Lure Fishing. A Diary of Danny & Friends

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly interview No.3

2012-02-10T03:49:00.000-08:00

Steve Collett 39, CEO harris sportsmail, Div 1 National winner, only person to have ever won, prestigeous Sea match, Flyfishing match, and Coarse match in a week .ex uk record holder match weights drayton, boddington, AT angler of the year finalist, MA Allrounder of the year finalist, drennan cup weekly winner numerous times, and evil villan.Who would be your ideal dinner guests? - Adolf Hitler and Ghandi at the same table

If you are not fishing/writing/photographing what would we normally find you doing in your spare time? - Horse Racing and perfecting the art of being a international playboy!

What was your favourite year and why? - 2010 winning the Div 1 National a childhood dream achieved in a sport I love, it doesnt get much better than that

If you were a animal what kind of animal would you be and why? - A Panda, I hate them with a passion, but over the years mankind has raised over 80 million pounds to make them mate, I would mate all day for half of that.

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be? - It would have to be HRH Prince Phillip, to find out if the Queen does “trumps” in bed

What is your worst quality? - Boldness and Baldness !!What is your most prized angling related item you have and why? - A pair of ABU 55s that a very famous angler gave to me, 20 years after he saw me looking at them in his shop, but could never afford them, he gave them to me and said, go out and catch everything from sticklebacks to stingrays, don’t just fish for Carp, if you do, you will be out of the sport in 3 years !! he was right

If you could only fish for one fish for the rest of your life what would it be and why? - Mackerel on a 5 weight fly rod, this has bought a smile to my face on many occasion, a real sporting fish when tackling them on matched gear, and then eat them !

Angling is supposed to be one of the most relaxing hobbies around so what one thing really pisses you off about our wonderful sport? - Forum Fantasists, anglers that 2 weeks ago were asking for advice, but now seem to know everything about everything, and belittle newcomers to our sport after they have reached a 1000 post status, you know what I mean Mr P ;)

Who or what got you into angling? - My dad, and then mother nature did the rest, all of us who have been lucky enough to get into this great sport have witnessed stuff that non anglers could only dream about.

Where do you see your self in fishing in the next 5 years? -Hopefully putting something back into the sport, wether that be on a coaching level, or teaching, I love watching others catch as well as representing my country in Angling.

Who or what has influenced your angling to get you to the stage you are now? - The next man !! we all like a bit of competition and along with great pals, we still like to whoop there asses, the competitive streak in me , has spoiled great days and made them, and long may it continue.

Interviews No.2

2012-02-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Ant Glascoe JR, am 29 years old, and i have been fishing since i was 3, i grew up fishing on my oldmans boat from Anglesey, targeting Bass,Pollock and Tope, to taking on some of the biggest lakes and Scottish Lochs fishing for Pike. We have always had a boat as long as i can remember and the whole family are all keen anglers including my Mom, we are all Scottish, Irish and Norwegian decent so the fishing is deep within our Celtic blood. Having Family that live in some beautyfull places in the UK and Ireland i get to fish some breath taking places. I have been involved in the tackle industry for 15 years writing features,Product development and just basically being a ghost in the background of the industry.Getting involved with some of the biggest brands in the world has gained me to meet lots of great pals in the industry, and now i am a consultant for Savage Gear and Okuma, taking care of the Predator side of things both freshwater and sea. I just like to get on with my fishing, i hate politics in Angling, i just dont get it, Its fishing for F$%cks sakes its suppose to be fun. "Rock N Roll"

Who would be your ideal dinner guests? - My ideal Dinner Guest, Hmnn hard one that,there are many folk on my list, purely just to tell them face to face what a C$%t they are. But on a serious note ill have to go for Frankie Sandford, and deffo put chilli on her badly wrapped Kebab.

If you are not fishing/writing/photographing what would we normally find you doing in your spare time? - In my spare time, i like to drop kick drum kits, listen to my Tunes Buck Fizz im goin mad for at the Moment, drink beer and eat Kebabs. "I watch my soaps too, love Corrie"

What was your favourite year and why? - My Fav year, now thats got to be 1969, Woodstock, why, Because i wasnt born, and i would of love to of been..

If you were a animal what kind of animal would you be and why? - If i was an animal, Hmmnnn, id have to be a trout, but only living in Chew, just purley for the challenge, or a Blenny.

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be? - If i could trade places for a week with some one dead or alive, it would have to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top the guy is cool as F*$k, but on the other hand Adrian Smith, Iron Maiden the guy is a Legend, then i could enjoy fishing and be apart of Maiden.

What is your worst quality? - My worst Quality, chat up lines for Birds, Body Popping i just cant seem to crack it, and i cant tie Granny Knots. What is your most prized angling related item you have and why? - My most Prized peice of Angling Gear has to be a Batterd Jointed Rapala my dad bought me for Bass fishing for my 8th birthday, its in my safe for memories.

If you could only fish for one fish for the rest of your life what would it be and why? -Now if i could fish for one species for ever it would 100% be Pollock, one of the first fish i caught, i just cant get enough of them.

Angling is supposed to be one of the most relaxing hobbies around so what one thing really pisses you off about our wonderful sport? -What really pisses me off about this sport, Many things to be honest, for starters, two face people really bug me, especially the ones that call ya behind ya back as well as Ass Lick,, but not realiseing they are calling ya to a real mate (There is always a Fly on the wall). Infact my dad has always said, "if you cant say anything good then dont say anything at all", say no more.

Who or what got you into angling? - My oldman got me in to Angling and pointed me in the right direction, i grew up Sea and Freshwater fishing Boat,shore,river and Lochs as a family we do it all, which to me is very important its just the Norm with in the Glascoe Clan, Thanks Mom and Dad.

Where do you see your self in fishing in the next 5 years? - In the Next 5 years, even Fatter, i am aiming to Sherman Klump standards, am just going to keep riding the roller coaster, enjoying the fishing and getting on with life, helping others in the sport too.

Who or what has influenced your angling to get you to the stage you are now? - My Influence has to be my Oldman, he is a great guy and angler,.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly!

2012-02-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

Right then Guys as fishing here is a bit quieter at the mo iv taken the time out to get some interviews done with people in the fishing world that iv worked with or fish with over the years and some guys i think are key to todays angling world from fresh and salt water! so i hope you guys like what your going to read in these "in your own words" interviews over the next few weeks

So here you go...... Interview no.1 :-)

Dave Barham – I’m the owner/publisher/editor of Boat Fishing Monthly magazine. I’ve been editing/ working on sea fishing mags for over 17 years now, being editor of BFM for the past 5 ½ years, editor of Total Sea Fishing for 7 years before that, and staff writer on Improve Your Sea Angling for 4 ½ years. I’ve been lucky really to do what I love for a living so far. I’ve also been lucky enough to play with most of the new tackle that has come out over that time as well. Fishing is a way of life for me, a religion of sorts. I really don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t ever fish again.

Who would be your ideal dinner guests? - John Bonham, Keith Moon and The Pussycat Dolls – Now that’s a party!

If you are not fishing/writing/photographing what would we normally find you doing in your spare time? - What spare time? Cooking, looking after my family, drinking Jameson and thinking about fishing.

What was your favourite year and why? - To be honest, I have a feeling that 2012 is gonna be my favourite year, because I’ve just taken ownership of Boat Fishing Monthly Magazine.

If you were a animal what kind of animal would you be and why? - I’d be an Osprey, because I love traveling and I love fishing.

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be? - That would have to be Animal from the Muppets!

What is your worst quality? - I’m a lazy SOB sometimes.What is your prized angling related item you have and why? - This is the toughest question on the list. I guess if I had to choose, it would be my trusty Shimano Talica 10II multiplier. It’s fairly new, but it’s by far the best reel that I have ever owned/ used, anywhere in the world.

If you could only fish for one fish for the rest of your life what would it be and why? - If we’re talking UK then bass! Do I really need to explain why? Abroad it would be marlin, because they are just amazing to hook and fight.

Angling is supposed to be one of the most relaxing hobbies around so what one thing really pisses you off about our wonderful sport? - The politics and lack of cohesion between the sea angling disciplines (shore/boat). I guess it’s just the lack of direction we have as a united group of anglers really.

Who or what got you into angling? - My dad, he used to take me charter boat fishing every other weekend from the age of four until I started in the sea angling mag business.

Where do you see yourself in fishing in the next 5 years? - I’ve been lucky enough to travel around the world fishing in recent years. I have a passion for boat fishing out of Malindi, Kenya. That place is really special to me – so hopefully I’ll be out there fishing once or twice in the next 5 years.

Who or what has influenced your angling to get you to the stage you are now? - Working on, and editing sea fishing mags for the past 17 years has given me access to some of the biggest names in the business. I’ve been lucky enough to fish alongside shore anglers such as Alan Yates, Steve Allmark, Paul ‘Shakey’ Stevens, and from the boats I’ve fished with some of the best skippers in the country, along with countless top rods such as Jim Whippy, Bobby King etc. That’s what I love about angling though, you never stop learning – no matter how old you are. There’s no such thing as an angling ‘expert!’

2012..........

2012-02-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

Hello guys sorry been a bit quiet since crimbo not had the most productive fishing sessions with lots of time out but tiddlers or nothing of any interest caught. iv been on the coast a couple times Bassin/Wrassin and hit the flattys with Jim and DT as well as a few trips with LRF guru Matt Newcombe trying to sort his Pike missions out and glad to say he's now beat his PB twice on our trips :-) hope everyone has a good start to the year etc keep ya eyes peeled for some cool blog updates starting this weekend!!
Tight lines

Danny

christmas Pikin and a happy new year!

2011-12-31T06:01:00.000-08:00

Welllllll this is the last post of 2011....... been quiet the last month been hectic busy with various stuff so it was time i got out and had a road trip with buddys in search of a decent fish or two! so me Jim Odonnell and Matt Newcombe headed off to sunny Somerset looking for a Pike and Perch :-) but on this mission there was a tweak! Mr Matt Newcombe has never nailed a Pike.......... the pressure was on! i had a few venues lined up but with good old british weather the first was high and coloured after a few snags hooked up was time for venue no.2 and this was looking much better! brilliant visability and good and the signs all pointed to some fish being banked! after a quick faff around a few locks with a few chases and Jim finding a good shoal of Perch i finally nailed a Jack the pressure was on to get Matt his first Pike!

it wasnt long before Matt nails one on the good old trusty spinnerbait! we hit a patch of fish where me and Matt had a fair amount of chases and near misses, Matt was on a roll with nailin a few fish along a 300yard stretch Matt was getting into the swing of things by now with a good bit of banter between all of us we decided to hit one last venue which happened to be one of my banker spots which has always fished well for me! we parked up and headed off to "the spot" it wasnt long before we started to see results the surface was literally boiling with fish, chub pretty much everywhere with the odd big swirl where perch or pike happened to of been having lunch! i headed off to a likely looking swim

within a few casts i get totally slammed! and after a good spirited hard fight i nail this 10lb 14oz double! I could see Matts eyes lighting up as we took these pictures a Pike nails some bait fish off the surface behind us! you could of had hit on surface lures i reckon there was so much going on! Matt has now swapped over to a 4inch white shad and Jim has stuck on a Rattle'smolt it wasnt long before Matts luck struck again! and he was in to a cool rough and tumble fight with his new PB Pike of 5 and a half pound, you could see Matt had caught the fresh water lure bug, the grin on his face was awesome considering he's never fished like this before being a Light Game legend of plymouth.

after these shots it was time Jim had a few and it wasnt long before his lure was getting crunched! while landing yet another one of Matts jacks i could hear Jim's drag belting off the reel but the fish came off after a 15ft or so powerful run after the pike about 7-8lb nailed the lure from right under his feet! within a few more casts Jim gets hit again but loses it :-( im fishing the next swim and get completely slack lined and then connecting with a Jack tail walking to the bank! love this style of fishin! time was against us now with only a hour or so before losing the light and headin back to Ivybridge for tea! we fished around some features in hopes of a couple more before home time when i get a couple chunky Perch follow up behind the lure! the next cast see's this wee beastythis cheeky little one pounder wallops my cannibal shad gettin zapped on the Owner stinger which i make up for shad fishing. bloody love perch! if only they grew to pike size id never fish for anything else! the day was coming to a end now and was time to head back! Jimbo had blanked (but caught a jack the next day) Matt had caught his first Pike and then beat his PB in the same day, cant get better than that ayy :-) all in all a cracking day of with good company, we are heading back here next week i will wack a post up after we have nailed some more fish from here and hopefully got Matt his double figure Pike! so check back in the new year! hope you all have a good new years eve i know i certainly will be!! ;-)

tightlines

Rock Donkeys

2011-11-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

This summer has seen some awesome fishing in me salt water antics and myself and James really put some effort in to catching one paticular addictive critter the Ballan Wrasse :-) this hard fighting brute of a fish is everything you could want in a UK salt water species for light lure fishing! Above is Jim with a lovely marked male Ballan which literally scraps like you wouldnt belive! such a small fish really does go off like a steam train and cannot fail to make your heart buzz and wack a massive grin on your face, Jim nailed this fish on a Hart absolute worm on a 10g ball jig fished no more than 5yards off the rocks in the deep clear gullies off south devon.

Above is a selection of some of the lures iv found to work well for me such as Senkos and the IT-shrimp from Megabass and Hawg craws, all these lure have caught some lovely fish from right in the roughest ground fished either on sled-head style jigs, hitch-hiker standard jigs and texed carolina and other weedless methods. Such a affective but simple styles of fishing that really do crack a smile on your face! this type of rock fishing is really REALLY addictive and although you will experience a few bits of tackle loss once you have figured out whats what you can reap the rewards of pretty much untapped potential for wrassin with softplastics :-)Heres my most recent wrasse after having my ass handed to me by Jim on monday on his local stomping grounds think he done me over something like 6-1 to him :-( most wrasse being a good average size all scrapping like demons! this fish nailed a giant Xlayer by megabass on a Owner sled-head it took on the drop on a small patch of boulders and kelp it made 3 good steaming runs to the point i had to palm the spool to stop being ruined in the rough stuff! bloody heart stopping stuff! after boga'ing it out and some quick snaps it was returned to swim another day! Jim had a cracking take where the wrasse was literally swimming along with the lure in its mouth plodding along nicely, before James whammed the jig head home and nailed the chunky wrasse. we are out again this weekend so will wack up some more as and when..... all in all a cracking day out with a good buddy catching awesome fish

Danny

Bassing the Sound

2011-11-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry been quiet recently had a busy time etc with trade shows and some half assed fishing sessions. but as usuall iv managed to have a bloody good giggle while iv been doing it! on the last warm period me and James had the pleasure of getting out in a Westport Marine Pilot6 CC for the day slashing around the plymouth sound on some Bass and Wrasse stopmping grounds...... and what a cracking day we had! we got down the quay at first light armed to the teeth with our softplastic rods and one 6lb class just incase mr Conger wanted to play!

heres a picture i took of james blasting out the back of the breakwater before we headed back in towards Plym for some pictures for Jims new book for the RYA. Jim knew we could crack on with the Pigs almost straight away with the tides and weather playin ball for once! it wasnt long before we were both into fish! Jim smashes the first wrasse on the Hart absolute worm while i search the ground with a HWK craw's and almost instantly im in to a nice wrasse of a couple pound! as we sit just out of the main tide behind a lovely feature we continue vertical jigging for wrasse and i get a massive smash in 20ft of water this rough and tumble fight sings out decent wrasse as the fish battles hard under the rod tip! james readys the net when we get a nice surprise as it comes into sight! a gawjus bass coming in at nealry 5lb i was dead chuffed!

as you can see in the photo above the bass nailed a HWK craw aimed for wrasse but hayyyy beggers cant be choosers :-) after a few quick snaps and a bollackin from the harbour police for drifting in the path of some bloody great german battle ship (cant they see we are fishing!) the Bass was safely returned to fight another day! we managed a few more hits here before we decided it was time to more to more open water on some of Jimbo's old stomping grounds when he chartered these waters! we had results almost instantly with hit after hit on numerous lures fished in around 40ft of water. i had my fishing brain on while James cracked on with doing images for the new RYA book and of coarse some magazine stuff for our TSF mag features it was all happening nicely! i had one more wrasse but only a tiddler and james nailed a wrasse on his Absolute worm

the colours on these more open water wrasse are such a warm orange compared to the fish caught right in under the rocks off the shoreline where they were more greens and reds but hayy wrasse on lures is a real guilty pleasure of mine anyway! you cant imagine if you have not caught wrasse on light gear when there right in the rough stuff how hard these beasts fight! talk about hit and hold tactics they are brutal! and never fail to wack a huge smile on my face, and i know James has also caught this bug of pigs on SP's with numerous 4's and 5's falling to the lure! it wasnt long before james's mate came along on his charter boat so i could transfer boats to shoot some images for james new book of him basting around the sound and some anchored up shot!
this was some of the last shots before the weather decided to take a complete turn for the worst! and i kid you not within the space of mins we went from vests and tshirts to chucking on the hoodys and getting battered by cold winds and mist! the seas lumped up and forced us to get back into the sound to shelter from the brunt of this bad weather hammering in! we tucked away behing the breakwater where James and i both had decent bass smash our lures on numerous hits but no results! it literally was proper shocking out here now and light was going rapidly! the mood dropped and we decided its prob best we headed back in! but not without one last highlight of the trip and one of the funniest things iv had happen to me in a long time!..... whats round, grey and weighs about 80lb and fights like you wouldnt believe!! i accidently foul hooked a sunfish! we got it close enough to see what the hell i had hooked before what can only be described as the most violent rod and line fisht iv had! i knew i was in trouble when i had one of the most experienced skippers behind me laughing like a school girl! well all in all a cracking day and once again its angling days like this with good friends that make fishing such a special part of my life! cheers Jimbo for another cracker :-) check out www.westportmarine.co.uk for some serious kit!

