We all carry different gear with us when we head out fishing, and how I do my thing has always been influenced by the photography gear that I need with me, which in turn is influenced by what I am actually doing - fishing and photography, photography only, or guiding. Apart from hiring somebody to follow me around with a load of camera gear which let’s face it ain’t going to happen, my fishing, photography and guiding lives as such all revolve around some kind of rucksack, and if I am fishing or guiding then how I carry lures with me hasn’t changed for years now and I don’t carry lures in my rucksacks…………

The more I do it, the more I am loving this whole lure fishing in the surf thing. I have done a fair bit of guiding work based around this style with John Quinlan over in Ireland, but because I am not fishing myself I can still work out of a waterproof rucksack just fine with my camera gear, and if I was purely taking photos of surf fishing and not doing any fishing myself then again, again a rucksack works out okay. But fishing myself and bearing in mind that I never, ever go out without at least some “proper” camera gear? It’s become very apparent that there isn’t one system which works perfectly all the time, and I wonder if my findings here might prove useful to a few of you?

I don’t personally like fishing with a rucksack actually on my back. I am fine with walking many miles with one, but when I clip on a lure and do the fishing bit, I want my rucksack off my back and sitting on the rocks or sand or weed and so on - which tends to be just fine when I’m fishing from the rocks or a beach of some other kind of ground where the tide isn’t going to either go way out or race back in at a rate of knots when you’re concentrating on your fishing. Surf fishing from proper surf beaches though tends not to fall into these categories, and earlier this year especially it became very apparent that a lot of the time a rucksack was in fact a mighty pain in the backside. Get into a load of fish or the light and conditions start looking really good for some photos and I can end up with my camera gear either way up the beach or else I’m having to constantly check up on the rucksack because the tide’s racing in. And so on. Accessing my lures is never the problem because I have them by my side in my HPA Chest Pack, but what about somewhere to keep various bits and pieces from getting soaking wet, and then for me, at least one camera plus lens? If you go surf fishing and you’re not getting at least regularly splashed by the waves then I would politely suggest you ain’t doing things quite right!

I have tended to shy away from any of the sling-type bags across your back things for a number of reasons, and of course you lose the whole bring the bag around your front aspect to them if you are wearing a lifejacket - which I am for a lot of my lure fishing these days, but not when I am in the surf. I managed a load of surf sessions this year with a waterproof rucksack while at the same time vowing to find a different solution, and I got to talking to a few lads I ended up fishing with a bit who are “wearing” those properly waterproof (as in fully submersible) and not remotely cheap Patagonia Stormfront Sling bags. Now these lads aren’t carrying camera gear like I am, but they are doing a lot of surf fishing and it obviously got me thinking. I took a bit of a punt and bought one to see if it could work for me.

I was really interested to see if for some of my surf fishing at least I could ditch the rucksack and do what I needed to do out of a 100% waterproof/submersible sling-type bag and of course my lures sitting at my side as they always do. I believe the lads I referred to above are carrying their lures in their sling bags, but that’s not for me at all. Attached to the belt that holds that HPA Chest Pack are my pliers and fish-grip as well, and of course a separate belt like that means I can tighten it up extra tight for surf fishing to stop water coming up under my jacket or smock and over the top of my waders.

In an ideal world I’d always be carrying at least one stills camera - Fuji X-T3 these days - plus at least two lenses plus polarising filters and so on, but I have worked in and around fishing for long enough to know that in certain situations you’d be better off going with one camera plus one lens and rolling with it whilst accepting that you might not be able to creatively do absolutely every single thing you wanted to. Surf fishing when I am actually fishing and photographing is one of those situations, so I strapped a spool of leader onto my brand new Patagonia Stormfront Sling bag, put a packet of Breakaway Mini Link lure clips and a pair of bloody reading glasses in there because I have to use them for knots and so on these days, and slipped my camera plus lens in there which in turn are in a small protective HPA camera insert type of bag I have. When I have locked my Epic Berlingo I put my car keys, mobile and wallet inside a mini rolltop waterproof sack thing and put that inside the Patagonia bag. The thinking behind this is that if I am going to be “slinging” the bag around my front and then getting my my camera out, if anything important were to fall out of the bag by mistake and drop in the water then at least it’s not going to get wet.

So I head out into the surf with my lures at my side (only the one lure box and my Lifeventure mug thing fits inside the HPA Chest Pack when I use just the one box, result!), obviously a rod and reel, and then the Patagonia sling-type bag across my back - and it worked, and has worked a fair few times since. There are obviously other much cheaper and non-waterproof sling-type bags out there, but from a lot of experience with some expensive LowerPro DryZone fully waterproof camera bags over the years, I know that once you put a proper TIZIP together with this kind of heavier duty waterproof material that then you’ve got a product you can actually go swimming with if needs be - and everything stays properly dry inside.

I am a fair few surf sessions into this new way of doing things and I kinda like it but with a few reservations. I have another fully waterproof and submersible sling bag to try out, the Fishpond Thunderhead Submersible Sling, and whilst it’s pretty similar to the Patagonia one I have, I do like how there are some handy compartments inside the Fishpond one to put your leader and clips and so on inside and kept out of the way for when you go delving around in the bag. TIZIPs need regular lubricating to keep them working properly, so finding a tube of proper TIZIP lubricant inside the Fishpond bag when it arrived was good. In essence though these not remotely cheap sling bags are simple and functional bits of kit that unless punctured are going to keep whatever you put inside 100% dry.

In an ideal world when I want to shoot some photos I clip my lure to the bottom ring of my rod stuff the butt of my lure rod inside my wading belt and go to pull the sling bag around my front and “serenely” unzip the bag, lift my camera out, zip the bag back up, shoot the photos I want to shoot, unzip the bag, place the camera back in its little HPA bag inside the sling bag, zip it back up, “sling” it back around my body so that it sits on my back, then grab my rod and put a lure out there again. Seems like a lot of faffing around when I write it like this, but it’s actually okay albeit your hands are often soaking wet when surf fishing so I don’t really want to be handling camera gear like this if I don’t have to. I also don’t really want waves crashing over my camera plus lens, so in reality whilst I want this sling bag type of system to be a totally seamless way of surf based fishing photography, in reality I am still having to sometimes move back a bit to either dry hands or get away from the bigger waves.

I’m going to keep going with this system for my surf fishing and no doubt after lots more use I will find further ways of refining things. So far these high-end submersible style sling bags from Patagonia and Fishpond seem to be very good, but if anything now that I am actually using them a bit it confounds me even more as to why anybody would ever want to carry their lures that they want to fish a session with in a sling bag. Perhaps this is me being so completely used to how efficient and easy it is to carry and change lures out of my HPA Chest Pack sitting on my left hip, but I do think it’s SO much easier to put my rod in my armpit and change lures out of the HPA bag. My use these days of a sling bag is based completely around needing and indeed wanting to carry camera gear with me and more easily to hand than a rucksack somewhere on the beach when I am surf fishing, plus I want a place to keep those car keys, mobile and wallet properly dry and protected and out of the way when I am fishing. Nope, it’s not 100% ideal, but it’s the best way I have come across so far……………..

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Lure fishing in the surf is forcing me to adapt how I carry my gear

© Henry Gilbey 2023