Off to Portugal for a week (hope my flight goes this time!), thank you for all your feedback to my previous post

If we don’t get another hectic storm over the weekend which stops my flight taking off - see here from this time last year - then on Sunday morning I am flying to SW Portugal to see if I can find a few bass to do battle with. I am still gutted that I didn’t get to see this lad’s awesome bass from the trip I was meant to be on last year, so here’s to hoping that a fish like that might rear its head at some point next week……………

I am very realistic about trying to catch bass in that stunning corner of the world, because the fishing is not at all easy. A mate is there at the moment and it’s been a real struggle with some serious swells battering the west coast especially, but of course the big appeal is that if you get very lucky you might just end up connected to the bass of a lifetime. To be perfectly honest a bit of sunshine and warmer temperatures will be more than welcome anyway, plus spending a week with a few mates in a part of the world I am very much falling in love with is more than enough before you throw any potential fish into the mix. It’s never going to be about numbers of bass on that coastline, but with every cast you make you are in with that chance. Just like with Andy and his monster from last year.

I wanted to say a big thank you for so much feedback on Wednesday’s blog post. I have read every single comment and if time wasn’t an issue I’d love to be able to reply to them all. However I might or might not start mixing the style of blog posts up a bit, I have never contemplated any cessation of writing actual blog posts. If people keep reading what I write then I will continue to write the posts. I love writing about fishing, and I love trying to make fishing look as impressive as possible via my photography. Nothing will change on that front unless I find out from the statistics one day that literally nobody is reading this blog!

Even if I do start to mix things up a bit, I don’t have either the time or the financial resources to get out and try to make loads of “proper” YouTube style fishing videos that take ages to shoot and edit. For sure I need to look at getting back to my YouTube channel, but I worked out from day one that if you want to make purely “look at me fishing away” videos then you are going to ruin where you like to quietly go fishing. Same with not taking enough care with photos. If the world was perfect I’d love to go shouting about exactly where I go fishing, but we live on a relatively small island with a high population density and I value peace and quiet over any desire for some sort of internet based hero status.

I need to really start exploring what is and isn’t possible with the time I have, because any writing I do on this blog is on my own time and the only money I earn from it is if any of you kind people choose to buy some of your fishing tackle via my affiliate links. This is the UK and our (sea) bass fishing market is nothing when compared to say carp fishing, so whatever I earn from the links is never going to amount to very much and I know that. Any video or audio work I might start to try and incorporate into this blog would also be on my own time and therefore I need to keep things fairly simple, accessible, and as swift and easy for me to produce as possible.

I also need to explore a platform such as Substack where I might be able to produce more content if any anglers out there are prepared to pay a small monthly or yearly subscription. I remain very wary of something like this because I know how much we all like free content on the internet, but the simple fact is that I love communicating about fishing via words and photos and potentially more video or audio. If I can find a market that will potentially pay me to do more of this then I’d be a fool not to give it a go. Again, I am not talking at all about stopping this (free) blog. It’s purely because I love doing this blog so much that I want to explore how I might do more of this kind of stuff. You all have a good weekend and I will try to keep you updated from out in Portugal if I can actually get there this time around! Roll on the Six Nations of course……………