Red Eye Sessions

2011-09-29T03:36:00.000-07:00

Last week saw a few of us take on a challenge......... road trip and fish devon and cornwall! Myself, James, John Barribal and the north devon bass fishing bandit Joel Squires had a fun couple days lined up. on the thursday Me and Jimbo headed up to north devon to have a days banter and fishing with North Devons Finest Bass Guide Joel Squires http://www.joelsoul.co.uk/ he's a fully insured bass guide with over 6years guiding under his belt up on that beautiful part of the world. we would be crambling around on the secret squirrel club rocks hoping to nail one of two spikey buggers.

as you can see the north devon coast is a demanding bit of coastline and i would highly recommend help from locals or a guide Joel. this fishing is about as fun as it gets as you can be a kid again scrambling in and around rocks casting in and around these stunning rocks and gullys which every inch just screams BASS! the ground here is fairly shallow so surface lures and shallow divers like Popkeys from IMA and X120's and X140's from Megabass are just what the doctor orders..... i started with the Popkey as this lure can be worked to chug just under the surface and in this choppy water i stuck on a Limited edition Candy flashing plate version which had a good amount of flash and bright colours to stand out in the white water crashing in and around the rocks. Joel sticking with his long range minnow type lures which certainly did the trick! i managed to rise a nice fish which tail slapped my lure right off the surface but i couldnt get the bloody thing to hit again...... in steps Joel :-(

flukey sh&t i swear i warmed that fish up ha ha ha good on you mate. after a spirited fight which i would of put money on the fish snapping Joel up on some rather frisky looking rocks right in from if us...... talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place! after some quick photos this plumb 4lber was returned to fight another day, you cant beat seeing these fish swim off :-) the tide was pushing now and was time to head off to the next spot where after 10mins of me thrashing the water to a foam with my IMA Sazuke 140 up pops a face i didnt want to see...... and no i didnt mean the Ex Mrs it was a couple hundred pound seal...... :-( so that nailed that on the head! off to the next spot we go

now talk about out of this world fishing....... clambering along this rocks like a bunch of mountain goats it surely couldnt get any more remote and bass fishing bliss, i honestly couldnt care if we caught or not i just love being on places like this, and thats what i love about being one of the truly luck ones who does this on a regular basis i have some amazing memorys of being to places like this with like minded guys and above all friends! what more can you ask for? i actually managed pretty well to get every bass within 20miles to stay clear of my lures (doing my bit for the conservation of bass ;-) ha ha ha) after a couple hours playing around the weather decided it was time for us to stop our north devon adventure as the swell and wind had other ideas. still a fantastic days fishing with a top guy, thanks Joel your a star and look forward to joining you again soon either bassin or on my turf for the pike! please look this guy up a truly great guide and a true gent well worth hooking up with for a days guided bassin! http://www.joelsoul.co.uk/

so after a long drive home from North devon all the way to Ivybridge where me and James would grab some grub and a couple glasses of red before another early push friday morning down to meet with John Barribal owner of the Lure Heaven lure shop and of coarse his own online shop http://www.lureheaven.co.uk/ which stock pretty much all you could ever want for you modern lure angling! we had a quick poke around the shop looking at the lures he imports himself as well as the giants like Megabass, IMA, Savagear, Graphite leader and many more it was time to head off to some rock marks James and I had spoken about over the last few weeks it was finally time to get out and have a chuck! as you can see above it isnt the type of fishing you can just turn up and flick you lure out! you really do need to have your comman sense about you when venturing out like this to these marks....... pretty much most of this climb was shuffling around on your ass and all fours! not for the weak hearted thats for sure! remember fish arent worth your life be safe all three of us are experienced fisherman with many many years of this kind of stuff under our belts!

it wasnt long before we had fish nailing the lures.... on 3-4 occasions i had fish nail me on the drop fishing off a point where there was lots of busy water and they werent tiddler pollack thats for sure! after a few changes of lure from Megabass Flutta'bait the Savage sandeel and then i stuck to my guns and wacked on the trusty Owner SledHead weedless jig and a Megabass Giant Xlayer in smoke and glitter and i didnt have to wait for the fish to react well to this change! on the very first drop in to a good 30-40ft hole just off the rocks the rod slams over and iv got some good head shake and a charge but off it comes....... the very next cast i retrive slightly shallower hoping to hit a good Pollack or Bass rather than risk tackle loss with the monster rock pigs here, BANG im in!
heres a plump little 2lber which scrapped like a beast under the rod tip. awesome fun on my Sakura Mazerra 742ml to 21g and Shimano Stradic FG4000 loaded with sunline super PE 24lb a pure pleasure to use :-) you should of seen the colours on this whipper snapper while it was scrapping in the water..... an electric blue running through the fins and dark as night on its back a truly differnt fish when there yanked from the seas by us anglers! after some quick snaps it was returned for another day and behind me i could hear John into a fish too a small Pollack had nailed his Bait Breath lure on the Owner 3/16 OZ Sledhead too. it the day was flying by and we wanted to up anchor and head to the north coast of cornwall to get some gawjus sun set scenes over the wild storm beaches and hopefully a bass or two......
but as again you can see here good old mother nature had other ideas........ the winds had ment to of swung due south but plainly had stuck at southwesterlys which gave us some interesting coastal conditions....... now im a lure junky and to be honest there is much i wont fish within reasons but i must say im proud to admit when nature has beaten me! Me Jimbob and John scrambled down some ledges in search of some rocks to attack the seas but from up here it looks rough as a tivvy rave caves lass's undercrackers but trust me when your stood on the ledges with wind, swell and choppy seas its a different ball game, you canb usually fish two of these conditions but all three work against you to a point its hopeless. we pissed around in hope but then pops up a pair of seals and then a pod of dolphins GAME OVER.we moved off to this stunning beach which had gullys and deep holes dotted all over it just as the light was dropping, while Jimbo and John shot some product shots i did what i do best and scrambled across the muscle beds in search of Bass but it just didnt happen, i think if we had been here a hour before so the water wasnt so low it would of been a different story! all in all a brilliant days fishing here in sunny cornwall and by this point the looks on mine and James face said it all we had just about ran out of energy after this two day long fishing marathon covering Devon and Cornwall with some of the most back breaking cliff stomps and the most beautiful surroundings you could ask for! if you want a adventure head down our way for some awesome fishing in the salty stuff!

The Drop Shot

2011-09-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

Drop shotting is a awesome method for presenting a soft plastic in a way that it is kept "in the zone" with deadly results! this method came here with real bonus's for the likes of big Perch and Zander fishing where the presentation is about as good as it gets! i used this method in the sea also for Pollack and Bass with good results, but for me my heart still sits on the fresh water side where you can work docks and locks with ease in a way previous methods just dont cut the mustard! im going to take time out to put a few piccys up to show how to rig "drop shot" with my fav softplastic the Megabass Xlayer :-)

here im about to tie the Palomar knot, form a tight loop with your Fluro (20lb in this case as there are pike present on my local venures, you can uptrace with wire if needed) this is the part you push through the eye of the hook so forming a nice small tight loop is important, the lighter the fluro the easier this bit is. flure strength is a totally person choice between 15lb and 20lb covers all my needs even in salt water.

then you form a simple overhand knot with the loop you have just pushed through the eye of the hook. I generally use carp hooks from Korda in size 6's and 4's as there sharp as shit and really do hook the fish specially in boney mouths! at this point in the above photo you pass the hook through the loop created hanging here on the right of the picture and then moisten the knot and slowly pull tight, making sure eveything is nice and tidy.

now at this point you will have one end of the fluro attached to ya braided mainline and one end will have nothing attached and hanging

you need to now pass this lose end back up over the hook and thread it down back through the eye (making sure hook is pointing up like the abive picture) this keeps the hook always pointing upright like a scorpions tail, this also is important as it helps the overall action your imparting on the lure.

as you can see the Palomar/drop shot knot is now tied and ready for action. now on the lose tag end you attach your lead/weight this can be tied like i do or you can get leads that have the pinch pull system where leads can easily be moved or changed as well as less snag resistant. i start at about half a ounce for my general drop shotting and if needed move to a heavier weight to keep my gear in the zone!

once your lead has been attached your pretty much there ready for action! all you need now is to choose your soft plastic to wack on the hook :-) i LOVE the Megabass Xlayer as its action literally dances around on the drop shot and perch go pretty much cross eyed when they see them! rigging couldnt be any easier and more deadly

you insert the hook point in the end of the Xlayer and pull it out just before the first rib (ribs always up on the Xlayer for better hook position) you can also rig this just nipped on the nose or even "wacky" which gives you even more lure movements if you want to spice it up a bit! push the Xlayer around the shank so the eye of the hook lies tight into the end of the lure.
once the Xlayer is on the hook you are ready to seriously upset some Perch or even Wrasse etc! this method has accounted for fudgin loads of decent fish in the last 5years or so and apart from it being awesome fish catching method the Drop Shot is a brilliant fun way of catching you fav fish on a cracking method! please do give it a try :-)

Guernsey G.B.A.S.S

2011-09-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

In August a Motley crew of Anglers ventured across the channel to Guernsey like a bunch of pirates armed to the teeth with numerous rods from Mullet to our Bass lure rods...... we had just over a week to play around hunting down the legendary channel islands Bass! the first day we arrived we headed out the the campsite to set up base and have a quick scout about in time for some late afternoon Mulleting in the harbour at st.petersport and more importantly get midlands based angling sniper Andy Hart his first Mullet! after a bit of pre baiting and hunting the harbour for the mullet it wasnt long before we found a good shoal.....

Andy nails this beaut almost instantly after me and James fed them up and what a cracking first mullet! quick scrap under the rod tip it was shot with the camera and returned to fight another day! we all headed off to the outer piers and break water where we found some awesome looking spots for later on in the week, Andy also nails a Garfish on a jointed plug hunting for Bass. the next couple days are spent wreckying for venues for the G.B.A.S.S comp at the end of the week where me James and Andy would enter in hopes of taking at least the visitors prize :-) we new where to hit after a few nights out with local leg-end Tom Brock where we nailed a few smaller Bass and Tom got proper smashed up by a beast of a thing! i reckon the fish he lost had every ounce to of been the winning shore fish!

Heres James fishing on a mark where i had just nailed two more bass on the Sakura magic eel fished on a glider jig head this lure just looked amazing fished in the really busy white water where these fish cruised the rocks...... check out the full reports and pictures in Total Sea Fishing mag in the next couple of months, the next few evenings we would go to the weighins at Boatworks in st.petersport where we could see there wasnt much happening which made me happier knowing i had'nt had many decent fish just schoolys etc this was certainly tough fishing but does it get any more beautifull than these wild rocky beaches and bays Guernsey is deffo a place ill be visiting again very soon! the last night of the comp we all stood around the weighin waiting for the beasts to be weighed in when two young lads who had already managed a 7lber for the small boat section the young lad only being 7! his slightly older fishing buddy had only nailed yet another beast just scraping the double at just over 10lb! this turned of to be the winning fish with a few guys weighing in 7's 8's and a few 9's please check out http://www.gbass.co.uk/ for more info on fishing for Bass in and around Guernsey. i highly recommend it! keep your eyes peeled in TSF mag and world sea fishing for more reports and features
all in all an amazing week with good company!

Urban Beautys

2011-09-18T04:06:00.000-07:00

Hectic few months things have finally settled and with that comes the shite weather :-( i havent been out as much as id like but after some pissing around on my local canal doing small wrecky sessions and a few evenings on the topwaters i decided it was time to figure out where the big perch have been hiding throughout the summer, and boy did i stumble across them! Theres a urban fishery not to far away that for the last say 5years has really come into its own with good heads of perch and pike i posted up last summer a few trips here and always managed to pull it out the hat. i know of some huge perch being caught here so i got my self down there armed with drop shot and carolina rigs hoping for some action.....

after a full morning of fishing the carolina rigs through this stretch i managed 14 perch to just over a pound all to carolina rigs either texposed or on mozzi hooks, the best lure by far was the smallest size of the Megabass Xlayers..... there action is superb and perch just nail them! but here i was struggling to hit the 2lb plus fish! i turned one perch which was bar far the biggest iv seen here locally and was deffo over 3lb and for a moment got my heart pounding :-) but nothing came from it! i decided to head to a small corner where two trees are sunken from the near bank where instantly i get what im after! in the first drop (now on drop shot) i get smashed up and get two 1lb perch one after another.... then a tiddler which had 3 perch follow it up, all over 2lb biggest being a good 3lb! the very next cast i nail this beauty which on the lie detectors hit 2lb 3oz :-) i managed by the point 40plus perch from quarter of a pound 8 of which went a pound plus! the biggest being this 2lb 3oz. drop shot deffo showing the larger fish and such a enjoyable method!

Me and Ady decided that enough was enough i needed to head out to piss off some pike! the same local urban spot has always had the potential to throw up some monsters...... people are feeding the swans/ducks and geese all day long here and the place was crawling with roach and dace perfect pike prey! it wasnt long before the action started! Ady having the first bit of action when this awesome fish nailed his twin tail out in the deeper channel she tipped the scales at 12lb 7oz and certainly started the day off well :-) in the very next swim i cast out my savagegear Da'bush spinnerbait out and half way through the retrieve i felt a sharp knock but no take.... as i lifted the bait of the water up comes a big old head! another mid double comes charging in after it! i was buzzing now, but i think she saw me as it didnt comeback :-( it wasnt long before i had some more luck with another fish of around 9lb smashing my lure but again not hooking up i was now a nervous wreck as seeing Adys double got the juices flowing! the fish couldnt come quick enough!
finally i nailed this lively pike it literally lept 3ft out the water i couldnt believe it! proper took line like allot bigger fish! gotta love summer pike there soooooo explosive! quick photo and it was returned the afternoon then went very slow with only one more small jack showing when it hit my spinnerbait and came off the conditions of the weather and venue couldnt of got any better but it just didnt happen :-( we at least thought more jacks would come out to play! so we headed back to where we had the fish in the morning, with almost instant results! i had another big double i would say a good 13-14lb plus..... it was super long and very meaty this fish chases 3 times even head butting the lure but again wouldnt smash the lure VERY frustrating fishing! while i was playing around tryin to get this fish to take Ady hooks another fish the rod looped over but even that one came off with a twin tail pulled down the hook it was getting a bit downhearted now! couldnt complain though as there was obviously a amazing head of decent double plus fish all within half a mile stretch! we walked back to where i saw my fish double of the day and managed to turn it again right under the rod tip but still no take! :-( ohhhh well i know the fish are there i WILL be back end of the week to settle the scores all in all a great day out with surprising results

Fishing Adventures 2011

2011-08-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

Me and James have been busy doing features the last 9 days and wow what fun we'v had! its been tough weather wise and fishing but as per usuall we nailed it! southwest ireland is such a gorgeous place to fish, what more can ya ask for that pure blue sea's fish literally everywhere and stunning coastlines its anglers heaven! we headed out with the Legend Nick Dent on the first day in search of monster pollack and cod on the light gear, we took our shore lure rods 7ft rods and 4000 size reels loaded with braid abusing jigs and grubs fished over the Fast Net reefs and rock ledges. the water was between 80 and a 140ft and had to be crawling! it was literally instantly into fish on the first drop! braid screamin off the reels

heres James lifting into one of the first braid melting runs off the Fast Net anyone who says you cant use light gear off boats is wrong! there is deffo conditions where its hard but as long as you have some water sense the fish are there to be abused good and proper and boy dont Pollack and Cod scrap on light lure rods! we had tons of Pollack to just under doubles all on our light jigs and grubs. it was the Delalande GT shads in the smaller sizes and Buster shads that truly came through with the results! coupled with Decoy jigs around 3/4 of a ounce to a ounce. it was cracking sport and i would be lying if i didnt say im addicted!

Not being one to turn my nose up at this sport i soon put down the camera and put the stomp down on these beautys..... between us we had 30-40 decent pollack to 9lb all on the soft plastics and it wasnt long before we lost the tide so out came the big gun rods the 20/30's for the conger and ling fishing! and after some funny rigging techniques shown by Mikey.H which worked a treat! we were soon into the fish! nearly 13lb Huss conger to 20lb ling to low singles your have to stay tuned to TSF mag for the full report and pictures.

the next day after a trek and a half we headed out on Nealy's boat out of Valencia as you can see above the weather did its usuall irish trick of pissing it down with rain but not being one to mess around i soon rigged up my lure rods and put on the Danny show for the cameras with action from the get go! we drifted casting distance to the rocks in 60ft of water loonking for structure it wasnt lomg before the fish came out to play! with this 6lb Ballan being the first decent fish to nail the jig's after a brutal fight it was released after a few piccys and again the rain pounded and pounded! we nailed a good 20 or so nice Pollack off this mark we moved on to what can only be said as the mother of all inshore Pollack marks...... after feeling a take on one of the first drifts on the drop and striking lifting into what can only of been a monster Pollack it comes off GUTTIN! but the next drift see's this corker showing

anyone who's done light shore pollacking knows how well a 6-7lber goes and when you nail doubles like this it really is a hold on for dear life style angling! they really do try and F%&k you up and after 4-5 steaming runs i still hadnt seen this fish i knew it was a brute due tonthe sheer power it had i pulled it pulled back! the water here is gin clear i got the Pollack under the rod tip, in about 15ft of water i finally saw it and panic sets in! one more run and it was over strate in the net! 11lb cant be all that bad! after a few more fish it was time to head in! again wait for the mag features for more details and fish! after this we headed off to the beautiful Beara

we stopped off at Kenmare in the hills of the Beara for a spot of Salmon bashin while the water was still running high fro recent rain! i think it was my second cast in the first pool this little bugger nails my flying-c spinner and wow what a heart stopping second...... if only it was 10lb heavier lol. but still my first Irish salmon dead chuffed! mean while Jimbo has the beast of all braid wind knots, iv seriously never seen anything like it ha ha ha . it was long before james was in and nails his first irish salmon too :-)

by this point the bass were calling us and who were we to say no to that! first stop was a spot tucked away fro the irish secret squirrel club on the Beara which no one knows about! thanks Mikey.H it was long before they were soon charging up behind the the soft plastic surface lures :-) but after a good few near misses and countless swearing from me and Mike nothing was banked to head off to Clon for the serious Bassing with local guide Allan i fished from the small boat with Pete and James stayed with Allan where they nailed 2 nice bass to 4lb on live eel where as i blasted out pollack after pollack on the hard baits Megabass X120's and IMA Komomo's i had fish to 6lb which again was a ball on lighter gear! me and Pete headed back up the beach to meet James and allan where i cast out my IMA lures for bass in the estuary, second cast and Bang!

a golden grey mullet....... from a distance i thought id nailed a small schooly but once i got it to my feet i could see it was a mullet! and it nailed my IMA komomo good and proper! while james rung Mikey.H we were told this was a seriously close contender for the Irish rod and line record!....... chuffed to bits but we later found out i was a couple ounces off, but still its the second biggest nailed and on a lure...... brilliant result! it was now time to trek off to Cobh in search of the monster Bass from cork harbour the second biggest natural harbour in the world! literally Bass central! on the first night it wasnt long before my Bass brain started churning and we got out with Kev and Howard (father son compo) and owners of the biggest fishing hotel base this side of the sea's. ill post up about these guys in the week . we headed out in the stunning Warrior 175's in search of Bass

This fine nearly 6lber was the first to show its face to a Cultiva shad and Decoy football jig combo banged out to the treeline you can see behing me in this picture. by this point we were both shattered as we had covered serious miles getting here it was time for Rum and coke! we steamed of back to the hotel for a well earned bit of grub and smash back some drinkys! i nailed three decent bass in the next sessions all over 5lb and the biggest being 7lb sooooo much fun and on the last days session we nailed yet another 8 more bass to over 8lb again watch out for the reports in features for TSF and Boat Fishing mags soon. ill post up more stuff as and when we deal with it. a cracking week with amazing people behind us big thanks to Micheal Hennessy, Paul Harris, Kevin Murphy and Jim Clohessy for the support and friendly welcome while me and James had a tough yet awesome week!

