It’s always a blast to fish or photograph with a professional fishing guide when they aren’t guiding

I have worked around a whole heap of professional fishing guides around the world, and whilst they all share one thing in common - guides should not fish with their clients - wow does it tend to be a lot fun for me as a photographer or angler when I get the chance to fish or photograph with a guide when they have time off and can actually go out fishing instead of guiding. One of my most memorable days of fishing photography was on a vast flats system around the ultra-remote Providence atoll, many hundreds of miles away from anywhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Two seriously good guides who are also scary-good fly anglers had the day off, and they kindly invited me to come along and take photos. Holy frigging cow they fell upon the bonefish, milkfish, triggerfish and GTs like men possessed. The light was epic, the flats and the sky went on forever, the water was ridiculously shallow, the bonefish especially were chowing flies almost right off the end of their rod tips, and I ripped through memory cards all day long in those wonderfully hot and humid and sticky conditions………………….

So bass fishing here in the UK or Ireland is a little different to that kind of fishing, but that’s the whole point of fishing to me - if you don’t truly love what we might term our “everyday kind of fishing” then one’s love of fishing is only skin-deep to me. I have been lucky enough to have spent a lot of time around some of the finest sport fishing in the world but nothing does it for me as much as lure fishing for bass. Last week I got to spend a session fishing with my friend Marc Cowling of the outstanding South Devon Bass Guide service. I had not crossed the Tamar into Devon since lockdown began and I was half expecting to be asked for my passport, but the Torpoint ferry was safely negotiated and I made my way to a quiet and out of the way part of south Devon to meet Marc. We made our way to the fishing spot (socially distancing of course, f&^k me backwards but this f@*&%$g virus can do one now) and Marc pointed out various bits of structure and current lines to me. All the bass he has caught from this spot have been at range and in no time at all we were on the rocks and firing various lures out there.

We ended up catching a fair few bass including a couple of nice ones for Marc, and it was a huge amount of fun, but I will tell you what my favourite part of the session was. You’ve got a guy here who current global situation aside now spends most of his working life helping to put anglers onto bass along the stunning south Devon coastline, and I looked over at one point when Marc’s hooked into another bass and I see him literally howl to the sky “I love fishing so much!” as his rod tip banged down to the kick of the fish. I know Marc would love to be out guiding at the moment, but he can’t, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he is loving every single bass he is catching that bit more than normal precisely because the world has gone so mad. Marc is a bit reluctant to make much noise about how well he is doing on these new needlefish lures that he designed, for various reasons that anybody who works in fishing in the UK will know all about, but I have a fair idea how well his new lures are working for him at night and can you imagine how much of a thrill it has to be to catch fish on something that you have designed and/or made? Hell, I hooked a bass the other night on my very first cast with a soft plastic that I have had a lot of input into and I nearly fell off my rock with excitement! It’s such a buzz.

All of Marc’s fish came on the regular Patchinko which for my bit of a moan about the build and components quality the other day on Facebook is still my go-to surface lure when you really need to get out there and “hold” bouncier conditions especially. I still grin when I catch this surface lure just right because it goes out so incredibly well. In pure fishing terms I should really have stuck with the one lure, but I had made the decision that if there were a few fish around I was going to chop and change my lures to see what I could get to work. I have got various lures here from my work with Savage Gear that either need more water time and testing, plus I am learning more about their current or new lures and how and where they might or might not work for me. I don’t get an email from the grownups at Savage Gear HQ saying “Henry, get out there and test so and so lure”, rather the people I deal with trust me to think for myself and do what I need to do to further our cause as such. Of course I love catching fish, but I also really enjoy “playing”. One fish on a new lure or a new technique etc. does it for me like you would not believe.

Marc who is one hell a bass angler outfished me by sticking to the Patchinko whilst I was chopping and changing most of the time and quite obviously affecting my results - but I learnt plenty more about these lures I am involved with. I had a bass off the top on the Savage Gear Surf Walker 155F for example, and as much as the newer version of this lure has got some seriously good hooks and split rings on and seems to be built really well and casts a mile if you keep things very smooth, it has been interesting to weigh it up against something like the Patchinko. That “face” on the Patchinko definitely helps it “grip” much better in rougher sea conditions, whereas a surface lure designed like the SG Surf Walker prefers calmer conditions like we had for most of this session in south Devon.

I also caught bass on the missile that is the Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 150. I really like how these serious casting lures are so easy to fish with - whack them out and wind them in, playing with the retrieve speeds to affect the depth at which they swim and so on. I did hook what felt like a bit of a better bass on this lure right at the end of the session but I got to thinking about photography angles and so on and forgot about a big rock just underneath the surface and right in front of us and I lost the bloody fish when my braid went right over the top of it. But my own howl to the sky, “I love fishing so much” moment of the session for me was catching a bass on what is turning out to be a rather special soft plastic I have got here. I am often rigging it weedless and weightless, but as well as it casts I could not quite get it out to where the bass were feeding, so I changed weedless hooks over to one with a belly-weight on it. I was pretty amazed at how much further I was getting it, and crumbs did I let out a yelp of joy when a bass nailed the lure almost straight away. I so want to tell you about this lure but I can’t quite yet. It’s so easy to fish with, I am finding that it works in a whole bunch of different situations, and I have got plenty more ideas about where we might take the design ideas in the future. A big thanks to Marc Cowling for having me along………………

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