Such a fun few days with our first group of anglers

At supper on their last night, one of the lads in our first October group asked me if we had ever had any “difficult” guests, and apart from a couple of people we wouldn’t have back even if they offered us free tarpon fishing for evermore, we get good people on these co-guided lure fishing trips out here in Ireland. Even with the odd bit of unpleasantness we all see on various social media sites, nothing has changed my firm belief that anglers are mostly very cool people who I really enjoy spending time with and communicating with………….

Just like our first group of anglers who left yesterday morning. They have all fished with us before and I genuinely look forward to seeing them all again. John and I work as hard as we can to put them onto a few fish and help improve their own fishing and lure fishing related stuff, while John’s brilliant wife works her socks off to (brilliantly) feed and house them all. It’s a fantastic operation out here and I sincerely count myself lucky to spend a good few weeks in this corner of Kerry each year and do this sort of work. When the fishing is good it’s awesome, and when the fishing’s a bit tough I would hope that our clients still say the whole thing is still pretty awesome.

If anybody can point me towards bass fishing that’s guaranteed all day long every single day then I am all ears, but most of you here know the ups and downs of bass fishing. Over the first four guiding days of my October 2024 time out here we found some good bass fishing at times (including one proper lost bass that I know is going to haunt the poor bloke for a long time), but we also struggled at times. I would hope most anglers realise how fickle any fishing can be at times, but on a couple of occasions we pulled away from targeting bass with our anglers and instead we walked them out to a few rocky points and got on with bothering the local wrasse population.

I know it’s bass that we all seem to want above most other fish, but if I could have done an audio recording of those wrasse sessions you’d have heard the most glorious amount of giggling and piss-taking and having a blast. I dread to think how many wrasse were landed and released, but at times it was a bit daft how hard these fine fish were smashing into the soft plastics. Fishing is all about having fun in my book, and that wrasse fishing was the perfect example of this.

The 10cm Savage Gear NED Dragontail Slug on a cheb rig

I hadn’t realised that the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug lures were available in the UK, but one of our lads was using them for the wrasse and it was just ridiculous how successful these lures were. They are made from a similar material to the Z-Man lures which of course means that you can’t mix them with other lures or store them in plastic lure boxes etc., but what it does also mean is that after a whole heap of wrasse there was virtually no damage to the lure and Michael could put it back in the packet and fish with it again. Which he did on the next wrasse session, but on his first drop he snagged up good and proper and had to break out! Guess who is going to get their grubby mitts on some of those Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug lures and have a bit of a go at some Cornish wrasse when I get home? If you read my review of the awesome Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod you will know how much I like it, but I haven’t used it for wrasse fishing. One of our lads had brought one with him because he now fishes with one as his all round bass lure rod. But he also put it to very good use on the wrasse, and I was slightly taken aback by just how much lifting power there is in a lighter lure rod like this - look at the bandage below for a good example of wrenching wrasse away from the rocks!

On the bass fishing front it was some pretty standard stuff for us out here that got the fish. Savage Gear Gravity Sticks in white when it was dark, but in the bad (rain, low light etc.) weather we had on Saturday I changed one lad from white to the colour of Gravity Stick you can see me using in the video above. As I walked away from him to go and photograph a nice bass one of our other anglers had just nailed on a surface lure - as ever walkie talkies are SO useful - he shouted that he was into a fish. It’s such a buzz when you go for a lure or lure colour change and something positive happens straight away. One of the anglers in that first group literally has to be bribed to not fish with the Sandeel Pencil 90 or 125 all the time, but with how well the lures continue to work for him I can quite understand!

Our anglers obviously bring their own lures with them and we carry a few favourites if they are required, and there is no getting away from the lethal and different sizes of Xorus Patchinko being the most popular surface lures I see. Not cheap for sure, but if you invest £20+ in a single lure and it catches you a load of bass and you don’t go losing it? I do like the look of the EvoBass lures which are made in Ireland by a very good bass angler. One of our lads had a fair few in his many pencil cases stashed around himself and caught some of his bass on them - including that really good fish which broke his braid over some sharp rocks.

Anyway, when you read this we will be out fishing with a new group of anglers who came in yesterday afternoon. If there is one place in the world where the weather changes from hour to hour and the actual forecast I am pretty sure is done via carrier-pigeon and guesswork, that’s this corner of Ireland. We take each day as it comes and we do our best to come up with viable plans. I love how almost whatever the weather does - good or bad I might add - we tend to have viable options to chase bass especially, but if need be we will offer our anglers a bit of something different and roll with it……….

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