A big Happy New Year and I hope you all had a good Christmas with family and friends wherever you may be upon this glorious earth. I am sitting in my office in a very quiet house because my wife (teacher) and two girls have gone back to school this morning, but I’ve got the Test cricket on in the background (come on England!) from what must surely be the most stunning cricket ground there is - Newlands, Cape Town - and the wind is starting to freshen up a bit from the S/SW after what has actually been a relatively settled Xmas period………….

We finally we got some good bass fishing conditions and we found a few fish which made my respective days but also frustrated me with how hard the weather has hit us for most of November and December especially - because the moment we get decent water it is pretty obvious there are bass around and they will take lures. I am seeing and hearing of reports of bass coming to lures all over the place and it has to beg the question - are lure anglers trying to catch bass on lures for longer and longer each “season” and then finding out that the those traditional “seasons” are actually wrong with their supposed timings?

Mark and I did manage to catch bass on New Year’s Eve and on a couple of the previous mornings, but annoyingly we then failed to catch on the morning of New Year’s Day with some tidy conditions and really nice looking water. A mate did drop a nice bass at his feet though so we nearly did it! It’s still so mild and we have had some decent bass fishing well into January before, so who knows what could happen over the next few weeks? I will be out there giving it a go for sure.

Payo Perca 125 Mac Tune Floating Jerkbait - Perca 7 Chartreuse Gizzard colour

I am so happy to see that IMA lures are officially back in the UK thanks to the nice people at Tacklewave UK (they also import and distribute Major Craft gear into the UK), and I am doubly happy to find out that the killer IMA Hound 125F Glide lure is no longer discontinued and into 2020 will see this lure back on the market and properly available again - yippee! As much as I like IMA lures though and I obviously have a thing for their Hound Glide, it’s becoming increasingly interesting how a specific colour of what is by miles the best Hound Glide ripoff I have found so far is consistently working for my mate Mark and I in all kinds of light and water conditions - the rather strangely named “Perca 7 Chartreuse Gizzard”. Is that chartreuse back on the lure really making a difference or is it yet again a case of catching bass on a new lure and therefore you continue to use it because you are confident with it?

There is one new IMA hard lure that I am really excited about, but to be honest I am still at a bit of a loss as to why it’s taken IMA Japan so long to come out with this thing. I have loved the killer little IMA iBorn 98F from the first time I fished with it, but even then I thought it was a bit strange that there wasn’t a larger version of this lure available for us junkies - but there is now, and holy frigging cow this brand new IMA iBorn 118F is a sodding missile of an ultra-shallow diver. I have never measured how far a lure can go in my life, but from feeling alone it seems that this new IMA iBorn 118F is flying easily as far as their long-casting Hound Glide yet it’s swimming so, so shallow - and this is so my kind of hard lure with the kind of ground I fish over so much. How effective might this new lure prove to be? I don’t know yet, but I rarely go out without the smaller iBorn 98F in my lure box so I have some high hopes for this bigger 118F version.

Does it ever get any easier?! Here we are now at the start of a new decade and next month I turn 47 and I am not far off the five year mark free of cancer. I am a father of two who doesn’t run (obviously!) or sail but I am increasingly interested in both sports because via my two girls I spend so much time around them now - yesterday for example I took my youngest girl up to the SW Cross Country champs in Yeovil where she came 6th in her U13 race which now means a March weekend trip up to Loughborough for the nationals, sorry, proud dad moment! - but this lure fishing thing just gets worse and worse the older and more obsessed I get. Do I need a new, very long casting and very shallow swimming hard lure for example? Nope, of course not, but when did logic ever need to enter the equation when it comes to fishing tackle?

Do you know what is really, really wrecking my head though? I am starting to do some work with the mighty Savage Gear, and mostly with one particular person who is an absolute live wire of lure ideas and design. We are starting to sample some interesting bass related gear and I am so excited about what we can hopefully do together within bass fishing that I can hardly sleep. Lots more to come in due course and please watch this space. Happy New Year Year to you all and may this wonderful obsession grow and grow……………

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IMA lures officially back in the UK and bass are still being caught on lures - Happy New Year to that!

© Henry Gilbey 2023