Why don’t more bass anglers carry a landing net? Is it a macho thing? (most exciting day so far this year, the Ashes cricket is finally starting!!)

For a long time now I have wondered why so few bass lure anglers seem to carry a landing net with them for at least some of their fishing. Is it simply a macho, “real men don’t carry a net” thing, or is it more an ignorance thing because so many of us come from great big baits rods and a lot of fish which we can simply lift up and in? There are obviously a lot of times where a short-handle, rubber-mesh landing net - the easiest sort of net to carry and use in my opinion - isn’t going to be any good, but for those times when you can successfully crouch down a bit and slip a decent bass into a waiting landing net? I think back to my mate Mark’s double figure bass from a year or two ago and where we were fishing and how there was nowhere to “beach” the fish because we were up to our waists and beyond in water. Not an easy fish to land if you’re going to try and grab the lip or secure a fish-grip to it - but into my net the fish went and I sometimes wonder if that fish would have been landed if I wasn’t there with my net…………….

I only really carry a landing net if I know I am going to be fishing from a wading position, indeed when I am fishing like this it’s a complete no-brainer to me. Why on earth wouldn’t I carry a lightweight landing net if I know that I have nowhere to beach a fish because I am out in the water? I have such strong memories of a big Irish bass I caught one spring on my way back from guiding out in Kerry because I didn’t even touch the fish once. I was out wading over my waist and I hooked the fish in a strong current. I gave it the gears, got it to me, slipped my net underneath the bass, made sure the fish was actually in the net, opened the bale-arm on the reel to get a bit of slack line, stuffed the butt of the rod down the front of my waders, grabbed the bend of the barbless hook on the Fiiish Black Minnow 120 and turned the lure out of the fish’s mouth, dropped the net underneath the surface - and let the roughly 8lb bass swim off. At no point did I even need to touch the fish. How easy could it be?

There was no scrabbling around trying to grab a green (lively) bass by the bottom jaw between thumb and forefinger. Same with trying to fish-grip a green fish. I didn’t want to be wading back to shore to try and beach the fish somewhere. Unclip my net at my side and lead the bass into it. Don’t go chasing the fish with the net of course, and you can actually kinda fold a particularly big bass up and into these nets which are in fact designed mainly for trout fishing I believe. Get it wrong with trying to carry a landing net around and it can be a complete pain though, so if you have any interest in this I would refer you to a blog post here in which I explain how I do things net wise. Forget those magnetic net clip things because either they come apart in current, or else they are bloody lethal if you are bouncing around the rocks and your net falls free from the magnet - it will - and you nearly go arse over tit tripping over the now loose net. Yep, I talk from experience here. If I am going to carry a landing net then it needs to sit at my side and out of the way until I need it. That blog post still stands as the best way to do it that I have figured out so far.

I can’t help the fact that my landing net of choice these days is a Savage Gear Pro Finezze Rubber Mesh Net Floating in the medium size (I can see it in stock here on Amazon if that helps), because it just works. I am nothing at all to do with this landing net, but I can’t fault it and it has had double figure bass slip into into it with no great hassle. It’s so lightweight, it’s not very expensive, and it’s got an elastic lanyard thing built into the handle of the net which I clip into a stainless steel carabiner which lives on the lure bag which sits at my side. I use a Savage Gear Bottle and Net Clip to secure around the landing net, but what I didn’t know at the time of writing that blog post is that you can find these types of clips all over the place - like here on Amazon for example.

Anyway, you all have a good weekend. I can barely contain my excitement at the Ashes cricket finally getting underway from 11am this morning. The build up has been incredible, and if you love and know your cricket then you will know all about why this particular Ashes series has the potential to be such a cracker. Bring it on and cue plenty of working on my laptop in front of the TV!

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