tight lines Danny

Free stretches...... :-)

2011-08-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

Just recently me James.O and briefly young "lure Guru in the making" Jamie have been seeing what the local free stretches have on offer! with mostly chub and perch in mind we'v managed some good results, one of the most comman comments i hear on stretches of water like these are "you aint going to catch anything decent there mate" we lets hope this short report and pictures spurs you into having a venture on you local free stretch.

heres James with a chunky chub on one of our recent outings just touching 4lb and taken while stalking fish in gin clear water, none of this sitting there and waiting for it to happen, when your fishing these type of venues you gotta make ya own luck and getting out using water craft and reading the swims is key to successful fishing we knew these fish were here it was a case of setting the trap and going for it, remembering to keep off the skyline and keep out of the chubs crafty view and bingo this was one of twelve fish over 3lb mostly 3-4lbers one under the 3lb mark! not bad hay for a "useless water"

heres the biggest from that session at 4.5lb a cracking scrap as i was in the usuall snagged up chub swim "hold on tight" with light gear as they dont half pull, you gotta have ya witts about you when near cover as chub know there homes better than we ever will! all you need is a good pair of polaroids we wear Costa Del Mars which are pricey but they are the best you can get leading the way in the fishing glasses scene! http://www.costadelmar.com/ and some nice dark clothing as you can bet your last quid the fish will see you before you see them! we bumped into to a couple fairly large perch some 2lb plussers but we couldnt get any to play but hayy Danny knows where you live now!!

we fished today on another free stretch me and Jamie with some cracking results..... the sun was beaming kids were climbing the trees and jumping in it wasnt what you would call my kind of scene while our light lure fishing but i wanted to get out and show jamie some nice local fun fishing! now iv done very well here before and have had perch to over 2lb and chub well over 5lb here but to the locals its just a "roach bashing" venue with tiny perch, roach, gudgeon crawling the river bed, i often get asked how iv caught such big fish here as its just not seen as a big fish venue. but if your willing to put the effort in and sculk around looking for the features there is plenty of whoppers here, just most of you spook them before you get a chance to see them! after a hour of tickling out half a dozen small perch on texposed kalin grub i get to my banker swim :-)

second cast with a pepper pearl Kalin grub tex rigged on a decoy offset hook weightless chucked over a raft of weed where i could see 4-5 2lb plus chub and this beaut of a chub, i let the lure sink and started my retrieve and bank the biggest nails it! after a spirited fight under all the weed and snags i managed to get it up on the top. with anglers line wrapped around my braid i was worried this chub was going to snag me up but after some crafty netting by young Jamie and it was ours :-) weighin in just over 5lb proof is in the pudding this fish and many other was no more than 20yards from spots where other anglers sit on bait nearly every day of the week! this fish didnt have a mark on it, no hook damage and yet again it is another big chub from the venue that "aint got no decent fish"

i also managed to whip out two pike from the same swim this little bugger Jamies holding and one of about 6lb also. which Jamie actually has attack his savage gear grub again on our way back! just showing these aggressive little chaps are here for some fun on light gear even if its only a hour after work. we ended this session with 10 perch 3 pike and a decent chub all on the same stretch of river not far from exeter, cant complain it was awesome seeing the smile on jamies face every time i called him over to show him another fish :-) jamie also had 2 pike on but they came off and lost a coulpe small perch too he was beaming with smiles which makes me a happy bunny as i remember being his age and catching pike and perch, i wouldnt be the man i am today without those experiences. tight lines to next time

Danny

Exeter Float Tube Zeds........ ;-)

2011-07-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

I must say this is the most fun you can have with you clothes on....... float tubing is gotta be the best way to explore new and exciting venues...... just the thought gets me smilling ear to ear! you fish light none of this 10tons of gear shite, all the unhooking tools on ya chest a small bag of lures to allow easy movement to unhook fish while there still in the water! you only need to take fish out if you wanna quick photo sheer fun and really good for fish handling. and most of all you wont stop laughing from start to finish by beiing towed around the place by the pike etc.
here's adrian with his first of a very very very long drawn out start to the session on a "apparently" stuffed full venue it was hard going with me losing every single bloody pike that came anywhere near me after a solid 3hours jigging and drop shotting for the crafty Zander that call this place home....... which didnt show a sign of coming out! we decided to head back down the venue in search of pike on the spinnerbaits and that soon showed us some results from jacks around a few pounds but just great to get a bend in the rod :-) Me and Adrian met up with Adrians bass junky mate Kev and he had what can only be called a shite morning for all the wrong reasons...... he's a Spinnerbait virgin and manages to hook from the bank what can only be said as a horse of a pike well over the doubles right in the lillies its going ape shit! he only had on 15lb super PE braid and his trusty Berkley skeletor ultra light gear...... after a explosive 2mins the braid goes and the fish swims off :-( guttin losing a PB but losing it still attached to a lure is truly guttin :-(

after we had fished the sections which had ment to of been a dead cert for the Zeds we thought lets take a short drive to a free stretch we knew of which had saved my bacon a few times over the years for pike and zeds and we had almost instant action! on only my third cast from the tube i see a fish charge up to look at my Delalande buster shad thinking it had been my Zed as it followed up literallt 10inches from my legs i dropped the shad down and smash it was on! i could tell instantly i had a pike! but all good fun :-) i also had two other pike in only a few casts the biggest being this plump of a pike on the sebile magic swimmer. while being towed around by this fish and i mean being towed around the pool Adrian was paddling over to take the piccy. its released and strate away Adrian shouts im in! a big congrats to the Dorset destroyer on his first Zander you should of seen the smile on Adrians face...... this Zed took a fox hornet spinnerbait in hopes of a pike! i couldnt believe how aggressive this fish was literally nailing the lure right to the back of its throat...... you couldnt see the lure unless you opened its mouth, the state of the spinnerbait was awesome! all mangled and twisted! Adrian lost a zed on our last trip out for them and we'v been sayin we wanna come back and hit it with the tubes ever since...... a big well done and at a respectable 6lb 7oz a nice zed for your first! by this point i was a man crazed with the zed feaver! as we released this fish Kev shouts up and he's into a zander too.... :-( where was mine? i frantically cast all my small shads and lures in hopes a zed came out but after another pike i had got pretty pissed off
I turned around to drift back down the pool toward the other where i could see bleak scattin and being chased around so i stuck on the Delalande shad again and it wasnt long before my zed showed up! result at last! after a quick scrap it was mine i tailed it out to unhook the zed which got nailed on my owner st-36 stinger treble took a quick photo etc and got it back safe and sound! a nice plump 5lber....... mission accomplished! the problem is this midlands venue is a good 2hours drive for us which sucks as its doing my head in i wanna get back and break the double figure zed! well it was a slow start but it all came together nicely with Ady and Kev getting the first ever Zeds :-)

Anglers and Danglers..... :-)

2011-07-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

Just recently iv been lucky enouth to tag along with the fly fishing Guru and all round wrongen Lewis Hendrie iv been gaggin to get out using fly gear for bloody ages after being mentally ruined by Nick Hart and the gang watching them fly fish for trout and pike...... its something iv wanted to do in a long time but not having access to this stuff on a reg basis it was always something that never spawned! well Lewis rings me asking if id fancie joining him for a session i jumped at the chance to get out our first session was on one of my local small rivers for wild brownys and it was AMAZING the next session was some pure angling porn!Now i would call myself a sheer dangler when it came to this type of fishing, we fished little bug patterns in teams of twos or new zealand dropper under the rod tip on this STUNNING southwest tiny water....talk about jungle fishing i was beaming with smiles this was exactly the sort of stuff fishing dreams are made of, kinda takes you back to ya childhood waist deep in water, whats not to like! quoting a a Nick Hart comment "if theis style of fishing doesnt get your juices flowing your not a angler" soooooo true..... with the hepl of Lewis i soon got the flick and catapolt technique dialled and was gettin into fish, although Lewis was whippin me big time!

we had Grayling on the brain and after i had spooked and lost a few while Lewis consistantly caught is was my duty to star nailing some of these gorgeous "lady of the streams" and i soon got stuck into grayling! all of which were between a pound and 2lb which are awesome fighting weight for our ZERO weight fly rods..... yeh zero weights! truly stunning gear coupled with some tiny Sage reels this was amazing finesse gear just right for the job and a real pleasure to use. around every corner there was another pool or gully all crammed to the brim of grayling it was amazing to see and be able to fish water that i usually wouldnt get on!

the next session was my kind of thing.... i had told Lewis about some clonkin chub fishing on another southwest venue where i had recently beat my PB on lure caught Chubblys and we chatted about how on light fly gear it would be insane fishing, real hit and hold no holes barred fly fishing! when we pulled up a short walk to the venue i could see Lew's face coming to life he could instantly see the potential here...... everywhere you look in this river you are greeted with hundreds of chub from a pound to 7lb plus! theres also a huge head of big pike here too :-) we took two fly outfits a 2weight and a 3/4weight for the chub etc so we could play around with nympths on the lighter rod and whip out the frogs and mice patterns on the 4, i also had my trusty Sakura Mazzera 742ml and 4000 reel with a bag of tricks

I had a few casts in a small wier with the fly rod and managed a tiny 3/4lb chub instantly but i could see the Perch and bigger chub tucked right in under the wier in all the white water, so it wasnt long before my lure came out to play :-) i rigged a 3" kalin pepper pearly grub onto a offset hook unweighted and popped it above the wier to let it come doen over the wier into the white water..... and on the next 4 casts i nailed 2 perch to around a pound a 1.5lb chub and a 1lb wild browny! while we moved down the river i continued with the lure and found a small raft of weed on the other side and cast out to the clear water behind, let it drop and drift under and started my drift soon as i started to wind i could see the beats turnin and looking at the grub and a 3lb perch come hammering out but doesnt take! i was in pieces i wasnt expectin that! in the next swims down i can hear fish splashing and see small fish scattin from the water in all directions! thinkin it was the pike which normally hang out here i cast out only to see huge perch everywhere...... i couldnt believe my eyes! it wasnt long before the piking pisshead was into his first decent fish of the day! this plumb 2lb perch! well chuffed we carried on up river

we fished a good old stretch teaming with chub and perch where both me and Lewis nailed them on lure and fly we both saw chub over the magic 5lb mark and a few real biggys well over 6lb...... lewis was jumpin around at the thought of nailing these fish but lost every single one ha ha we headed to a really snaggy patch of the river where there is pubic acces and of coarse shopping trolleys, prams, bikes, traffic cones, beers cans Gotta love wild fishing ayyy! and Lewis shouts F%*$in hell look at that browny........ i knew this venue had beasts as i caught a 3lb 3oz wildy only a few weeks back on a surface lure aimed for chub! after about twenty casts snaggin a few times lewis was sure we spooked this fish but as we were pissin about and lewis was actually on the phone i sat down lookin on facbook and Lew shout "I GOT IT!" it couldnt of been a worse swim snags everywhere on a light fly rod it went mental! but we landed it! a beast of a wild browny!
It was getting late now and we headed back to the car fishing the good looking pools on the way back in hopes of one of these beast Chub..... it wasnt long before they came out to play...... i had the fly rod in hand this time with a chernobyl ant pattern on and BOOM up comes those big rubbery white lips it literally smashed me! i had to run the bank after it i had no control in this fast paced river...... but wow what fun! after 2mins of shoutin to lewis that i had one it burys its head deep into the cover, i could still feel it plunging deeper and deeper into the weed so lewis jumps in with the net to try and help out but i get that heart breaking feelin of slack line... the chub is gone :-( a good fish too so lewis says. Lewis had just been snapped off as well by a big 6lber on 5lb flurocarbon leader...... these fish actually abuse light gear! we finished the session with 11 chub and a couple nice trout plus the biggy and my decent perch. that was it game over home time. bring it on next session on here we are gaggin to hit it again. couple that with the 30 odd grayling and 20 odd trout to fly gear its been a awesome couple weeks :-)

CLA Game Fair.......

2011-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

I recently spent 3 days working up at Blenheim Palace, just outside Oxford at the CLA game fair. filled to the brim of all the horsey types (fit posh totty ;-).....) farmers, outdoor sports etc and of coarse the fishing village........ where we had our EPIC stand Basslures.co.uk stand had a awesome weekend meeting ang greeting all the lure crazed fishing from all sorts of background! we had the pro's right through to the new'bees all coming over to see our amazing selection of lure brands like Megabass, IMA, Lucky Craft, Lunker City and Delalande

we had the testing tank on site which was a crowd pleaser and let Me and the guys Mike and Nick show and tell all of our top brands and the popular lure styles from the awesome Slug-go to Zonk's...... I managed to get peoples brains churning with my various drop shot styles and funky rigging types of the popular soft plastics which allot of guys werent all that tuned into, its always good to see the look and grin on guys faces when they see what can me done! your be surprised how many of you have all the nice new lures and actually have no clue of its "benifits and actions" the tank allowed us to show you all what was what and we had lots of good feedback from guys and girls who learnt lots of new tricks :-)

As you can see we stocked a fair bit of all the top brands which we sell and import and managed to sell a fair bit as our stand seemed to be one of the busiest in the angling village, mostly lure sales but we also shift some rods and reels to some very happy punters some of which knew just what they wanted and lots of guys who came to us for help and advice which is where i really love to be involved in..... i cant think of anything better than where i can help others learn and get out the experiences iv been lucky enough to have from lure fishing. myself Nick and Mike were all on hand to help out as having that "new bingy" lure is all well and good but not having the foggiest how to use and abuse isnt all that fun :-)

we also had a good selection of the rods from the brands Sakura, Lucky craft and the "secret squirrel club" Megabass rods which literally made me weak at the knees..... the Sakura range consisted of the older Rookie the Shinjin's, Stingrays and the Mazzera's. we had ultra light to 7g right up the the sea monster upsetting 802XH Mazzera tropical beast killer! covering all ground for todays modern lure anger from Bass to fresh water applications and even the GAY'me boys hand there salmon brains ticking with some of the kit we had on board! the Megabass range was beautifully made and i can honestly say out of this world..... if you got the wonga and you dont buy one when you could you need sectioning! the ShadowXX range simply oozed sheer class so did the Indipendance and XIO range! pure lure fishing porn!

the brand that stands out for me in terms of styling and function has to be IMA.... dont get me wrong im a Megabass for life kinda guy but hats off to the IMA guys...... new lures like the super thin Komomo's and new sizes of most the models as well as simply mouth watering new colours that im sure will catch anglers but distroy the UK Bass population ha ha. we had allot of new stuff that isnt even on the topwater catalogue yet all of which will surely rise up the ranks of the finest lure gear on the market! Basslures.co.uk is truly the boys in the retail lure market today and will continue the march to superiour gear for you guys so please please pop onto the site and support Nick and the gang @ www.basslures.co.uk i had a awesome weekend surrounded by awesome people all of which are part of the basslures family a true sign of quality family run business its really a pleasure to be one of the lucky few to be involved :-)

www.basslures.co.uk Parkins quality assured ha ha

CLA Game Fair 2011

2011-07-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

sooo its that time of year again! next weekend is the CLA game fair in Oxfordshire. where there will be a wealth of Angling, Hunting and general outdoor activities all on show as well as tons of shops and dispalys from all the top names in the Fly fishing world. Hardy/Greys will be taking care of casting displays etc as well as numerous coarse fishing brands now on display!I will be there working on the Basslures/Topwater stand over the three days where we have a awesome selection of Lure brands from the likes of MegaBass, Lucky Craft, IMA, Lunker City, Sakura, Sebile and Delalande. including all the most modern lures from each brand, Rods and Reels as well as a tank to "show and tell" on various products across the ranges. So please come down and visit us for a banter and check out what exciting brands www.basslures.co.uk and www.topwaterlures.co.uk have to offer up to the Modern lure angler.

CLA Game Fair, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. 22-24 July 2011

Smashed........

2011-06-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

Managed to get out with the Portland Penetrater in search of more monster chub on a different venue last nite...... i knew there was some huge chub here as often spooked them while out Pike and Perch fishing often seein fish over 4lb blasting off upstream when we hook a jack going mental in the swims. we headed out leaving mine for 11pm in total darkness as thats the time to target lunker Chub and Pike and after my recent chub action from the week was buzzing to get out again! it wasnt long before theaction started i was the first to hook up with a tiddler of around one and a half pounds! but still exciting fun when you cant really see a hand in front of your face!

its not long before Mart is into his first of the session! im litterally in the next glide up when i hear the take and turn to see a massive swirl in the moonlight and Marts rod looped over good and proper..... thinking the chap had done it again and caught another 5plus but as you can see it was far from it he was lent into the fish as it had lunged head first into the streamer weed and thats why it looked like he was bent into a monster! after a quick snap the chub was returned for another day, the very next cast see's me being nailed like a gooden behind a sunken tree i had it on for a while i stuck my lamp on and got a glimse of a fish around 4lb before it came off bolting for cover! after a hour or so of F*%k all apart from the odd hit we decided a move was in order as i reckon this stretch has seen a bit of action with the bait boys since open day!

iv fished this river allot over the last 12years and knew a few swims normally neglected due to the stupid weed growth and shallow runs its practically un fishable unless you are willing to get stung bitten snagged or fall in :-) i have done some thinking in to what a chub wants from its night time feeding and this stretch with its gin clear water, shallow runs and cover from lillies, trees and streamer weed offers plenty of hunting ground for big chub and iv seen them moving up into these areas on eveings im guessin to feed...... it wasnt long before we had scrambled down the banks in search of swims as you can see from the photo above its a bit jungle warfare down here! all the better for me as the guys with all there gear wont venture down to these rough spots! well after a few missed hits by smaller chub i decided it was time to stop pissing around so i clipped on my fav surface lure the swampy and within 3 casts in a likely looking swim the magic happens :-)

i get what i think is a pike charge up behind the lure with one huge swipe at the swampy which misses then another miss before smashing the lure with vengeance its on..... still thinking pike at this point the fish takes line heading for the far bank i stop it thinking iv nailed a 7-8lb Jack! we get it to our bank where i lose sight of it as it burys its head in the streamer weed martin shouts its a Chub!......... (shit my pants moment) as i knew this was a large fish, after a bit of a faff and panic stations we netteed the beast. i couldnt believe my eyes and i knew it was a PB with me like a jibbering wreck its weighed and BOOM hovering between 6lb 13oz and 7lb with nervy shakes ill call it 6lb 13oz :-) my PB chub what a moment and wow i wont be forgetting this week in a while, what a awesome weeks chubbing and the season has only just begun :-) i actually couldnt care less about catchin much else so my fishing was a bit half arsed to say the least after one more hour we headed home. ill be giving chub a break for a while in search of more bass and wrasse so keep ya eyes peeled

Danny

What a day.....

