When we can’t go fishing there are double figure bass all over the place, but they will still be there when we can get back at it, albeit a little smaller and less numerous than in our dreams

If you are a bloke and you find it easy to admit to your mistakes then you are a better man than me. I am pretty sure that if you asked my wife and two girls who in our family is utterly convinced they are right nearly all the time then the answer would be dad! I went out fishing on my own and well away from anybody else before first light yesterday morning and I made a mistake. I hadn’t thought about what I was doing save for the fact that I wanted to be out on the coast to see if I could sniff out an early bass (I couldn’t!), and when I got home I put something up on Facebook along the lines of I gave it a quick go away from other people and that it felt amazing to be out there…………….

My post very quickly attracted some criticism and I categorically do not want to fan the flames when life is already so bloody confusing and scary, so I deleted the original post and instead apologised and asked people to get involved in a healthy and polite debate about some questions I had concerning what we can and can’t do at the moment. I had not thought about what I did yesterday morning and I quickly made myself aware of how things had changed literally overnight. I only had to block a couple of people from my Facebook page because they could not be polite, and all in all the discussions on there yesterday were mostly pretty civil and it was very interesting to hear from a few people who are on the frontline of what is going on at the moment. 

These are obviously some seriously emotional times and for a lot of us lure anglers who obsess about bass fishing, we’re coming out of one of the crappiest winters for ages when cabin fever has raged like never before. Spring has finally sprung with some truly stunning weather, and whilst in pure fishing terms I know my chances of connecting with a bass right now is or was slim, I went out briefly yesterday morning without properly thinking about it. I was wrong and I am hoping that by admitting to my mistake and owning up to my (lack of) thought processes I might encourage a few other anglers to think hard about what we all need to be doing as the government advises. 

If you go on social media I am sure you see a lot of what I call “shouting”, and it’s only natural that in times like these which let’s face it are unprecedented, there is a whole lot more “shouting” going on. Lots and lots of regular people are telling lots and lots of regular people what to do and not do. If the news is correct then there has been a lot of unnecessary panic-buying going on in the supermarkets and the cynical side of me can’t help wondering if a small percentage of the most ardent “shouters” are “shouting” away whilst surrounded by shelves near the point of collapse with bog roll, pasta, flour, and assorted canned items that other people could do with. What I am trying to somewhat badly say is that I made a mistake yesterday morning, but I don’t feel like I should be trying to tell other people what to do when there is plenty of real news and information out there for us regular people to digest and act upon. We know what we must be doing and I would urge you not to do what I did. 

On a lighter note, I wanted to say hello to a lot of anglers out there who aren’t going fishing and will no doubt be in the same boat with me and an overactive imagination. By the time this madness is over I can assure you that I will have driven myself loopy dreaming about all the places where I would have been catching whack loads of great big bass on my new or sample lures and new things I want to try out. When we get back to reality I will get out there fishing and come back down to earth with a swift bump because I very obviously don’t catch heaps of big bass all the time! Can you imagine how good it’s going to feel when life does get back to whatever passes for normal and nutters like us can freely wander our glorious coastlines once more? Do we sometimes take for granted that which we freely have and a period of not being able to get out there will reinforce our appreciation for the natural world and all the good that it does for us human beings?

A particular bass I lost over in Ireland is nearly at the 20lb mark already in my head, but give it a few more months and I’ll be telling you about the largest bass which ever swam and it nailed my lure but ran the wrong way over some very shallow rocks. A couple more months and I’ll have convinced myself that a 150yd spool of braid isn’t enough for how far I am going to be launching a 32g Seeker when the time comes to be back out in the surf before the regular people have even woken up. Cabin fever at the winter weather seems to be over - famous last words? - so I would suggest that what anglers are going through now is a new thing which is yet to be classified. Please note that I am deliberately making light of how things are right now because these are some bloody scary times for so many reasons, but surely we need to try and find stuff to laugh about now more than ever to help us all through this. You please stay safe out there and feel entirely free to come on here in the comments section below and share stories and experiences and questions and observations and so on. We ain’t going anywhere soon so let’s stick together………………...