It fascinates me to see the lures that my co-guide out in Ireland turns to the most for his clients…………...and yes, damn right it’s time to dream again, come on England!

What a weekend of rugby! I crawled into bed just after 3am on Saturday morning after my journey back from Kerry, and then woke up a few hours later to watch one of the great World Cup matches. I thought England did exactly what they needed to do and produced a game against Australia that on its day I am hopeful can do for the All Blacks next weekend - who let’s be honest were scary-good against Ireland. Wales were incredibly lucky to get past France and their stupid red card, and as much as I love South Africa, I was gutted to see Japan knocked out. If you support the England rugby team then I guess you’re in the same boat as me here - can’t wait for Saturday, hugely excited, but also very nervous………....

Anyway, back to fishing. You need to bear in mind that whilst I do four weeks of co-guiding work out in Kerry each year with John Quinlan, he works full time as a fishing guide for at least eight or nine months each season. He is bloody good at it and he gets to see all kinds of anglers from all over the place doing all kinds of fishing with him - from bass to salmon to sea trout to pollack to mullet to wild brown trout in the mountains, and so on. He sees a lot of fish caught each and every year, and as much as a lot of our clients especially tend to bring a selection of lures, by virtue of John’s work he ends up handing out a lot of lures for his anglers to fish with. I have asked John a few times now what his go-to top three lures are when he needs to provide them.

The number one lure which I never, ever see John without is the 6’’ long OSP DoLive Stick, indeed I have got to Kerry before and managed to mend a whole heap of them for him with either the not easy to get hold of Mend-It repair glue, or the takes a bit longer to dry but works just as well and is far easier to source Savage Gear Fix-It “soft lure resin”. Through the course of a season a professional fishing guide like John is working with so many anglers of varying skill levels, and as I have seen many times myself now, the DoLive Stick is such an easy to use lure to clip on for a less experienced angler and get them fishing it really well in no time at all. Obviously a lure needs to work really well for bass, but a guide also needs to carry successful lures for their clients which are easy to use in a bunch of different situations - and the DoLive Stick is that lure. I dread to think how many Kerry bass are landed by John’s clients over the course of a season on the 6’’ OSP DoLive Stick!

I don’t know the percentage of bass that John’s clients might catch in surf or at least beach based lure fishing conditions each year, but it’s a lot, and whilst I was initially surprised to learn that his second go-to guide lure is the 125mm/19g long Savage Gear Line-Thru Sandeel, in fact when I stop and think about it, this lure makes a lot of sense as a guide lure. John tends to pre-rig his Line-Thru Sandeels on a bit of fluoro to make them easier to clip on and off (half-hitches to the top swivel to enable a nice short length of line), but the thinking is very much along the lines of the DoLive Stick - the Line-Thru Sandeel is a lure which works just fine on a simple straight retrieve, and not just in surf conditions at all. Easy to fish with lures that work great for bass are perfect lures for a guiding operation.

And I have noticed that the fixed-hook version of the Line-Thru Sandeel is now trickling onto the market here in the UK. It’s called the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 and I have had some samples here for a while - they are lethal! I have caught a heap of bass in the surf here in the UK on these samples, rigged as per above with a 2/0 or 3/0 single hook and a couple of split-rings, and I had some of our clients fish with them back in July. The lures worked at night fished like a needlefish, in a bit of surf, and also off a few rock marks when a bit of distance paid off. This Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 125 might only weigh 19g, but holy cow they fly, and I would imagine that their increased ease of clip on/clip off use over the Line-Thru Sandeel will see John out in Kerry turning over to these fixed-hook versions big time.

The third lure in this list also surprised me a bit until I really started using it a fair bit myself and learnt more about how a simple metal as such can in fact be fished in a bunch of different ways in a whole heap of conditions. Again you need to bear in mind how the needs of a fishing guide tend to be a bit different to going out and fishing yourself with your own lures which you know all about using. Yep, the third lure is another nice and simple lure, the Savage Gear Seeker, and whilst I understand the 28g and 32g sizes will be back on the market early next year (I pushed hard for this to happen), I see John quite happily using the generally more available 23g Seeker a lot. I am also fascinated to see that we have both come to the same conclusion about the Black Pearl colour as well, in that for whatever reason this colour Seeker tends to work really well either early in the morning or in muckier water.

There are of course a few other lures we tend not to be without - and the discontinued IMA Hound Glide is very much on that list, with the best copy I have found being this one here - but as a list of three lures which are all very simple to fish with and very importantly can cover a wide range of sea conditions and location types? Well if I didn’t try to learn all I can from good anglers and guides I get to spend time with then that would be remarkably stupid to say the least, so I note with interest how often the Seeker and now the Sandeel Pencil lures are in my lure boxes for my own fishing these days. As for the DoLive Stick? Let’s just say that it’s easier to weigh my collection than it is trying to count them!

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