2011-06-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

Im still smiling my ass off! decided to head out to one of my favorite local Chub spots for a spot of surface fishing for Chubblys the conditions started off awfull with bright sunshine and temps climbing, it was HOT! i could see chub from the get go and they deffo had there minds on sun bathing rather than food with a couple chases and two small chub to about a pound within the first 10mins. then as if the weather man was listening to my moaning about too much sun bothering the fish the cloud sneaked in, it was still really warm and started to get muggy. but the cloud cover is just what the doctor ordered

i got to a nice glide where i sneaked in behind the reeds and stingers i could see four nice chub, two about 2lb and two around 4lb now the sun was not beaming down i felt allot more confident so i cast my tiny Jitterbug (ill talk about this lure at the end of the report) across to the other bank plopping it next to the far bank streamer weed, and slowly crept the Jitterbug up the current and i could clearly see the chub looking for what ever is in there swim and the two smaller fish charging over to it in the gin clear water they were litterally competing for the action and smash this fiesty little 2lber nails the lure and instantly im grinning from ear to ear as this is my favorite type of fishing!

In the very next gap in the streamer weed i only had 3ft to play with and i could see this nice plump two and a half pounder nails the lure almost instantly i wound the handle once if that and smash it was on! and while is was crankin this fish over the weed another massive chub spooks out well over 5lb i was buzzing with excitement as things started to all come together! it was crawling with chub most gaps in the weed had one if not a few chub lurking around and they all wanted a bit of Jitterbug!

I got to a really nice wier pool where it just screamed chub big slabs of rock and feed beds created a really nice looking swim it was clear of streamer weed and had two nice glides where the water was creating some nice eddys and slacks once again the first cast comes up trumps! bang and yet another chub nailing the lure and this time it was the biggest of the session at just over 3lb it scrapped well even taking line i thought for a second it was allot larger, they certainly pull ya string! i put on the side strain to not spook the wier pool and that certainly worked a treat! after two more casts im pleasantly shocked at what happens next! i see a nice dark brown shape turn and then with a explosion of action the fish leaps completely clear of the water, this was no chub! it took a fair bit of braid off my calais before leaping again! i got it to the net and had to weigh this beast! a new PB

3lb 3oz......... stunning fins, not a spot out place and my fish ever Jitterbug trout :-) and went really well considering i had the rod loaded up to deal with snag happy mental chub! the river was now picking up pace and shallowing the streamer weed creating lots of nice creases and runs all full to the brim of nice chub and i know some corking runs and glides where iv caught some big chub over the years in winter on SP's twitched across the bottom will they hold the chub today? only one way to find out! things were looking good as i aproached i could see three big chub all over 4lb and one massive fish i was like a child in the sweet shop! i cast the Jitterbug down the run and instantly could see the chub gettin twitchy it wasnt long before i nailed a biggy! it took 3 casts and then a big bow wave steams up behind the lure and smash the big pair of rubbery lips nailed the lure!

Heres the biggest fish of the session and my daytime surface PB chub of 5lb 6oz...... im gutted i couldnt get a decent picture of this as it really was a barrel of a fish and went mental when it was hooked charging off down stream and then some dirrrrty tactics by ploughing through the streamer weed! i thought for a minute i was going to lose the chub as it charged deeper into the weed i just couldnt get the correct angle on it but after a bit of Parkins persuasion i got the fish to the net shaking like a leaf trying to take the picture i am sooooo chuffed out this fish! and there was a few all around this size through this run, ill be back on a night session to see whats what next week!i wasnt long before i was in again! i crept down the run where i could still see some big chub i took only two casts and bang i was in again!

check out the guts on this fat chub at almost 5lb they were built like carp with massive guts they certainly arent short of food here as the belly on this chub shows! i would love to see the size of the chub we caught in the winter from this run they were 6-7inches longer than this fish weighing the same i dread to think! im hoping there show on a nite session next week as i know there still on here! these two fish bumped me up to chub number 21 on this hectic session and i was having a ball even with the tiddlers which plagued the twisty bends on this river, one thing missing today was pike...... you can normally catch a fair few here and i only saw two all day, one of around 8lb and a tiny jack. not one of them taking any interest in the lures, i think if i had syuck on a Sebile soft magic swimmer or something like that i think i could of prob nailed one or two but the chub was my target today and boy did i manage to pull that off..... gutting i didnt have a buddy fishing with me so we could have some decent grab and grin shots specially of the larger fish as im never happy with rod and grass shots but hay its not the end of the world!

Heres the tiny Jitterbug..... deadly for chub and even pike will smash this lure, we cut the standard hooks off as there very poor quality they come with two small trebles i cut them off and attach a small split ring to the rear eye and wack on a nice new small Owner st-36 be sure to use a hook big enough to hook the fish well but not too big it kills the action of the lure. and now it only has one hook its slightly more weedless too :-) i would consider this the premium lure for surface chubbing day or nite, so why not give them a go. ill be trying a night session here again next week ill post up so keep ya eyes peeled

The Postman.......

2011-06-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well....... i think you can safely say Adrian is the postman, he certainly delivered last night!! we fished a southwest venue which we'v been gaggin to fish for a couple months and it certainly came up trumps :-) we got there about a hour before dark and with the pooring rain it was looking amazing! we had the usuall banter while gettin ready, the whole "im not greedy, a 20 will be fine" which we know there are plenty of those in here :-) and it wasnt long before Ady nails his first fish! actually it was his first bloody cast to be honest..... a fish of around 6-7lb which came off at the reeds in front of us, was that a sign of things to come or the dreaded first cast session killer......but literally in the next swim im happily walking along in the pissing it down with rain! and Bang Adrian is in again! the pike was only a rod length out in from of a big patch of reeds and adrian shouts its a better fish maybe 8-9 lb so i get the net off my back rucksack off and get ready to land it, thats when i see the fish steam off 10ft line i could see it was a double and i would of said 15lb after a few talk walks i start my descent into the depths with my waders on ill be ok right? well i managed to get to the edge of the reeds to a safe landing spot and the water was 2inches from the top of my waders lol :-) the fish was in the net and i passed it over my shoulder to Ady up the bank ofter a quick photo she was weighed a nice tidy 14lb 1oz not bad for less than 10 casts! it wasnt long before it was my turn for the action! in the very next swim i cast my swampy to the other bank into a small hole in the lillies and start my retrieve it isnt long before i see this huge bow wave charging up behind my lure. but it didnt come to a take i think it saw me as i couldnt get it to charge and take :-( judging by the bow wave it was another lump of a pike. Adrian was managing to completely distroy me last nite by this point he was managing a fish or lose a fish in most swims it was awesome! the pike were on fire hitting anything twitched across there swim
by this point adrian was 7 fish up on me after i seemed to lose every single bloody pike that came anywhere near my lures.... awesome sport though when they charge up behind your surface lure and smash it with vengeance! just before we lost too much light i whipped out my camera and decided to film in the next bay, and after two casts Adrian manages to get the chase i wanted and we got the hit on film which was soooooo buzzing and will edit it and crop stuff and try and get the video up on here asap. the problem now was the skys started to clear and we all know what moonlight does to nite piking..... kills it dead! luckily we had trees covering most of the venue we wanted to fish but soon as the light completely went the fishing just died... and it became very hard work! with only a few fish rising to the swampys after dark which its normally happens the other way around, the dark normally turns the pike on big style its like a light switch! but the moon light killed the fishing, Adrian manages a few more fish and for me it was dead :-( in the end we called it a day, as things just got bad to worse. Adrian was 10 fish in front of me but hayy cant win them all and was awesome to get out again on this special venue.

OPEN SEASON.........

2011-06-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like the weather is going to play dirrrrty this weekend prob ruining most peoples open seasons first couple sessions :-( Ill be mostly upsetting the monster chubblys all around the southwest and cannot wait im like a child on christmas eve....... armed to the teeth with small swampys, renoski rubber frogs, and jitterbugs along with various soft plastics! Tight lines guys and keep your eyes peeled for new reports as the 2011 fishing really starts to kick off

Danny

Wrasse bashing

2011-06-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Fished today with my brother using soft plastics and bait for Ballan Wrasse on one of my top wrasse marks and as usuall it was blindingly good fun! you gotta love the absolute smash grab and crash dive fight of the ballan on the correct gear! the fact they are prob the most beautiful fish in UK waters being all different colours from bight reds and oranges to lumo blues and electric whites :-)This Ballan nailed a megabass spindle worm on a delelande jig you can see how aggressive they are when fished for correctly as you can only just see the jig in the mouth! after a scrappy fight right under the rod tip i managed to get it to the surface, great fun on a 25g casting weight casting rod coupled with a shimano curado e7 and 30lb braid! the action on bait was pretty much non stop...... soon as our mini fixed pats touched the bottom the rag worm was nailed instantly! plenty of smaller fish hammerin the bait the second it was in there, with the larger wrasse smashing the worm and pretty much nailing them selfs on our rigs which are deadly! it wasnt long before my brother was landing fish

Joe into only a fish not even 2lb but they dont half put a bend in powerful spinning rods like this Speedmaster above from shimano this is a saltwater specific lure rod designed for large bass and tropical species yet look at the bend this wrasse puts on it :-) again fished with 30lb powerpro braid if youv never had the pleasure of under the rod wrassin you do not know what your missing

Even the smaller fish fight like troopers...... it was awesome wathing my brothers face when he hooked these ballans as you think youv hooked a beast then up pops little fellas like this pretty little fella. the tide had turned and i knew that the monsters would start to show there faces..... it was long before the proper bites started to show. and i didnt have to wait long before my rod was looped over trying to pull me off the ledges :-) it never fails to crack a smile on my face and iv litterally caught hundreds and hundreds of ballan wrasse

with litterally hundreds of missed takes it really does do your head in its impossible to not get frustrated as these fish do you over most times you hook them, in this venue iv had ballans over 6lb so these smaller 2 and a half pounders arent all that special but there cracking fun..... its all about fishing these gin clear coves where all you can see is deep clear blue ledges coverd in kelp and weed the mind certainly gets going when the rod first taps over and we even had a first today from this spot..... and a cool little critter tooa very cute but aggressive sea scorpion :-) certainly a first for me here in the UK we'v caught loads on the costa brave in spain where they get well over a foot long and weigh a couple pounds and the bite it gave me on my bait rod was awesome i honestly thought i had another ballan on the end until i struck like a loony and felt this little bugger on the end i think i ruined his day lol. off out bassin again in the week so watch this space :-)

Danny

Nearly Open Season :-)

2011-05-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

Cant bloody wait.......... walked a few stretches of local beats last week! massive chub every where :-) got my micro surface lures ready all rigged out with Owner st-46's and im itching to go now. blog has been quiet as fishing has been on and off and waiting for a proper blinding session. out bassing mid week to a new top secret spot hush hush. keep your eyes peeled as normal blog continues from next week

Danny

Float tubing

2011-04-30T02:38:00.000-07:00

Been a busy couple weeks..... but managed some awesome sessions for pike recently in both daylight and of coarse night piking! Me and Adrian decided that it was about time we hit the water on our float tubes! i couldnt sleep the night before getting out on the tubes as they offer sooooo much fun and different approach that you just cant get from the bank or boat! plus this has to be the most fish friendly method going.... if you wanted to you could unhook and release a pike without even getting them out the water! truly brilliant fun and wow was it worth the wait!I managed the first fish a tiddler to the monsters lurking around on the venue, i cannot explain how chuffed i was when i landed the first fish it was amazing fun i nailed it on one of the new Savagegear spinners with tons of flash in the skirt. this lure worked a treat the other week when me and Jimbo fished here so i knew it would sort me out :-) it wasnt long before me and Adrian figured out how to get around in the tubes which was most of the fun i reckon...... we certainly didnt care if we blanked it was just awesome fun to be on the water like this. Adrian was the next to hook up on a Fox hornet spinnerbait the fish literally came up from 15ft of water and nailed his bait off the top no more than 2ft away from Adrians tube! i could see the look on his face he was giggling like a child but so was i! god only knows what will happen if we nailed one of the 30's...... :-)

gotta apologise for the quality of these pictures it wasnt to i got home i realised i had my camera set to low light conditions so everything is a little out of focus...... as you can see these pike arent monsters but awesome fun on our light gear, Adrian using his skeletor and shimano stradic ci4 loaded with 20lb varivas and i had two set ups a shimano special bass perch oufit with shimano conquest 51gt-ti and 20lb braid and a tournament rod with shimano Curado e7 all great fun for lighter pike fishing as we had no real interest in chasing monsters this gear was spot on. it wasnt long before Adrian started nailing fish after fish on the yellow hornet spinner bait i had 2 fish to his 5.... but i really didnt care. it wasnt long before we headed towards the pub (i blame the wind drifting us) where we stopped to get a drink and some grub. we had loads of people tell us what we were doing was awesome and ill agree happily smiling away it was turning out to be a brilliant day! we both had mastered the basic of this float tube malarky we were gagging to get back out choosing to target a stretch we had'nt done this morning

soon after changing spots Adrians drag soon starts steaming off........ and the giggling starts again this fish was only 11-12lb but good god what a fight in these float tubes every time Adrian gets the fish to the surface it steams off again! i even managed a soaking no less than 3 times getting proper soaked as the pike bolted off! they deffo reacted differently to being caught like this, from the shore we would of had that fish netted not long after being hook but like this it was a handfull but some of the funniest fishing iv witnessed both of us were laghing our socks off while Adrian played this fish..... the scores ended up at this point Me 4 Adrian 8:-( i didnt mind though was great just being afloat.
we both managed one more fish each making the fish count 13 fish for the session which is good going considering we had a massive learning curve to overcome but i can honestly say i had one of the best sessions iv had in a long long time...... fishing has got so serious in the last few years and i cant bloody stand the attitudes of fisherman in fresh and salt water, we all need to get back to basics and start enjoying fishing for fishing not chasing monsters i didnt have any large pike this session but i had more fun because of the fact i was doing something i love.... watch this space for some more float tubing in fresh and salt water coming up :-) once again a pleasure to get out with Adrian catching fish :-)

Much Needed Session

2011-04-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

Fished monday with my good buddy James Odonnell fishing photographer and all round fishing nut case, oh and maisy the realtree dog. we headed out to the local canal in search on proper monster pike and a possible bonus lump perch, this venue recently had a L.A.S match on it with shocking results which got me ithcing to get out and see what was wrong lol.

we got there early AM. with light mist still lingering it was just perfect! love this venue always done very well with plenty of fish over 20lb being caught and two fish over the magic 30! these are proper pike none of those ressy lumps that fill the mags nowadays, both of us started out fishing savagegear lures myself using 4plays in various colours and Jimbo using one of the new savage spinnerbaits. the conditions couldnt get any better you could feel the atmosphere in the air, both me and Jimbo buzzed with excitement at the possibility of a monster or two turning up :-) Jimbo was the first to land a fish and this tiny 1lb Jack was a welcomed sight as James has had a slight dry patch concerning pike in 2011. its very unusual to see pike this size on this venue i prob see 2-3 a year I managed to sneak a small jack on a wobblespinner not long after Jimbo nailed his, the Savage 4plays didnt work at all which is strange as they usually murder this place...... we both had large very flashy lures fishing them with a very lazy sink and draw style retrieve fluttering the lures in and around weeds beds in the gin clear water, it was amazing watching the pike chase over 20ft of water and smash lures in the clear water it was like a fish tank we could see everything. im happily fishing away when i hear James shout F£*@ing hell that a huge fish..... as Jimbo has a fish well over 15lb prob around 17-18lb come hammering up behaind his lure which was actually covered in weed when the pike chased! any min now surely its going to take but Jimbo manages to hook this monster in the same swim sods law hay..... but still possitive as there was some huge fish moving and the deffo liked the lures we were throwing! only two swims away i had another decent fish chase again a fish between 12-15lb it was only a matter of time before something huge nailed our lures! i was now gagging for a decent fish now, and it wasnt long before i was treated to a good fish falling to my christmas tree style lure. after a few good hefty runs and some awesome tailwalking this fish was in the net

just scraping the double but it certainly wacked a smile on my face! as i was releasing this fish Jimbo shouts out again! with this time another lump of a pike smashing up behind the lure again a fish of around 20lb! the bright blue skys helping us spot the pike on the bottom but this also ment that most of the time the pike could also see us...... the sun was creeping high in the sky now and the action started to slow a fair bit which is generally what happens on this venue at mid day. but we still kept on chucking lures while James shoots some black and white stills on me catsing and other fishing action shots. we fished prob another quarter mile stretch of canal before deciding that the pub was calling us for a drink and plate of chips....
ended the session with 4 pike to low double and the pub we can safely say a awesome morning out.... still with a couple hows of chilling time when we got home! watch this space we are going to try this venue again next week before Jimbo heads off to guide in florida for two months. fingers crossed for one of those monsters jumping on our lures :-)

Nearly Summer Madness

2011-04-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Hey guys sorry been quiet..... had allot on with work etc and when free there just wanted to get out fishing with friends and family. going to jump back on regular blog duties next week :-) we'v been busy at the shop http://www.hartflyshop.com/ gearing up for the new seasons lure antics so please to browse the site for the very best in modern lure fishing gear, if you cant see what you want just give us a ring ill happily sort you out with all the top brands MegaBass, IMA, Sakura, Sebile, Lunker City, Owner, Varivas, Decoy, AFW, Boga, Powerpro, Shimano, Greys and of coarse all the top Fly brands...... Keep your eyes peeled for all my summer antics like the texposed surface frogs and swampys! iv recently managed 4-5 surface sessions and caught on every one :-) so things are hotting up soon be time for night piking!! ill be fishing the next few days and will hopefully get some good images for some write up's. ill also be wacking up some interviews with my angling friends and other known charactors in the lure angling world..... watch this space

Danny

Sneak Peak

2011-03-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

Heres a quick post from last weekends session i had with Nick and Lewis from Hart Flyshop. Nick will be putting up a full blog report on his blog over the weekend so check it out on my links section. we headed out to a new venue i found the other week with both fly and lure gear, we had all the bases covered from Lewis's tiny 3weight tickling stick to the 8 and 10weight pike fly kits and of coarse my trusty lure gear! Lewis was the first to turbo tickle out a handfull of tiny chub from under a bridge which was stuffed to the brim with chub and perch. he could literally put his fly where ever he wanted and on nearly every cast he nailed a small chub! i fished the next swim up and and managed to get a couple small perch chase and nip the small shads and grubs i was fishing with, it was 10-15mins before i managed to whip out a small Jack on a Delilande GT shad, a short spirited fight and i had landed the little monster i looked over my shoulders to see Nick beside me craftely shooting his black pike fly under the trees hoping for a decent pike and Lewis still tickling out small chub on the other side of us It wasnt long before Lewis was twitching for pike as i was manging to catch 3 more jacks from right under his nose, He wacks on his pike fly gear and instantly nails a small scrappy jack in the swim up form me about 2-3lb it was awesome seeing things take shape nicely! Nick was icthing to nail a pike now after our fairly poor most recent sessions together, the sport was hotting up its always wicked to be on a new venue and nailing fish one after another! we fished for another hour and the sport started to slow so we decided to head back to the sections that we started at. i managed yet again a few more scrappy jacks to about 6lb on white shads from either Delilande or the Savagegear Cannibals it was crazy fun these pike really did hang on! Nick had found a nice swim where he saw a nice Perch nail some fry and he had a chase from a fairly decent pike (low double) me and Lewis decided to cross the bridge and fish a section where we could see literally tons of bait fish rolling it wasnt long before i was in again! i started fishing these swims with a 3inch Savage cannibal shad in glow yellow with one thing in mind! big Perch..... i knew they were here because peering over the bridge i could see them shoaling up the small fry and saw 3 or four Perch well over 2lb. literally a couple casts later and bang! i knew exactly what iv got on here :-) the usuall jag jag head shake of a fairly nice perch of a pound and a half Love it when Perch nail lures really well! this Savage cannibal shad dint stand a chance, i dropped another nice perch about the same size two casts later as we were almost netting it! while taking these pictures my phone rang twice it was nick the other side of the bridge, he had managed to nail a decent pike around 8lb on the fly the pike were deffo coming on again now for the mid afternoon feed there was shoals busting the surface where pike were nailing fry off the top it was awesome to see! by tis time Nick had made it to our side, grinning from ear to ear it was a great atmosphere with all these fish nailing the lures and flys..... i Nailed this nice plump 8lber from the same swim as Nick was fishing and he was getting hit on the far bank! Between me and Nick we managed to nail a impressive 10 more pike from these next couple swims, poor old Lewis wasnt getting a sniff :-) Nick was his usuall piss taking self and the banter was well and truly flowing its always a laugh when we all get out and hit the banks of the local canals and rivers...... i can only imagine what this place is going to be like when we get back on here when the rivers re-open in june! bring on the surface lures and weedless stuff its literally going to kick off here! the two biggest pike one to Nick and one to me both just over 9lb were taken no more than 20ft from each other! they were kicking off when hooked fighting well above there weight when they first got hooked you would think we had hooked mid doubles they steamed off down stream cracking fun on the light gear! Nicks 10weight was looped right over awesome sport! cant wait to see the pictures from Nicks camera, and the proper blog report! one of the highlights of the day was seeing Lewis nail his first ever pike on the Lure..... i set up a spinning rod coupled with a 4.5inch delilande shad and Lewis was away! literally on his second cast he brings the shad up the shallows from the deep ledges and Bang this small Jack nails the lure right under the surface! it was awesome seeing this jack smash the shad in a split second! the smile on Lews face siad it all, i get a proper buzz seeing friends achieve these little goals its what fishing is all about, having fun with ya friends... no massive pike but like iv said before i couldnt care less i just love nailing fish on lures with good company.

