Such fun with our first group, it’s always so interesting what you continue to learn when anglers are fishing together

In some respects the long days out here kinda blend into one big experience, but it’s also a bit of a strange feeling waking up on the morning of the changeover day when one group is going to head off and another group is inbound for their trip. It’s October and you’d expect all kinds of weather out here on the south west coast of Ireland - it has obliged! - but because of the makeup of the place we have almost always got some viable fishing to do…………..

And we have had such fun. I stand by my belief that the majority of anglers are really good people, and as much as our lads fished hard and caught a bunch of bass when the fish were on, it’s the laughing and smiling and having a blast that sticks longest in the memory for me. With weather that is so changeable you also sometimes get these brief periods when the light goes a bit loopy, and when your anglers happen to be fishing away of playing a fish by pure chance in the “right” position and it all comes together from a photography point of view then it’s an extra thrill for me and it means that I can make even better visual memories for our groups.

If you would like to come and do this sort of fishing with us out here in Ireland then please go to the Guiding page above and fill out the contact form to get in touch with me.

From a lure fishing point of view it’s always interesting when you have a few anglers fishing fairly close together because everybody is going to do something subtly different even if you have them fishing with the same lures or techniques and so on. One of the lads was particularly good for example at bumping lures along the bottom in a run of current. Whereas I will tend to let a fast enough current do the work for me, Ed tended to put a definite little “kick” on the lure as it raced down with the flow, and he caught a number of bass doing exactly this. From my point of view it is always a buzz to see our lads catching on lures which I have helped bring to market - Sandeel V2 Weedless in this situation - but there are of course plenty of good lures which work well when you fish them like this on jig heads.

It continues to interest me how good the different looking Savage Gear Slender Scoop Shad is when you swing it in current on the 6/0 belly-weight weedless hook which we made for our original Gravity Sticks. A soft plastic paddletail that is doing something noticeably different in the water to say “my” Gravity Stick Paddletail, it does continue to amuse me slightly that a lure which was designed for freshwater lure fishing and which I knew nothing about until it launched has turned out to be a paddletail which has done so well this year and which we turn to a fair bit for this guiding work. You can get as technical or not as you want to get with fishing, but whereas I once thought a paddletail was simply a paddletail, now I will more than likely turn to a specific one for a specific kind of fishing these days. In a fast run of current or when I can kinda “hold” my lure on the back of dumping waves in a short sea I will often turn to this bloody lethal Slender Scoop Shad in the 13cm or 15cm sizes - I rig both of them on that 6/0 belly-weight hook, or I go with a heavier Berkley belly-weight weedless hook if need be - and then for a straight retrieve sort of fishing I will more often than not use one of the Gravity Stick Paddletails. It’s a feeling thing at the end of the day because I can’t prove one way or another, but I know what I see and experience, plus I enjoy trying things out, watching other anglers, and learning all I can all the time.

I accept that what I happen to think could be a load of crap, but when you are watching your anglers like a hawk for long hours, you’d be a bit of a tit not to notice stuff like this. I know that you can only catch on what you are putting in front of the fish, but when a particular lure fished in a particular way continues to produce fish I have to take notice (in enough current the flow is working a paddletail for you on the swing). The IMA Hound 125F Glide might be a hard lure which I tend to obsess about for boncier conditions, but it also works great in current. I notice that most of the lads who come fishing with us have a few of these killer lures. One of our lads also did well on the long-casting Shimano Responder 149F which I think you can find at Chesil Bait’n’Tackle. Hell, I think back to how well the Gravity Stick Pintail 120 was doing for us back in July and then a load of steam starts spouting from my ears as my brain goes into overdrive mode!

We got properly kicked by some filthy weather yesterday and the fishing was tough, but Joe had a nice fish and a couple of others were lost. What was perhaps most interesting though was the outrageously good looking water that we found via a good call from John yet again. It’s an extensive area and we have fished there a bit with our groups over the years, but to me it’s one of those locations where I would so love to spend some decent time exploring because I think there is so much more potential with the way the water moves and rips and crashes around so many features. The evidence is that it’s loaded with bait and I can visualise fishing it in so many different ways. If you are reading this then I guess you love your bass fishing, but don’t some locations excite you a bit more than others because they quite simply look so interesting? Our next group of anglers arrives this afternoon so we go again from early tomorrow morning…………….

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