker and the Sandeel Pencil enough this morning to find out that the bass wanted the lure a bit deeper than the Pencil naturally swims, but how many bass did I need at the end of the day, and also when I’ve got ideas in my head that need some water time? I clipped on my white Pintail, whacked it out (they fly), let it sink for a few seconds, and then I put say four or five quick turns of the reel handle in, and stopped. How damn good did that look? With no added weight and because I let it sink for a few seconds, the Pintail still goes into this really nice looking S-Curve sort of swim when you wind fairly fast, and when you suddenly stop the lure it darts hard one way and then turns itself to turn hard the other way as it drops. Repeat the four or five fast turns of the reel handle and pause again, then repeat all the way in.

And on about my second or third cast trying out this way of fishing my Pintail this morning I saw a flash of silver behind the lure and all of a sudden it’s engulfed and my rod tip slams over - one of those hits that you couldn’t miss even if you tried! As always, I am sure that a bunch of other lures would have caught that bass above this morning, but on the flipside it’s completely irrelevant because you can only catch on what you’re fishing with. As I tried to get across on Wednesday’s blog post, I am absolutely loving this bass fishing related work I am doing with Savage Gear, and why on earth would I not fish with the lures we are developing when I believe in them so much? Fishing fits us all in so well because it gives us so many different experiences, and whilst I understand anglers chasing big fish or lots of fish and what have you, this one particular bass from this morning did it for me like you would not believe because of how I caught it. One fish caught doing something slightly differently, on a lure I have been so closely involved with, and now I’ve got a head full of ideas and plans and I know that my sleep patterns for the next few nights will be all over the place because I can’t stop thinking about fishing stuff. You all have a good weekend……………..

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