Nick shouts out from across the feild as he's just been followed by another decent fish of low doubles so me and Lew head over with our gear! it wasnt long before Nick nails a fish of 9lb again on the fly from a lush pool where two rivers met. it had all the charactoristics you would look for deep water close in dropped flow just awesome fishing conditions! the last two fish cam from this bay making the grand total of 28 pike caught between the 3 of us..... i had 13 pike to 9lb and Nick had 12 pike to 9lb also with Lewis nailing the last 3 brilliant day! the full blog report and all photos from my camera and nicks will be up by next week.... like i said i cant wait to hit here again when the rivers open again! truly awesome fun and a real red letter day! Ill post up when Nick has written his parts think it'll make a good write up!

Danny

Gold Mine.......

2011-03-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a short one as off to this venue again later in the week to proper smash it! while out fishing today with the Portland Penetrator today we drove across some lovely countryside and stumbled across some amazing water..... i literally almost jumped out the moving car when we saw this stretch talk about mouth watering river! we parked up on the next passing point and scrambled down the country lane like bloody school kids! i took one look over the bridge and honest to god never seen anything like it! iv been lucky enough to fish some amazing water over the years but this was mind blowing the surface was littered in roach and rudd some well over a pound bellow that could only be described as a carpet of small roach baby chub and dace, iv never seen shoals like this.... the water was black with fish and under all that lot was the odd large chuch and a fair few decent perch! i was a jibbering wreck!

so after scrambling to the village to pick up the day tickets we tackled up with our Perch outfits mart opting to use the legendary Rapala F5 tricked out with Gama hooks to make sure any nips turn into fish on the bank! and i stuck on the trusty Kalin 3inch pepper pearl grub on the owner 4g jig, Mart being the smiper he is manages to winkle out the first Perch almost instantly and this little 1lber was in the net! you can just see the marks on this Perch it had obviously had a run in with a fairly large Pike in the winter so this spot seemed to be getting better and better :-) Mart manages to nail a few more simular size right in front of me! i didnt get a bloody sniff...... i managed to pester a chub of about 4inches long apart from that i couldnt catch a cold! Mart then rubs salt in my wound by nailing 3 pike to around 6-7lb and still i havent had a frigging take! then out of the blue while i was away with the fairys soaking up the sun i get smashed right under my feet by a beast of a pike must of been all of 14oz's :-) Pikie is Pike as they say mummy always told me its not how big it is........

then i really had to up my game because i was being shafted again by Mart and i stuck on a four inch Cannibal shad kind of hoping to nail a decent pike to even out the score and bang this plump beautifully coloured river perch nails the lure..... it must of been hungry as it totally ingulfed the shad 4inch shad.... you can just about see the jig head poking out the Perch's mouth! it folded the lure completely in half! from this same swim i managed to get a couple more all around the pound mark on the same shad. i was hoping for a proper unit of a perch as this swim looked mental perfect for perch and had 3lber written all over it! but it wasnt ment to be! at this point the swims in front of me were totally crawling with roach dace rudd and baby chub it was literally quite surreal seeing this many fish shoaled up in these gawjus stretches of river. especially this time of year i can only imagine this venue in the heights of summer as there was tons of lillies just breaking through the mud and there is no pace here already it has all the signs for a smashing summer light lure venue and cannot wait to get on it once the closed season ends and hopefully summer is well on the way!

Both me and Mart had a handfull more Jacks each none very big but all the same goo fun on our lighter outfits. its days like this which i love being out on the bank, brilliant weather and good company the venue came to life as the sun started to drop it was still fairly warm and it starts the brains ticking over thoughts of summer nights coming where i can head out and smash Pike on the surface lures! gotta be my favorite time of year late spring coming into summer, i have soooo much planned this season and times like this just fuel my passion for lure fishing! its not about big fish, far from it! its all about good times, good company and even better times ahead! we are heading back here friday with light lure and fly gear! fingers bloody crossed its going to be a gooden! :-)

Danny

Recent Trips

2011-03-02T03:53:00.000-08:00

Had a good few sessions recently, not the easiest time of year for harassing pike due to the random weather conditions and the fact they are just about to spawn making them a bit scatty and have there minds on other things...... but still i managed a few sessions around this weekend and was great to get out with good mates on a good venue.

On friday i headed out with the Portland penitrator, Mart really opened a can of whoop ass on me on this session i guess a kind of payback from the last time when we fished and i nailed a high twenty and a gorgeous 2lb perch and he blanked :-) he actually was 9-0 up on me before i even got a hit! i was tryin out some new SavageGear products and i was getting plenty of chases in fact the first 5mins i had a 20plus'r charge up behind one of the Savage "Da Bush" spinnerbaits i crapped my pants as there was lots of glare in the water i didnt see the beast until it was too late..... she sat there staring at me before slowely turning and swimming back off in to depths!

I must say i was super impressed with the samples Mads at savage sent over, these spinnerbaits are very well made! ball bearing swivels soldered joints, decent sized hooks (some american spinnerbaits designed for bass come with smaller hooks) awesome flash foil and rubber skirts with a hard coated jig head! Mads sent over various sizes and colours and the all look the muts nuts, sure winners this year im sure! i have lots lined up for these lures throughout the year its amazing how many styles you can fish spinnerbaits!

I finally managed to put a fish on the bank...... Yes its not as big as some of the perch i normally stick up on here but was chuffed to actually catch while martin was turfing out Jacks one after another! this little bugger was nailed on a Rapala Xrap shad in yellow perch one or my fav clear water lures it hangs in the water soooo well you can literally see the pike and perch going cross eyed when the see it! but as i said earlier the pike are deffo prespawning and there was loads of decent pike swimming up and down the swims but they just werent interested! very frustrating fishing i tell ya! but with a week or so rest they should be back on form! bring on the surface fishing i say! :-)
Yesterday Me and Adrian headed back out to show these pike who was the boss! we started off in our usual hot spots but this was a waste of time with the water being tapwater clear we had a few casts but called it a day there! we headed back to some sections where i have fished hundreds of times over the years Adrian had never fished it so was good to get to a venue where it was pretty fresh and unfished! Adrian stuck with his trusty yellow BassPro twin tail on a owner jig head and was steadily nailing the odd pike on the drop off the far bank in the deep section! fishing with his Tenryu Injection and Shimano Stella a perfectly ballanced bit of kit it looked a real pleasure to use! i had my usual Tourniment rod and Shimano Curado e7 which was chucking out the lures perfectly! i was once again back on the SavageGear Da Bush spinner baits and this time the magic happened!
we fished the session with 4 pike each, still struggling with the freezing easterly winds and lack of cover but awesome to get out again, going to give this venue a break for a week or so see if the fish calm down after the spawn as i know exactly how to catch them once they have spawned! and will wack a good report up soon as things spice up a bit! watch this space! anyway always good to get out with good friends and see some decnt fish showing, roll on the summer surface action i say!

Sakura Goodys

2011-02-16T08:49:00.000-08:00

Those of you who follow the blog know or have seen me use various Sakura products from soft plastics to the Alpax reel. All of them performing amazing in all conditions from fresh water to the wild Beara, southwest Ireland! taking a leaf out of the lighter side of angling especially the fly fishing from Nick etc iv taken a shining to the "fishing vest" style bags and rucksacks which have been used allot in there industry. i used to use a Shimano fishing vest it followed me everywhere in my early fishing adventures!

I spoke with my mate Nick Roberts over at Top Water Lures and asked to try out the Sakura Koa Bag this is a tidy little unit which has tons of space due to the two chest pouches with three pockets attached to the main chest pouch. These are large enough to stuff full of packets of softbaits or smaller Plano style lure boxes, they also have a nifty little panel of dense foam for sticking lures in the pouch without them tangling as you can hang the trebles in the foam, i love this feature as i always have pockets full of shads etc. the back pack side of the lure easily holds a medium sized lure case and also has a front pouch ideal for drikns and snacks :-) coupled with the endless adjustability and lanyards for snips etc what a great little package!

What with all the new and exciting adventures i have planned throughout 2011 including various magazine stuff with Jimbo etc Nick from Topwater asked would i like to crack on and try some of Sakura's rods one being there Dawgs Nuts light to medium spinning rod the impressive Sakura Mazzera 742ML..... WOW what a bit of kit! super slim super fast coming complete with Fugi reel seat and Fugi SiC guides throughout. This 7ft 4 spinning rod is everything you could want from general fresh or salt water rod with soft plastics and medium sized lures. Im out Perch fishing tomorrow and hopefully will get a few decent bends in it! its beautifully styled and fits in the hand like a dream, its everything you could possibly want for a rod priced at the £200 mark. obviously time will tell with rods but first impressions are awesome! bring on the Pike,Perch,Chub,Bass and Pollack of 2011. ill wack a proper review of this rod in a few months once iv abused it a bit! I also had the nice surprise with a load of base ball caps from the companys i test and fish with so ill be looking super "pro" while using there gear this season :-) all the above gear and tons more are all available from Nick and the guys at www.basslures.co.uk check it out

Danny

Like a fine summers day!

2011-02-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Well it shit it down with rain from start to finish yesterday on a chalk stream in Dorset. where me and Nick Hart had managed to blag a day on this exclusive trout chalk stream which just so happened to have tons of dirty great Pike munching on the wild brownies :-) After a eveing of beer, red wine and steak at Nicks house we were up at 5am ready for action! Nick manages to misplace the shop keys and forget the sarnys we certainly had a good start what with the awfull weather pounding down but as usual me and Nick are buzzing to go with thoughts of new venues and monster Pike to be caught!

after a good few hours of sod all i managed a follow from a huge pike well into twentys my faith was restored as you can see with the picture above of me hood up the wind and rain blasted us pretty much all day..... luckily wearing breathable waders and a wading jacket i was nice and dry under the layers! i was using a savage gear 4play in koi when the fish chases from the left hand side it literally hammered up behind the lure the like a croc sunk slowely to the bottom my heart missed a few beats i tell ya! Dave who took this photo is the guy who invited us to his private beat ran over in hopes of seeing another beast as he's the guy who has sussed this venue with fish to 21lb already in the last couple weeks!
I managed to sneak a tiny jack from one of the swims dubbed "Pike Corner" on another Savage Gear 4play in baby cod this fish was literally ripped to shreds! obviously some huge fish in these waters, its wierd seeing pike in water running so fast and as we said this is a "trout water" by nature but you know me ill catch pike where ever they haunt! while me and Nick snooped around these tidy swims all covered in over hanging trees perfect for big pike to sit behind waiting for a trout or two to swim past! Nick made the decision to switch from traditional wire traces to AF wire as this is so limp you can tie directly to the lures giving the magic swimmers we were now using the most awesome un-hindered action! flukely i managed to whip this 8lber right from under Nicks nose, the take was unreal smashing the lure through the over hanging trees almost like surface fishing in the hight of summer!
Literally two three casts later i cast yet again right behind where Nick was previously fishing and smash im in again! right in amongst the horrid snags this 10lber jumps on my Sebile Magic Swimmer..... screaming line off the baitcaster down stream in the powerfull current! talk about action packed, as Nick lands my fish we hear Simon shouting from around the corner "im in"...... then "WOW"....... then "Get the NET" Simon manages to nail this gawjus beast of a pike! me and Nick move down the swim to Simon to see this beast looking at us in the net.
the scales read 22lb 13oz take a pound of for the net arms and mesh thats 21lb 13oz and Simons PB (flukey sod:-).....) seriously though what a fish! this beat his previous PB of 13lb! a fish of a lifetime from a tiny chalk stream like this! awesome stuff and even though i also had a double in my hands it was nothing compared to the smile on Simons face and in fact all our faces to witness this capture! Dave had also caught a 21lber a week and a half ago, possibly the same fish but judging my there fishing reports from christmas onwards there are plenty of these twentys in here, dave losing a much larger fish just weeks ago further down stream! 10mins later Nick lands the biggest of the session..... the lesser spotted ginger fluff chucker which only just fitted in my landing net! as you can see the mood was awesome after that catch even the horrid weather didnt take the smiles off our faces! we fished on with fly and lures but had no more hits, we headed back down stream trying various lures and flys in all the likely swims but it just wasnt happening! all in all myself Nick Dave and Simon all had a wicked day and cant wait to get out again. we are heading back up there in the warmer months to get them off the top! Brilliant to see a bunch of guys from differnt fishing backgrounds all chipping together for a cracking session. This is what angling is all about for me friends and having a laugh on the bank!

heres Nick tyring to figure out if we could tickle out one or two more pike from the final few swims, but it just wasnt happening! it was now time for calling it quits and heading off to the nice warm pub. all in all a brilliant day and me and Nick really enjoyed it! massive thanks to Dave and Simon for letting us two motley angers venure out on there chalk stream we had a blast! we will deffo head back again later in the year to hit these fish off the surface! please check out Daves blog and site http://www.blurredfocus.co.uk/ for more fishing tales and adventures also flick over to Nicks blog for yet another great write up of the day.

Danny

Brilliant Morning Session

2011-02-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

Headed out with Fly Guide/instructor and all round Fly master Nick Hart yesterday for a session out and about. we jumped in the truck and headed off to a nice small river in search of Pike Perch and my mate the Chub! we parked up in the middle of no where again armed to the teeth with lure gear Nick using a tourniment outfit and Sakura Aplax and i used my Tourniment rod and Shimano CalaisDC filled with braid ready to smash some nice solid sport in this gorgeous spring day. I rigged us both up with Sebile Soft Magic Swimmers knowing this venue has lots of nooks and crannys to throw a lure and the Swimmers fish so well being weedless!

as you can see above they are mental perfect for brilliant natural presentation of Roach/Dace/Gudgeon with a wiggle that has to be seen to be believed! you can get these from Nick and crew at http://www.basslures.co.uk/ give them a shout and there sort you out with all you need! i had action strate away with a nice chub smashing the lure under the rod tip in the bowells of the river covered in snags and over hanging trees, but that excitement was nothing to what i was about to see! I got Nick to chuck his Swimmer along this deep slow run away from the main current when in the distance could see a good double figure fish chasing the lure down stream with a passion thinking decent pike to start off but no it was a double figure Salmon! couldnt believe my Fudging eyes...... after it chased 3-4 times it soon lost interest and we calmed down (like a bunch of hyper school boys)

We tried hard to stick some coarse fish on the bank, i finally managed to hunt down the Perch with a decent fish of around 2lb hitting my Magic Swimmer it was in a gorgeous 3-4ft deep swim tucked up behind a fallen tree on a narrow section, the tree created a pool behing it which screamed Pike/Perch i was smashed on the second cast and then again i called Nick over as he wanted to see the action taking place in the clear water! i swapped to a small japenese jig and Kalin pepper pearl grub and instantly saw movement there was a few BIG Perch tucked up out of sight and just as Mummy Perch was about to nail me Mr Chub comes in and smashes me right up with a aggressive take! but hang on Nick shouts Browny!! i infact had nailed my PB lures caught browny it wanst a Chub at all! see first piccy. Chuffed to bits.....
we hit a fairly quiet stage, mid day and river was running fast so plan was to deffo put Nick onto Pike at some point! i took him to my "break glass incase of an emergancy" swim where i knew we would hit the pike! and Nick certainly pulled a few! i gave him a change of lure the Savage Gear Cannibal shad in orange and instantly got a reaction! with 2 hits and chases right to his feet (both of which he balls'd up) :-) anglers and danglers hay ha ha ha sorry Nick your a legend really. with two pike in quick sucsession (fluke) he was in the smile on both our faces say it all, not big fish but its awsome to see progress. i managed a good hit from a larger pike which ruined a brand new shad! we headed further downstream to the "swamps" a spot on the river where it splits into countless mini streams but all full of pools and FISH i managed to get a chase from a decent Pike well into doubles it literally swam right up to us, laughed in our faces and swam off i wasnt best pleased soooooo frustrating! we decided enough was enough, a great day out with good company funny thing being the Fly game guy nails all the coarse fish! and me being a dab hand at Pike/Perch i nail all the game fish.... fishing so unpredictable i just love it! please check out Nicks site in my usefull links page for write ups and other info from the fly world, well worth a read!

Danny

10,000 plus hits!

