It’s amazing how much better I am at fishing when I can’t actually go fishing! Isolation………….

I haven’t been able to go fishing since that session last Monday which I blogged about here thanks to my wife and I both getting coronavirus and having to isolate here at home while our two amazing girls who haven’t caught it so far look after the house, exercise the dog, cook every single meal for us, and then leave our food at the door of the two rooms in the house we are using as part of our isolation. I haven’t gone fishing for a week, it’s wrecking my head, but with the fish I could have caught I have decided that I am a much better angler when I can’t actually go fishing. If I had been able to go fishing the last few days? 10lb+ bass literally fighting among themselves to get at whatever lure I chose to present to them. Obviously…………..

My wife is a teacher and the only surprise here for me is that we have escaped catching coronavirus for so long now. If you read various newspapers or news websites or watch the news and you have a shred of intelligence which causes you to ignore literally anything “news” based from something like Facebook then you will be fully aware of the spread of the virus in schools especially. I found it very interesting when I was over in Ireland the other day how you have to wear a face mask when you enter a shop to say pay for fuel or buy a sandwich, but here in the UK it seems to be very different now yet we have an alarming number of cases each day and of course we have all become virus experts by now.

My wife and I are both fully vaccinated and to be perfectly honest I don’t understand anybody who would not be. We have both had what I suppose you would call a heavy dose of man-flu and a general lack of energy for a few days (I helpfully told her to man-up at one point last week, it went down really well as you can imagine!), but that’s been about it and I am incredibly grateful for the vaccine and the protection we all have access to. My wife has cooked with our two girls since almost before they could properly sit up, and whilst I have completely lost my senses of taste and smell for the time being, what our girls have been cooking for us has looked amazing and my wife tells me how good it tastes. Last night a couple of portions of a full roast chicken supper were placed at the door to the sitting room while my wife and I watched something on Netflix! We always eat together as a family but obviously not at the moment although I could get used to this room service!

And of course I have been keeping a close eye on the weather and sea conditions and tides and so on. I have looked at some of the beach webcams so much I have most likely been flagged as a bandwidth thief, but when you can’t go fishing yet so much coastline is almost within touching distance it’s somewhat frustrating! Every single day since I last went I have been coming up with various fishing plans which I know would have resulted in amazing sessions every single time. I’d have caught more big bass in one single week than the entire population of bass fishing experts on Facebook - if only I could have actually gone. I’d have gone there and cleaned up on soft plastics and then I’d have moved there and banged a load on metals. The next day I’d have moved to another spot and tricked a load of big bass into hitting a number of sample lures I have here which need some water time. I couldn’t have failed - if I could only have actually gone. The fact that my local beach most likely went all coloured and weedy for a few days is besides the point. I would also imagine that my local estuary system went all brown and horrible looking with all that rain we had.

But it doesn’t matter though because I am such a good angler when I can’t actually go fishing! All the choices I made here at home I know would have all worked so well, completely unlike when I can actually go fishing and I end up blanking and I can actually taste the egg on my face instead of having to imagine what the food tastes like! Hell, you should try this approach sometime. Don’t actually go fishing but instead make amazing plans which couldn’t have failed, and then even better you can sit behind a screen on some social media platform and tap out badly spelt, grammatically incorrect and crushingly terse advice “nuggets” for all those anglers who are enjoying their journey along what I know as the fishing curve. Ouch Henry, did you become all cynical during your enforced isolation?

Not for one second do I take any of this coronavirus stuff lightly by the way, and of course there are a scary number of people in exactly the same situation as my wife and I here at home - with an even scarier number of people having gone through or are now going through far, far worse. I don’t want to speak too soon but it looks like we are lucky enough to have come through this dose of COVID-19 without much hassle. Not being able to go fishing for ten days or so is completely meaningless and we all know that, but please humour me and my approach to this. All our lives have changed in so many ways, countless peoples’ lives have ended prematurely because of this bastard virus, but we will get through it because we have to. I end my isolation at midnight on Thursday and then I will leave my house at 6.45am on Friday morning to begin the long journey over to Kerry for some more co-guiding work. As much as I am obviously looking forward to it, what I really want to do is be able to give my girls a hug and a kiss and get back to what passes for normal these days.

Do you know what has made my week on the (not being able to go) fishing front more than anything? A thoroughly nice lad who came along on one of our guided Ireland trips the other day and who has fished with us before went and took a bit of what he has learnt with us in Kerry, applied it to his local area, and holy frigging cow he only went and landed a 75cms bass on a white Pulsetail in what he said was about 2’ of water. I have seen the photos, the bass is an absolute cracker, the angler is absolutely over the moon, does it get much better than that from a fishing point of view? Except that is for my not actually going fishing plans for today which I know would have resulted in multiple 75cms bass!