2011-01-21T13:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, My blog hit over 10,000 hits in the last 12months this morning! cheers to all the readers and followers, these season is going to see some Awesome things lined up so keep ya eyes peeled! thanks again guys :-)

Well on Wed me and Nick Hart headed out for a long over due session on a local venue where we bantered on about all sorts of crazy ventures for this season!

I supplied the gear for the session as most of you know Nicks a Fly angler and we wanted a change, check out this beast of a log Nick managed to land! gotta be 2011 biggest catch lol! hardly fitted in my huge net. conditions were not the best but we got lots of chat sorted for the next coming season etc. Please take the time to flick across to Nicks site which can be found in my Links section, he has a full write up of the day and lots of other interesting stuff from the wonderfull world of flyfishing :-)

Danny

Playing around

2011-01-17T04:24:00.000-08:00

Check out a couple of these images Jimbo took on our last trip out last week, we spent a bit of time playing around with different angles and styles of shooting lure fishing with some cracking results! we had a blast thinking up new techniques and it was funny seeing Jimbo soaking up the water like a tea bag in his leaky snowbees lol :-) iv seen allot of images in the last 12months through Gilbeys stuff of guys lure fishing and loads of shots of loaded rods! check this out....you just dont realise how much rods load up while casting fairly light lures....... thats a impressive bend dont you think! id love to see what my 8ft bass rod does chucking a Xpod or something! its not like im really punching these casts its not a great distance to the far bank as you can see in this picture, i really like this shot it really shows what your gear can do, soooo many guys piss about with stupidly heavy gear when there really is no need. we will try and get some more shots like this on the next sessions.Check this splash shot...... this took sooooo long to capture but was good fun all the same, how i didnt put the jig through the camera i dont know :-) this is a picture you just dont see in the mags or media, it works perfectly we will try this next time with a floating plug in firetiger or something! it'll create such a cool shot seeing the lure still floating in the surface! not only was it good fun but it was good piching practice which is a method i use on small rivers etc as you can cast well in tight areas with no backswing! all in all a good day out. hope you like the photo's check them out plus lots more on Jimbo's Facebook in my useful links section

Danny

Perch...... Not just for Parrots!

2011-01-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

Well me and Jimbo had a shite session on wednesday..... its rained full stop for the whole morning while out on one of my local venues fishing for Pike, couldnt even get the cameras out! Jimbo said later in the week that sundays weather looked mint did we fancie a early doors Perch session! I love Perch fishing wish sometimes they would be pike size i really do think i wouldnt fish for anything else! i got dragged out on the piss sat nite so getting up for 4.30 was entertaining! but we managed to crack on and get to the venue just as the sun was peeping over the horrizon its was starting to take shape :-)

its always good to get out with Jimbo, as we set up the gear both Rod and camera its always some funny banter and especially with the hang over i was nursing! burning the candle at both ends as they call it! I had a Plano full to the brim of various softplastics from the likes of MegaBass, Sebile, SavageGear and Lunker City and a mixture of jig heads from Owner and Gamakatsu armed to the teeth for my Stripey mates. this venue lends itself to lutes around 3-5iches be it grubs or shads with yellows and whites being my favorites! but my friends who also visit here with me have caught on some awesomely garrish BassPro lures, the key is reading your water and knowing the gear in your hand!

This Perch nailing this Sebile Magic swimmer softbait but barely getting hooked i was a lucky devil with this fish! after dropping two previous to this Perch i was beginning to think i had'nt had any hooks in the lures..... These Sebile soft Swimmers are truly the dawgs nuts for most pred fish in the UK not my first choice for this venue but it just felt right at the time! the almost hypnotic swimming action is all thats need to nail these perch in here! i'd normally stick with a white shad on a 8g owner jig and owner st-36 stinger for good measures something like the SavageGear cannibal shad below

The sun was really rolling up through the sky now, the light was amazing still bloody cold but just enough heat from the sun to take the edge off :-) the Perch fishing wasnt as good as hoped with a couple chases, two dropped fish and One plump 2lber but as said we had a ball messing around with various camera styles and angles we really went to town on getting some new innovative look to the photo's. ill do a seperate write up in the week with some of Jimbo shots while we played with angles and light etc. the morning went sooo fast and before we knew it, it was gone 1pm and time to call it a day! Me and Mais the realtree dog managed another look at some decent swims with only a hit and a chase to show so we called it a day!Watch this space me and Jimbo have some really new exciting stuff lined up for 2011 and it will all be put up on here as well the Mags, think its going to be a corker of a year! please check out Jim O'donnell in my usefull links section his photo work is top notch and a pleasure to work with!

Danny

Cracking day out........

2011-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Well the last month or so has been soooooo hard with the shite weather conditions etc but everything came good today..... :-) after weeks of pulling my hair out with horrid conditions we finally managed to hit some local spots. First off was one of my favorite tiny lowland rivers always stuffed with chub, pike and perch but after a hour or so things didnt really happen! we managed 2-3 follows between me and Martin from small perch to around a pound when the water started to colour up loads making it hard work, we decided for a quick move to a venue on the flood levels where i knew things could turn good, after only 2 casts in one of the tight snaggy swims this shows its ugly head!!

Soooooo nearly the Magic wild 30lber number 3 but she didnt make it........ but its always a pleasure to witness beasts like this stunner! safely returned to fight another day :-) she nailed a white 5inch Savagear Cannibal shad it went fudging crazy under the rod tip then steamed off down the drain towards a snag then came to the surface for a nice shake of the gills then off again before i slammed on the breaks for the Net! what a way to start the season with one of my largest Lure caught pike. we fished this venue for a couple hours upsetting the Jacks and the odd perch when we decided to sneak off to the last venue for the lower light in search of Mr Perch! half hours drive in to the middle of no bloody where we finally got to this gawjus river within 10mins of getting there things looked great with two follows my Perch to about a pound again when i cast to a slack and Bang i knew strate away i had a Perch this nice chucky 2lber was a pleasant catch and i was now ready for home with numb fingers and nose the light was dropping fast, off home we go! cracking day out chuffed to bits as iv really struggled with the "no fishing" the last month! Mart blanked lol

tight lines

Danny

Making the most of it......

2010-12-21T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well the weather is getting from Bad to Fudging shocking! and its proper shafted my fishing! with all still waters and a couple rivers being totally frozen solid and have been now for almost a month! with temps not leaving the minus's throughout the day! we even have over a foot of snow fallen over the weekend its making fishing out of my reach!

Soooooo i thought id go through a few Lures im currently putting through there paces, some new some old but all still catching "when" i manage to get to the water.....

Going to start with my Trusty Sebile Magic Swimmers in the Hard swimbaits and of coarse my Fav the Magic Swimmer Soft. Both these lures ranging in size from the 62sk standard swimmer and 100mm soft, to the 228ssk beast standard swimmer and the impressive 200mm soft swimmer! coming in a serious amount of colours from the garrish blues and greens like Peacock(NI2) and Chartreuse Holo(M5) to the really awesome naturals like Rainbow Trout(NRT) above, to the likes of BlueGill and White Perch (NBG-NK2)These lures have actioned to be seen to be believed! iv used the Soft swimmers 130mm allot recently for its totally natural appearence and swimming action its Soft Weight System is the key here! you can alter the actions decents by adjusting the Soft tunsten weights forwards of into the lure depending on your style, also being weedless its the lure to use in and around the heavy cover. The standard Swimmer is the King of swimbaits with throughwire construction, to full Owner hookage (st-46 on larger sizes and St-36 for all else) these lures cover it all, the pike on one of my local venues go completely crosseyed for them and they provoke such mental attacks! the three models FSK, SK and SSK cover all situations! truly one of my Fav lures.

This time of year i like to fish lures nice and Slow close to the structures or bottom this is where Softbaits come into there own, there are literally thousands and thousands of Companys making alsorts of good baits out there today, from Japanese super brands to the western greats such as Savage Gear etc. But one of my favorite Brands that make some blinding lures Hard and Soft MegaBass....... those of you who follow salt water lure sites like http://www.henry-gilbey.com/ and other sites and forums will know this brand well! with the likes of the Zonk's and Xpods holding up the Hardbaits and the likes of these two beauties, the SpindleWorm and Xlayer's :-) now iv used both to amazing effect in salt water here and over in Ireland for Pollack, Wrasse and Bass but these stunners also kick the competition in the nuts with there Innovative designs and lure styles, The Xlayer being the Lure above they come in 3-4 different sizes in endless hand poured colours these lures either fished on jigs or weedless on offset worm style hooks really do offer endless styles to fish for Perch, Chub, Zander and of coarse Pike! the Xlayers are truly a legend in there own with tons of fish appeal with the Ribs and crease causing vibrations also a neat little tail rattle it really does the business! i fish mine on a light jig with anice sized hook fished really aggresive making the lure almost walk the dog under the surface! a true slash bait! The spindle worm really coming into its own for winter Perch! you can rig on a jig and slowely crawl this lure tight to the bottom, the tail naturally paddles away the perch just love them! Spindle worms do have there own problems though! due to them being made with Vios they WILL react with all over baits, and literally melt the lot! these need keeping together in there neat little packet apart from that hold on tight!

These lures above are from the Massively popular Delelande range, the white lure being the impressive GT-shads and the lure below the Buster shad. these lures again are ideally suited for perch and pike! with the GT-shads coming in various sizes right up to 8inch in a massive range of colours they are a very dence lure with a quick sink rate, the rubber is very tough and good with toothy critters like Pike and Zeds as you can see i rig mine with owner stingers which i make up in varied lengths to suit differnt situations. the Buster shad is one of my favorite shads with the articulated tail section and holes through the wrist of the tail giving this shad a mental action! it wriggles soooo much it almost feels like a plug on the line SERIOUS again comes in a numerous amounts of sizes to 6inches in a wicked amount of colours. shads can be fished on sooo many ways its best left to the fisherman to figure out but these to work very well! all of the above lures were sent to me by http://www.basslures.co.uk/ Nick and the gang over there will sort you out with all ya pred needs why not check them out.

Also dont forget the newest "in the know" forum packed with goodies from guys right across the board some come on join in! www.jerseybassguides.com/rockfishing

Hopefully be out fishing soon as the ice and snow fudges off, have a good christmas and new years guys

Danny

Couple hours out

2010-12-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

Brrrrrrrr its fudging cold!! Managed a few hours on a local river this weekend, with hopes of Pike and possible perch and Chub. we fished some known stretches that are stuffed with Pike etc with stunning slow deep bends, over hanging trees rafts of weed behing sunken snags it just screams fish! i had a hit from a Pike of around 2lb almost instantly but the little bugger wouldnt take again! soon after a Tiny Perch ruched up behind the Shad talk about eyes bigger than its belly! Martin had on the trusty Sonic spinner but managed to wang it strate into some snags deep into a slow corner losing the first lure of the session! things started to slow, the water was freezing cold conditions looked amazing over cast skys great colour to the water it just wasnt happening! we found some lovely looking swims tight to trees on our bank that when Martin manages to whip a small Jack out from the tree roots, the way it stayed deep made me think he had nailed a decent perch!

Martin caught his Pike on a trust twin tail on a Gama jig deadly on the right conditions! i soon whipped out the proper gear, sticking to the Sebile soft magic swimmer 130 in BlueGill the colours and action of this lure are amazing and one of my all time favorite lure since i was given them by Nick at TopWater over a year ago! but as hard as i tried skipping this lure under bushes and trees into all the likely holes nothing! it was really trying my skills to find the fish that are normally crawling these swims! it just wasnt happening! we fished a section a good 3miles long with only one follow to show for it! the water was soooooo cold the jacks we caught were shockinly cold and i reckon these fish are all holding up in the deeper water untill temps change! still it was good to get out shame we coudnt fish one of the local canals due to ice but next time fingers crossed!!

Cross Over's

2010-12-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Good evening guys, please check out a article i recently put together for Keith over at JerseyBassGuides! we are going to do more Cross over articles throughout 2011 ill put up some HRF/LRF stuff on here and he will be sticking up my Freshwater antics!
http://www.jerseybassguides.com/bassfish/blog1.php/2010/12/08/night-pike-a-guest-article-by-danny-parkins
Keiths stuff on his blog is always worth a read as these guys are truly a step above the rest in my eyes with the way they are pushing the techniques myself and my friends love to be involved in.
dont forget the new must see forum if your partial to a bit of salt water luring :-)

Danny

Dangling in Dorset

2010-12-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

As promised heres the report from my good mate Adrian and his angling antics this weekend!

"I wasn’t sure whether to go sea or river today but decided on the river as I fished the sea all last weekend and I haven’t fished the river for ages. So I dug out the UL gear, tied on a 20lb single strand titanium leader and off I went.
There was still a lot of snow and ice on the ground and I couldn’t get to park in my usual spot so had to walk a little way to the river. When I got there the water level was still quite low but the flow was reasonable and there was the right amount of clarity, about 3-4ft.
2nd swim upstream I hooked this little jack, about a pound or so, on a Rapala jointed Shad-rap 4cm.

Good, I thought, the fish must be "on". But spoke to soon as I didn’t get another take for nearly 2 hours. Had a pike of about 5lb on for about 5 seconds, then it was off.
Nothing again for 1/2hr so I thought I’d start making my way back to the car, and maybe go bassing somewhere. So, fishing back downstream, I then had these 2 jacks, both in the same swim. One about 4 lb and the other about 5lb.
and

Moved down to the last swim and decided "last cast".
Fish on. After a short fight I landed and weighed it at 13lb7oz. My best pike this winter so far. By now it was raining hard so I had another couple of casts (had another tiny jack) then packed up back to the car.

On the way home to pick up the bass gear I changed my mind and thought I’d fish a different stretch of the same river. When I got there, the water was beginning to rise due to the rain and the snow melt and was becoming more coloured but I thought I’d give it a go. 3 casts and I had this lovely, deep bodied chub on - 6lb4oz.. That was the only fish in about and hour and a half. It was still raining hard, so I packed up and called it a day."

Id say thats a pretty good session!! nice to be out evenin if it is wet and cold! thanks again Ady keep up the good work! it'll soon be our Perch session time of year!

Danny

F-F-F-F-F-Freeeezing

2010-12-05T06:39:00.000-08:00

Alrite Guys, managed a day out finally! Me Jimbo O'donnell from http://www.fishinginflorida.co.uk/ and Fatboy (shaun) headed out on this very cold -7 friday morning! a quick pit-stop in Mak d's then off to the tackle shop to pick up the day tickets, i wont go into the conversation that happened in the tackle shop! good job we all knew each other because we would of prob been arrested :-) ha ha ha i blame Jimbo myself! a quick 15mins drive and we were at the venue of choice, one of the pike rivers i fish fairly aften it looked awesome! still with snow covering most of the fields and the water looking very dark and moody Perfect pike fishing conditions!

While Jimbo and Shaun fished Deadbaits i of coarse stuck with various soft plastics, starting out with 5 and 6inch Cannible shads fishing them tight to the bottom following the contours hoping for a big Pike or chub to nail them behind the snags. while Jimbo pitched up a little trap of Lamprey and sprats in the pools behinds submerged trees and features. after half hour of fishing i managed to get a few chases but they just wouldnt nail the bait, i reckon the brilliant blue skys and awfull temp's just pushed the fish down! Jimbo was the first to connect with a fish as the float bobbed away and sailed up stream against the flow and then charged off back down stream, Jimbo cranks down hard and strikes the 10ft fox aqaus twig stalker looped over with massive head shakes and huge boils on the surface of 8-9ft water this fish was giving its best to not come out of the swim, i clambered down the slippery frozen banks and the fish spat the hooks!!! Gutted after a swear word or two the baits soon got wacked strate back out.

Those of you who follow the blog or know about Sebile lures will know iv been Testing the gear in our waters for over a year now and really enjoying being involved with the brand, i just love the style and innovation Sebile brings to the table! i pride myself in the up and coming techniques and pushing the lure fishing boundries so i spent most the day fanny assing around with the Softbait Magic Swimmers with all the different ways they can be fished! this photo shows my "secret" jig Mod with stinger hook. i wanted to come up with a method of rigging the lure as if it was on a Jighead but without the hook sticking from the top of the lure to keep that (almost) snaggless presentation and Hell yes i cracked it this time! ill post a "tech talk" in the week where ill go through what mods iv made to create this rigging style.

While Using various lures from Sebile etc i only managed to get 3 hits to the lures which was soooooo pissing me off as the conditions were spot on not even Fatboy and Jimbo had sniffs on there baits which was frustrating to say the least! but as usuall the day was full of Banter and humour its nice sometimes to just get out and enjoy Fishing for the love of just being out with friends trying to look like we all know what we are doing :-) we ended the day with a blank but hay ho great fun all the same. Adrian text while we were out he managed to fish in Dorset ill wack the report up tonight!

Danny

Check this out!

2010-12-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

Well this weather has really Ballsed my fishing up! But im out this friday shooting new photos with Jimbo O'donnell on a well known local venue stuffed to the brim of decent pike and chub! ill hopefully have a wicked report to stick up sat evening to watch out!
Well im posting up for a reason and thats this! http://www.jerseybassguides.com/rockfishing/index.php heres a new and exciting forum form the guys over at JerseyBassGuides, iv mentioned Keiths efforts and his site on my blog before deffo one to watch! this forum is dedicated to the new school style HRF/LRF style lure fishing as well as other Japanese styles of artificial fishing! iv prided myself in these styles for a few seasons now its a great way to fish! this site already has some of the big names using it and will be a gold mine of knolledge and info. lets hope it keeps level headed as this is a forum for the guys in the know and new comers alike! we dont need the school playground antics of say the P+P/LAS forums which are a weak shadow of them selfs due to problems with users. hope you guys check it out and give Keith the support and help JerseyBassGuides diserves!

Danny

Tropics

2010-11-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

well its all good for one certain friend of mine Adrian who is off on hols in St.lucia he packed his roadrunner rod and is going to feed me mini reports as and when he manages to get away from the wife and wet a line

here's the first fish caught so far and i believe it was on his first cast!! i spy a Kalin pepper perl grub hanging from that fishes mouth.... these lures really do shaft most fish swimmer from pike perch in our canals to irish Pollack, seems as if these "zoo creature" fish over there like them too. will post up again if he manages to land any more monsters..... 10points to who ever figures out what this is! check out the teeth

Tech Talk

2010-11-09T10:09:00.000-08:00

I see on numerous Forums newbe's and sometime more skilled anglers asking the heated dreaded "what Reel to use"....... so i thought id take the time to go through my main Baitcasters ( Multipliers ) which is use the most through out the season, from ultra-light perchin to the heavy weight 11-12inch swimbaits i use Baitcasters for 99% of my luring with sea luring being the only time id switch to the fixed spool reel.

Starting from left to right:- The Old worrior being my trusty Shimano Culcutta 101d, this old dog is my "MegaBait" reel.... loaded with 60lb PowerPro this reel is pretty much used soaly for Massive swimbaits and Jerks with a steady 5-0.1 retrieve and awesome drag even still after years of use, i actually used this reel when i caught my PB pike of 31lb 14oz and it dealt with the Pike great :-) Then its the Shimano Curado E7, this reel is my general purpose medium weight Baitcaster. its loaded with 30lb PowerPro and is used for general lure fishing with Medium swimbaits, Shads, spinnerbaits, general plugs etc also used allot while out Night surface fishing due to its rock solid reliability and ease of use. Then its my pride and Joy........ my rare as rocking horse shite Shimano Calaisdc :-) this reel beggers belief and is my fav bit of fishing kit its the top dog lure fishing reel money can buy in the world..... not cheap mind one of these puppies will set ya back 600quid i had mine shipped from Shimano Japan as soon as they got released a couple years back, with 4x4 digital control there is nothing conditions wise that will stop this reel! i use it for the pleasure of fishing, from larger lures to tiny spinners. Then its my other pride and joy the Shimano Conquest 51GT-Ti one of the smallest baitcasters on the market and smooth as butter used only for ultra-lighting as this is super tuned for the lighter work, again had this sent from Shimano Japan on the week of there release. almost scared to use it as its soooooo good looking a pure pleasure to use. Ill go through the Fixed spools i use next month and the ways i set the up, will also post some rods up

Winter Piking....

2010-11-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Me and Adrian Fished this sunday just gone in search of some decent fish around some of our local waters. with the rivers looking brilliant and a few "secret" still waters should start coming to life as the colder weather settling in! if im honest i was soooooo hoping for some huge perch but we only managed 4 Perch biggest being half a pound or so, but did see two Perch around the 2lb mark. but with super gin clear water it was almost impossible! we fished a few venues early off with no real luck the Pike we saw just didnt turn on with the odd follow the clear water didnt help matters. we ended up driving to a nearby lowland venue where Adrian managed 2 pike in 2 cast from the first swim we thought things looked up! but apart from a few small Jacks it just didnt happen! mind you i had a follow of a good double around the 15ish pound mark. after a couple of hours we decided to change scenery with the rivers in mind we headed off to a well known Pike and chub river when things finally started to happen with action almost instantly!

although the first 3 pike caught were the smallest iv had from this river 2 of which were less than half a pound! the average here is 6-9lb with lots of doubles when they decide to come out to play! this 8lber was my biggest of the day and really went well on light gear! long runs and tail walks! conditions couldnt get any better it really was amazing out there but the fish just didnt play ball! with the final pike caught being 10 not the best days piking iv had especially the tiny micro pikes trying to breast feed or something off my lure! was great to get out though this venue really does it for me! and ill be back hopefully in the next week or so and ill have some whoppers for the blog!

Bassing Adrian Stylie.......

2010-10-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

Well not much time before christmas for the Bass fishing to still come up trumps! with the colder weather heading in rapidly! but as usuall my good mate Adrian certainly made me want to dust off the Sea gear again after fishing Ireland...... heres a short report of what you could call a "GOOD" session :-)

Friday afternoon......leave work early.........go home, grab gear.........arrive at local Dorset mark.......conditions good (what wind there was was offshore, good tide flow, clear water, about 2ft swell and no chop, cloudy/sunny spells).......1st cast, thought I saw a swirl near where my lure landed, no takes....2nd cast, 2lb bass on......3rd cast, 1-1/2lb bass on........4th cast, no takes........5th cast 3lb14oz bass on

and so it continued. After 21 casts I'd landed 10 bass and 1 pollack. Then it went quiet as the tide slowed, the wind swung round to sideshore, chop started to build. Stopped counting casts, but ended up with 16 bass, 4 pollack and 3 gars. what an afternoon! Adrian tells me that most Bass were taken on the great IMA K2 in blood orange i believe, theses lures are the nuts and simply work where most other lures just dont get a sniff. I have 4-5 K2's and they really do catch fish, doesnt matter if your chasing Bass or chucking this lure in the fresh stuff it tracks well and can be fished in a variety of ways check them out along with the rest of the IMA range at http://www.basslures.co.uk/

I'd say that concludes a impressive Bass session by anyones means! im hoping to get out Bassin this coming weekend so keep ya eyes peeled. Cheers Adrian for forwarding me some stuff keep at it :-)

Danny

Channel Critters

2010-10-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

Well this isnt lure fishing by any means but still i get offered the chance to wrestle Ugly, Smelly, violent and evil creatures and i dont mean the Girls around pubs on a fri nite, Conger Eels....... me and my Bro headed up to north somerset last nite in search of Congers and Cod. we arrived at the various possible venues bang on high tide planning to fish it down and couple hours back up after low water. all the venues were packed by noddies and local anglers! iv never seen a North coast venue soooooo packed with anglers, they even had a burger van :-)

once we had stocked up on Fridge raiders and cola we headed to the spot we knew had the fish running close enough to be able to cover them with our casts, the fish at this venue are always between 75 and a 100yards off the beach. as you can see from the photo above you really have to pile on the pressure here as the fish try and pile into the big stones that litter this coastline and they WILL snap you off if the get in the rough stuff. it didnt take long before i had my first bite! literally 5mins aftwer my first cast my rod nodded over and smashed over and after a quick spirited fight the first Conger was landed! a fish of about 6lb not a monster but a handfull of angry Biting Eel.......
after a few dropper runs and shy bites the tide really started to crack on and our Fav time of the tide was starting to creep up on us..... i had another steamer of a bite which ended up on me being bitten off by yet another Eel, then as you can see abouve my Bro managed to nail a small Codling at super long range where we knew they would be shoaling at low water. its always good to see the cod showing again after a rough period for the species around UK shores. we managed to nail another big Flubber while trying for the Cod and i lost another decent fish while reeling it in over rough ground. we stuck it out for a couple hours more and decided to call it a day. Always good to try different types of fishing, shore fishing like this isnt really my cuppa tea but all in all a great night out with some nice fish thrown in the mix.

"oohhhh we do love to be beside the seaside"

2010-10-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Just returned from my second trip to Ireland this year, me and Martin headed out a couple weekends ago for two weeks of smashing Pollack, Coalfish, Maks and Wrasse with some PB's thrown in for good measure! we fished a different part of Ireland than when me and Adrian fished the Beara earlier in the summer. this was a totally different back drop to the wild southwest coast but all together beautifull suroundings to chuck some lures around! we even had the weather on our side with only two days deciding to piss it down on us!

we nailed Pollack on every session didnt blank at all! there was'nt the numbers of large Pollack like the beara but we did 20-30 fish a session on numerous sessions with Pollack between 4 and 6lb coming out most days with the odd larger one screaming line off the reels every now and then. we fished mostly wild rock ledges and reefs all stuffed with fish of all sizes, all willing to smash ya lures from soft plastics to surface lures the pollack loved it! on the first session we even smashed the hard fighting Coalfish. no real biggies but had them to around pound and a half, great fun on our light lure gear!

This Pollack which just bumped over the 6lb mark did the usuall dirty Pollack style take and fight! took right under the rod tip and steamed off 20ft of braid easy! its crazy how tough these fish are, pike this size dont even come close to the exsplosion off anger and charge these fish have when they have the kelp! i had 9 Pollack from this mark all between 4 and 6lb as well as my PB Wrasse which was caught on a soft plastic from Lunker City. all the Pollack took MegaBass Xlayers jigged in the deep holes close to the near rock ledges which are tackle grave yards you really have to bang the pressure on these hard fighting fish! check out the beast of a wrasse

We nailed lots of Wrasse on this trip on lures proving that it can be done, if you find the right swims and the right lures they really do abuse ya on light gear! we had most of our wrasse on jigs using 4-5inch grubs or as you can see a 7inch lunker city Fin-s fish!! i even had a wrasse on a surface lure while fishing one of the shallow reefs to the north of our holiday flat! iv never taken wrasse on surface lures just shows how aggressive these Ballans can get! check out the photo of this wrasse Martin nailed on a storm rattle grub on 5inch.

Nailed or what!!!

we found endless coves and points where you can chuck the lures in the right conditions and even the shallow little nooks and crannys produced some monsters! Martin nailed some clonking Pollack in one venue to a cracking 8lb! again on grubs fished tight to the reefs tackle loss was high but worth the risk when nailing fish like these, the storm grub winning again while i nailed fish to 5lb on the xlayers

Xlayers being my best catcher, in various sizes this lure rigged right just murders most fish that swim our seas and even the not so obvious colours doing the business

It wasnt all wild fishing we had some of our best catch's from the multiple small Harbours dotted around the place with fish 4-6lb cropping up nearly everywhere! the best bit is these places are totally neglected by all the anglers over here! anyone willing to put the tim in and venture off the beated tracks will be amazed at what can be had! both me and Henry Gilbey have said before its just plain crazy why its not more popular!

we also fished a fair bit in the hours of darkness which again is still unheard of over here we got some funny looks from the locals walking out to the spots armed with lure gear in the pitch black! but remember that this is such a dangerous coastline even in the day, the most experienced anglers can get into trouble here! so this sort of fishing is best left to guys who know there stuff! we fished mostly rough seas where we knew the pollack will be in close and smashing the baitfish which are shoaled up hiding from the mental seas i managed Pollack to 7lb in the pitch black truly heart stopping stuff when you cant see anything around you!

check out the scenery we were lucky enough to fish you cant beat sun sets like this in these beautiful suroundings! heres Martin gearing up for another night session which is always great when the conditions come good! this is proof that people should really be seeing this with there own eyes!
All in all a brill two weeks away fishing some amazing venues in the most amazing scenery you really cant beat this! cant wait to get back over there next year with Adrian again to put the Pollack back on the rocks bring it on!!

New toys for Ireland!!

2010-09-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

Off to Ireland on sat and finally rumaged through the gear im taking..... along with two Savagear Road Runner travel rods and my trusty Shimano's ill be packing the fab Sakura Alpax which i have on long term test and is the reel that taimed the Beara Pollack on my last Ireland trip i have been sent a rather nice package from Nick at TopWater. I am now armed to the teeth with lots of slimey new MegaBass soft baits such as Xlayers, Spindle worms and the rather stinky Hazedong's. but the lures iv been waiting for are the new 100mm Sebile soft swimmers! if you have followed my Blog i was lucky enough to get my hands on the first swimmers in the country months before they went on sale through http://www.basslures.co.uk/ these were the standard 130's which i wrote about on here. they truly are wicked lures and really do the Sebile magic swimmer brand justice!

Heres a picture of a selection of Sebile magic swimmers ranging from the (hush hush) not even released Swimmer 82SSK snagless, soft swimmers 105 and 130 and the standard Magic swimmer 110FS all these lures have proven time and time again that all pred fish just love them from Perch to the double figure pike in fresh water and the Pollack and Bass in the sea fish just love them! Sebile really do have the playing field sorted from floaters to fast sink! they even got the swimmers in the Salt & Sun series which are specially designed for the most bad ass toothed fish that swim in the sea or fresh water! Another Sebile product that i am lucky enough to have my mits on are the Sebile hollow stick shadd softbait! based on the popular EFFTEX winning Stick Shadd they are designed with the same removable weight system as the Soft swimmer where they are rigged on a beast of worm hook where the tunstan weights can be pushed on. the hook sits inside the Lure where the top slit opens pushing the hook into the fish for near 100% weedless fishing over lillies or heavy weedbeds.

Check out the Youtube videos for most of the Sebile range on there own channel, some really innovative designs and lures which in my eyes are punching in a league of there own in the new and exciting lure market of 2010-2011 iv had the chance to check out the 2011 range and expect BIG things..... of coarse ill have first picks before sales in the UK so keep ya eyes peeled. Please check out www.basslures.co.uk for the sebile range they will sort you out with most of the 2010 catalogue, get in touch you will not be let down on what ever Sebile lure you choose. Tight lines

Danny

Off to Ireland AGAIN!!

2010-09-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Well im having a rather Poo time at the mo what with recent Job issues and money rapidly running out..... so its amazing that iv been offered another trip to Ireland!! this time we are heading to the west coast rather than the wild wild southwest Beara. iv never visited this part before and have seen it many times through good friend Henry and his TV shows on sky.

Just check out the views of this place...... writing this makes me just wanna get out fishing!! Ireland has soooo much to offer even if you are a worm dangler but for me its the epic light lure fishing for Crazy Pollack, Coalfish, Bass and the odd surprise! fingers crossed for the weather as its pretty dam wild out there but thats the beauty of being lucky enough to visit these places through my fishing! i am a luck Bugger. Im over there for 2 weeks this time and i simply cannot wait!! going to be using some new gear from the guys at Topwater so ill be doing some product reviews on here so keep ya eyes peeled! lets hope we can connect with some more wierd and wonderful species like the John Dory from the last trip

Ill post up more info on venues where we will visit when i know more, off out fishing tonight for Pike on the surface lures. will post up if we have a good session

Danny

Bassin about

2010-08-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

well iv been shockinly busy working for my brother so sorry not put anything up for nearly a month!! iv managed a fair bit of fishing mostly in the sea as fresh water needed a bit of a rest! we have been fishing various spots on the south hams in search of Bass with surface lures or soft plastics. with hundreds of tiny Pollack enjoying smashing the lures last weekend we managed to nail a few nice Bass! on the last session we landed four bass to almost 3lb and lost a few biggies one of the venues was literally packed with bass it was almost unreal!

as you can see we fished sooooo hard that Martin fell asleep while holding up this bass for a mug shot! this fish was caught on a 3inch Kaolin grub in pearl white one of our Favorate lures for bass it smashed Marts lure after about three casts to the pillars, it gave a good old scrap on light Bass-pro gear. i had my fish on a Megabass Xlayer in white also, didnt get a decent picture due to the lovely weather that decided to cover us in heavy sea mist. we are out again tonight in search of some of the bigger bass we saw cchase the lures some of which easily reached 8-9lb truly awesome stuff on the light gear

theres plenty of schoolys out there if your willing to get out and try for them..... and this time of year really gets them going! ill hopefully have a much better report up tomorrow after we have had a good session tonight

Danny

Its a Dirrrty job, But someones gotta do it!

2010-07-29T02:48:00.000-07:00

Headed out last night with my friend Dangerous Dave as he has been asking for months to take him out Piking..... i think he kind of had the same idea as everyone else that fishing is this boring slow Hobby where we sit the and watch floats :-) gosh was he in for a surprise ha ha within the first half hour i had numerous smashes and hits from decent pike he couldnt believe there was fish this size and sooo crazy in this small venue! he had his eyes glued to the surface lures not wanting to miss a thing it was really warming to see someone who im normally seen with after a few shandys down the pubs come up here with me and actually be amazed by what i was doing !

Dave did a good Job of Netting her for me after a very spirited fight all the way in! this fish actually got hooked twice! it came off first i was gutted as i knew it was a lump seeing it in the clear water. i cast out directly over it again and SMASH it took again...... 18lb 2oz of mental Summer surface Pike. it was one of a good buch of fish all of which hit double figures, with one fish only being a tiddler but all in all a great evening out. wicked to see a fresh face on the bank experiencing this fishing!

Danny

Surface Pollack!!!

2010-07-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Managed to hit the south coast of Devon in the week with Martin for a spot of Pollack and Bass bashing, we headed to a gorgeous spot which iv fished a few times this year and its always fished its nuts off!! mostly Pollack here with Maks if you choose to go for them slimey buggers it just screams fish on the lure! we headed out with the usuall lures small nordic spoons and jigs fished on light rods for a good bit of sport! just check out the views from the spots we are lucky enough to fish here!

I stuck to my tried and tested pollack smasher for surface fishing in this gorgeous tide rip running through the creek between me and the small island, it just screamed pollack and bass! 6ft of fast flowing water running through rocks and weed..... can it get any more better than this?? any red blooded angler could NOT resist this spot i almost fell in twice just in excitement trying to rush to the spot, this lure is called the Sebile Stick Shadd. in Blood Red violet 90mm this is a slow float ( kind of suspend ) but fished with a fast erratic twitch its the perfect unpredictable wake/walk bait with fish just love to nail! i used the 114mm version over in Ireland where i caught Pollack off the surface which is a dream come true!! well it all just came together on this evening and i landed 12 Pollack off the surface all on these Sebile lures.
All the Pollack were around the 2-3lb mark but great fun off the surface! i lost two massive fish 5lb plus at range one leaping clear of the water it was like Pike fishing on my local canal they tailwalked all the way into the rocks! i had competition though!! 3 12ft long grey seals they eyted up my fish numerous times and have had the pleasure of Mart having his fish ripped off the line here before!! i didnt want to lose my best lures so we moved. we ended the session with 65plus pollack landed and god knows how many lost, all in all a good evening. the sun set and i couldnt wish to be anywhere else just amazing backdrop and amazing UK fishing. if you want to try out some of Sebiles Lures go to www.basslures.co.uk Nick will be sure to sort you out. great sport

Nice Night for some Doubles :-)

2010-07-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

Fished a really remote part of a southwest venue last night with Adrian and Martin Pike in Mind!!!!! as usuall armed to the teeth with Swampys and ready for action, the weather was crap all day with very strong winds and pissin it down with rain pretty much the whole day but we still managed to show those Pike who's boss..... I landed the first fish after casting my surface lure up into some heavy reeds and lillies in what is looking 100% pikey and instantly hook up within about 6ft of retrieving, it smashed the lure sooooo hard it just gets the heart pounding everytime and the fact iv not night surface fished in couple weeks really puts ya on edge!! after a spirited scrap i put her in the net

things looked good water was warm and the weather was settling the cloud lifted and winds dropped this could be turning into a mental Night session. we fished about a 3mile stretch of this venue abusing all the features and all of us turned a fair few nice fish! Poor Martin was lacking takes and wasnt even getting a sniff while me and Adrian put fish on the banks, we came to what i consider one of the quieter sections but that didnt Bother Adrian! i hooked and lost a nice fish and Adrian shouts he's in! i could hear the take from 50yards away awesome stuff, the fished weighed a good 11lb 6oz and scrapped all the way to the net great sport!

not the best picture quality but good enough for drizzle and a bit of fog. fishing with surface lures is hectic enough in the day you woundnt want to do this fishing if you had a dicky ticker i tell ya! heart stopping takes and runs these fish just bring a grin to my face everytime i get out for them! Now poor old Martin still hasnt even raised a fish yet! mind you the sod did managed to land 3 massive doubles while me and Adrian fished Ireland. the best bottoming out the 25lb scales which is always a good thing lol! a 18lb 5oz and a 15lb 3oz..... the 25lb plusser sounded like a fish yet to be caught by me as Mart tells me it had a old scar on the top of its back and all the biggies we'v landed this season have been clean of damage!! photo's as soon as he has uploaded them! Adrian is on fire at the moment and its not long to he's in again! this time with his venue biggest of 2010! a lovely fish of 16lb 1oz..... he didnt even shout for us with the net as he thought this fish was only a few pounds!! i walk over cool as a cucumber and shine my head torch over to the fish to land it and im greeted with this!! some tiddler!!

well after this it kind of dies the fish really quiet down and we fish a further hour and a half without a sniff, we head back to the car and manage two fish of 6-7lb and Martin has a real sulk on due to the fact he didnt raise one fish!! BUT on last nockings he winkles out this i believe low double, we didnt weigh it he reckons 9lb but i say at least a 10-11lb! nice fish and finished off a cracking nights fishing..... you cant beat this fishing and its still fishing as good as it did 2-3months ago!! with the best to come!!

roll on next time i say, me and Mart our Bassing this weekend and a cant wait to get out again, keep ya eyes peeled for more reports and hopefully some decent piccys

Danny

Blog id Deffo check out guys

2010-07-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Morning all. Heres a Blog iv viewed loads through Henry's praises over the last few months! this is deffo forward thinking Bassin and really shows how Lure fishing can be pushed and used to awesome effect! Keith has shown interest in my Blog for a while and we have chatted and decided to link the two blogs together, he will be having the odd article pushed on here and ill have the odd piece put up on his blog etc. Please check it out http://www.jerseybassguides.com/bassfish/blog1.php its updated as much as possible and will put the spark back into ya modern bassing, i look forward to crossing over some interesting articles this summer with Keith and the guys over in Jersey

Danny

Wrasse on Soft plastics

2010-07-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

Its that time of year again where i am seriously struggling to keep off the rocks of south devon in search of the crazy hardcore Ballan Wrasse!! those who follow Henry's blog will know that Wrasse on the lure is the new Rock and Roll!! iv been lucky enough to catch some pretty massive wrasse over the years! and getting stuck into them over in Ireland really didnt help my crave. Now Wrasse on lures is a fairly new challenge and to most of us can be fairly tricky but if you willing to brave the reefs and rock ledges there is sooooo much potential

Just check out the views from the venues im lucky enough to be able to fish! these coves are just stuffed with Wrasse all waiting to be nailed by the angler willing to up his or her's game. within the next few weeks im going to be really pushing wrasse on soft plastics and know just what lures to use! im thinking small 8-10gm jigs with the likes of small natural coloured Megabass Xlayers and spindle worms. as well as Kaolin grubs and Savagear grubs and hopefully will produce some amazing results! we have had Ballans from the spot in the above photo to over 6lb's!!! and on nothing more than light spinning rods and reels loaded with braid WOw what fun its going to be!These photo's are taken by my good mate Henry Gilbey check it out on my links bit or here. www.henry-gilbey.com the eagle eyed angler will spot rag worm hanging on for dear life in the above picture but there will certainly not be any bait on my next session for the spirited Ballan Wrasse. keep ya eyes peeled for a full catch report in the next few weeks

Danny

Sakura Gold

2010-07-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well as you know iv just returned back from fishing ireland and putting some gear through its paces!! i took over a couple Plano's full of hard and soft lures to try for Pollack and of coarse the new Sakura Aplax 4008FD...... as posted many times before you can prob see i have a unhealthy issue with shimano in the fact i really have no interest in using any other brand for my cranking power, BUT i can safely say i am completely blown away by the Sakura Alpax from start to finish!! this really is a bargain at just under a 100smackers i believe there is no reel that comes close to performance and styling! all the details from Micrometric front drag to the bio T-handle which didnt slip once while battling the impressive "crash dives, hold on for dear life" fight of the Irish Pollack. with a once piece billet spool anodised in black and Sakura orange, with milled out holes in the spool for lightness and sheer style-appeal! for this styling and performance i would at least be looking along the lines of reels twice the price and more!

I fished this reel pretty much all week through the rain and winds i even got a goo walloping by waves and the reel got a good royal soaking! i even dropped the rod in sheer panic while unhooking fish the reel got dunked a good few times i got back to the bungalow that night and took the reel apart to try and dry it up and to my surprise it was bone dry inside...... with only a bit of salt water under the spool which io dried and whipped it back together, the reel still spins as smoothly as when i took it out of the box. even when wet the drag was smooth as silk and packed allot of punch for such a small unit! the bio handle really worked well its very well ballanced and is well designed for pumping up the biggest of fish from the deeps on lighter gear! it swallowed up a fair bit of 30lb braid with a bit of backing. even after dropping it a few times and giving it a bit of barnicle rash it still looks the business and performs really well indeed. time will tell indeed but after 500plus Pollack i reckon i got a keeper here and wouldnt think twice of splashing my own cash on getting another one! they can be purchased from www.basslures.co.uk and i cant fault it..... Go on treat ya self

Danny

Oooops i did it again!

2010-07-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

well i had only been back in the country half a day and i was asked by my Dad to join him and my Brother out tiddler tickling in one of the local small rivers. they were armed with feeder rods and brandling worms etc for tackling the small perch and dace etc. with litterally 50-60 small Perch and a nice dace i managed to blag the rod off my Dad! i cast out the small ledger and piece of meat under some over hanging trees.

i managed to winkle out the best fish of the session right under there noses LOL. Dad didnt stop complaining and my Bro didnt look best pleased ha ha ha nice little chub didnt fight all that much luckily it got its head stuck in the weeds and it got blind sided, anyway nice little end to the weekend not the double figure Pollack but good fun especially when i whipped it out of the swim my Bro and Dad tried and tried to catch from. its a dirrrrty job but i love doing it

Mind Blowing Fishing

2010-07-12T00:42:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a lure fishing hols in Ireland on the wild southwest Beara coastline! Me and Adrian flew over last saturday to Cork then drove the 2hours treck to Castletownbere, we dumped our suitcases off and did a spot of shopping then headed strate out to the water in search of our main target MASSIVE shore caught Pollack!! the Beara is by far the best shore Pollacking spot iv ever had the pleasure to fish, its mind blowing i was completely overwelmed by the scenery and sheer wildness of the place! we tackled up with what most guys would say was light gear for sea luring, 7ft ML rods loaded with 30lb braid. Lure wise it was jigs from 8-12gm's on Owner and Gama hooks, using Grubs and shads from 3inch to 5 in various coulours also nordic spoons and small pilks to get down in these really deep seas. on the first session a couple hours before dark we managed over 50 fish between us a mix of small Pollack and Coalfis, Adrian landing the best fish of the night being just a bit over 4lb.

Sunday morning meant a full day out on the rocks in search of the beasts which we knew lurked below in the kelp! the swell was pounding in due to southerlys blowing up the cliffs luckily they didnt cause to much trouble! we headed to a mark which had white water sweeping round the point and gorgeous blue water surrounding it. i cast my Savagear grud out past the point and Smash!! im into a decent fish!! i knew strate away it was a Pollack by the rough head shake and brutal dives and runs, i got it in to about 30ft of the point and it steams off and screaming drag off the reel!! this fish had other ideas!! i managed to turn it and moved it to a pool beside me and Adrian handed her out the water. 5lb10 oz and my Irish PB now in the next three casts i nail a Pollack over 4lb on every cast this fishing was not the average tiddler tickling like in the UK.

after a hour or so casting around the numerous reefs we managed 8 fish from this mark all over 3lb Adrian managed to tickle out a smaller fish from under the rod tip which was explosive fishing! anyone who has caught Pollack from the boat on light gear will no the panic we went through hooking these fish they out run any fresh water fish iv hooked 6lb Pollack with a reef in its sight will out do 20lb pike on the first runs without even thinking about it and we had nothing more than the usuall pike and perch outfits lol! we headed back for a quick stock up of food and drinks then headed out to one of Adrians previous Fav headlands where he promised fish! he didnt let me down!!! we fished a point in the sound where Adrian reckoned the biggies hang around and within 3 cast i had a fish of 7-8lb chase and nip the grub my heart stopped as in the gin clear water you can see these fish chasing up the reef ledges! almost the next cast Adrian hooks up under the rod tip, this fish steams off the rod bending through the handle and drag screaming off at a stupid pace!! but it pulled the hook! Adrain holds up a owner jig which has just been snapped by a Pollack!! we headed around the point to a gorgeous cove where my dreams came true! i have never fished anything like it!! every cast hooking up with Pollack between 5-6lb, these fish just abused us! my ribs hurt where i was slamming the rod butt under my arm trying to stop these fish peeling 30-40ft of line off the reels...... the drag on my Sakura Alpax was up as hard as i can twist it with me still having to palm the spool to slow them!

Adrian with a Pollack of 6lb6ozthe first 5lber plus from the cove, after 20 odd 5lb plus fish nailed from this spot i kid you not my arm was aching and wrist hurt these fish are shockinly strong! we fished this spot for a good hour when Adrian shouts he's in! this fish was a different league!! the run started soon as it was hooked and could not be stopped! it just went and went by the look on adrians face it was a monster iv never seen fish run like it then PING its off...... Adrian reels in the line to another jig completely bent strate!! guttin. the couple days see's simular fishing on every mark we fished it was mind blowing fishing truelly amazing to witness. we also managed some other species being Ballan Wrasse and Cuckoo Wrasse all on small jigs, guys who follow Henry Gilbey will know that Wrasse are more than catchable on lures and are a great target for the lighter angler

Along with with the slimey Maks the fishing just got better and better, we fished some amazing looking marks which all had fish brimming from them, these fish are sooooo easy on lures due to the fact NO ONE is fishing for them over here! we had a slightly quieter day in the week where we didnt really fish as much but still managed to show some decent Pollack and a massive surprise for me! i saw the boards saying the various fish that could be caught off the Beara and one fish that i thought naaaa not a chance i actually managed to nail one!! i had this huge take right up in this cove i though it was another decent 5lb plus Pollack then the fight just died... almost like a lump of sea weed lol, then up she pops from the deep and me and Adrian looked at each other i couldnt believ i had nailed the John Dory i was after!! what a Gorgeous fish, it nailed a Savagear cannibla shad in lumo orange fished really aggressively hard to the bottom this fish was beautifull and really put a massive smile on my face! can the fishing get any better than this??

we ended the week fairly wet as the rain bolted in for two days strate which made the day a little bit more harder due to the leathal wet rocks which was like walking on ice! we decided to head to one of the islands where we could see some amazing looking coves from accross the bay, we found some amazing spots all extremely deep and gin clear. we had almost instant action from kippers and the odd fish 3-4lb i managed to land yet more Pollack on surface lures which was one of the highlights of the week as its something iv always wanted to do i managed about 8 fish all week to poppers and wake baits the best by far was the sebile Stick shad. we headed to a point where Adrian hooks up instantly with a decent fish of 5lb4oz at this point i was ready for my Double figure fish lol. i put a assist weight from lunker city on the braid and headed to a rough point where i managed several fish all over 5lb all one after another!!

the fishing was just mental!! in two casts i nailed a 7lb4oz and my Irish PB of 8lb7oz!! one after another both on Savagear grubs these fish fight like demons i really was shocked at the pressure these Pollack can put on you! iv had a couple 30lb plus pike and these fish do them over...... truelly gobsmacked by the power and garce of these beasts soooooo much fun on simple lure fishing gear!

7lb 4oz taken on white grub 4inch

8lb 7oz Irish shore PB taken on 10gm owner triangle jig and yellow 4inch grub this sums up ireland for me numerous PB's broke and over 500 pollack between 2 of us! 300 plus being between 4 and 6lb with a dozen massive fish over 6lb! i cannot explain the feeling to witness and catch fish like this in such unspoilt surroundings truelly amazing sport. a MASSIVE thank you to Adrian for letting me come along and experience this salt water luring!! i WILL be back

Lovely Chubbly

2010-07-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

Me and Martin headed out last nite with Chub in mind..... Huge chub! we headed off to a stretch of river known for its massive Chub taken on feeder gear, there is reports of 6-7lb chub coming from here on a weekly basis! but all to bait, we really had a open field to play with here being a fairly un-lure fished river specially for chub. we started off on the more well known stretches with surface lures hoping Mr Pike and Possibly Chub i had on a large swampy and Martin stuck on a tiny Jitterbug. the venue looked awesome with lillies fringing the inside bends and bull rushes lining the banks... it just screamed fish! the bottom sections failed to produce so after a bit of head scratching we decided to hit the faster stretches and had almost instant takes from the greedy Chub!

Martin being the first to land a nice fish of 4lb in nearly the first swim, this chub really tried to do him over in the weed and snags. i fished the next swim above Mart and had another chub bow wave up behind the lure 4-5 times this fishing drives you MAD its soooooo frustrating i managed to hook this tiny chub of around half a pound but it still managed to put a good scrap for itself! in nearly every swim fished chased and hit the lures (both on tiny JitterBugs now) we had some huge chub smash our lures and we both hooked and lost fish over 5lb. Martin managed another two fish of around 3 to 4 pound. along the pools i finally landed a better fish which done me over in the reeds and streamer weed! i thought it was possibly a pike at first but once i yanked it from the streamer weed i could see it was a chub of around 3lb, great sport on our fairly light Chubbing gear!

we ended the river session back down on the first sections where Martin flicks his JitterBug into the wier pool and instantly SMASH the best chub of the night of nearly 5lb is landed, i didnt get a photo due to rain but was the usual fat chunky southwest river chub! all in all awesome chubbing on surface lures in the pitch black of night. we ended the night with 6 chub banked and god knows how many hooked and lost!! heart stopping fun. we headed back to one of our Piking spots where we hooked and lost over 10 pike and i managed to land a fish of 9lb. it was getting late so we headed back. great all round session with a good head of fish, i highly recomend!!

New Toy

2010-06-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

As posted before i do a fair bit of testing new and exciting gear from all over the world through the guys at Topwater and http://www.basslures.co.uk/ and i recently recieved this fab new Reel from the guys at Sakura. Nick sent me out for my up and coming Ireland trip the 2010 Sakura Alpax 4008FD, this reel is pretty much everything a lure angler could want.

Now using a Non Shimano reel is almost a hangable offence, BUT this reel really does do the job well! as you can see its got modern styling following the trends as of late with anodised spools with machined holes throughout. with a one piece forged BIO handle with a really cosy grip. the bearings in the grip are smooth as butter and spin endlessly, it swallowed up a good 100metres of 30lb PowerPro with Backing which is plenty for UK fishing. it comes with 7 cartridge bearings and one roller bearing so its smooth and runs clean and fairly light for a ALL metal reel. the one niggle i have with it is the 5.0:1 line pick up...... im used to fast 6.0 plus Shimano's and it took a bit of getting used to but instantly felt good to use. the drag is smooth and packs plenty of punch, it has micro adjustment so plenty of scope for cranking up and down on the drag, all in all this reel has really impressed and i wouldnt shy off buying another one out of my own pocket as in any new reel time will tell and ill keep you updated once iv abused it on the pollack of southwest ireland next week. retailing at around a £100 i believe you cant go far wrong.... please check it out on www.basslures.co.uk

Piking antics finally come up trumps

2010-06-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Well just a quick Congratulations to my fishing Partner Tezo for having a blinding session on one of our more local spots, first time this has been fished properly in a while using our techniques and wow didnt it pay off!!taken using a large swampy twitched back fairly fast and SMASH

this is a known fish to me and Terry which was last weighed a couple weeks ago at just over 22lb Terry didnt get this one under the scales as it was released strate after the photo. id say its was still a good 20lb still and was a awesome sight to a good days fishing. Terry also managed another fish of just scraping the 20lb mark!! (how jealous was i!!) and wait for it a further four upper doubles all to surface lures! all in the middle of the day, which just shows the difference between two venues where simular venues only produce fish this stamp after dark.... Massive well done Terry and ill be up to catch them all next week ha ha ha

Wicked un-planned session

2010-06-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

Me and martin headed out late yesterday afternoon to a couple venues, with the tripple in mind! Chub, Perch and Pike. we started one a venue which Martin has never properly fished, with Chub and Perch on our minds i was completely single track minded to catch chub off the surface and managed to nail a awesome fish! i wizzed out a swampy onto a raft of streamer weed tucked up behind a weeping willow. i had about 5ft of water under the raft and as iv fished this venue since my school days i know full well where and when these chub will be! behind the raft is a tiny inlet stream coming into the main river, i flicked out the swampy and on the first cast i saw two Chub turn right in under the willow, i got the lure about half way between me and the raft and smash a chub of around 4lb nails the lure! i missed it, and after a few seconds on continual swearing and almost spooking every fish within a mile! i gathered myself together and tried again. anyone who has the lure bug knows how special chub on surface lures is and i simply cannot miss the chance to get them off the top. i cast over the raft into a 12inch channel of clear water before the raft and started to twitch it back and soon as it hit the raft SMASH this time i was on! i could see it was a decent fish as it went crazy under the raft! it headed strate to the willows roots under 8ft of raft and twigs but with some heavy side strain i pulled it away into the mid channel. she was quickly unhooked and returned safely as it was still roasting hot!

The buzz you get when it all comes together really makes it worth while, i saw some worm danglers down river and i bet they had no where near as much fun as us nailing this fish! lure fishing at its best and yet again surface lures fished correctly do the business every time! i then went away and managed to lose 3 other chub of simular size all to surface lures. Meantime Martin was pulling out Perch one after another, nothing huge but all great fun on light gear and on these tiny rivers theres soooo much fun to be had with the little Perch. Martin must of had 20+ perch to half a pound all to sonic spinners the light was starting to fall now and the chip shop was calling us before we tackled up with the Big Guns for our next venue! we tackled up with swampys and approached the venue it looked amazing the water was warm and the bait fish moved where ever you looked! it was shockingly bright with a massive moon beaming down on us, you didnt need a head lamp this wasnt good! as the Pike shy away from the surface lures when the light is beaming down like this, we fished for a good couple of hours with ony a handfull of hits, no fish landed! we hit my fav section where i knew there would be fish looking for baby moore hens etc and soon as i cast out i saw the massive bow wave smash my lure! this was a massive fish the whole venue rocked and the moore hens started making alsorts of noises! i called Martin over ready with the net. head lamps on and ready for action the hooks pulled...... judging by the flank i saw and the tail id say a good 15lb. in the next swim i cast out again and instantly got nailed by this nice fat scraper double

Not as big as i had first hoped, as it proper went mental on the first run and some impressive tail walking before weeding itself up! the moon started to fall now and it slowely got darker and darker! almost every swim now had chases or hits which made for some heart stopping fishing. but nothing prepared us for what was about to happen! i hear martin shout so i flick the headlamp on and leg it down the bank, Martin looks gutted! he then tells me of how he had a massive take under his feet which he hooked the stuck his head lamp on to see another mid 20 had nailed the swampy! this is literally a swim away from where i lost the 2o last week! it then ran 10-15ft of line before coming off! it gets better, he then cast over the top again and yet another hit but did not connect, we put of lights on again to scan the water and there it was !!!!!...... one of the big upper 20's litterally 20ft from the other big pike he just lost, this fish was huge! both myself Adrian and Tezo have all hooked huge pike from here and iv had a couple 30's from other venues this fish was well up there with them a true monster!! after a nervous 10mins tryin to connect with it she slowely swims off into the snags. we then decided to hit the lower sections still buzzing from what we just witnessed Martin was soon to hook up again! this time it was staying hooked! Terry was now with us and we landed the fish and got her weighed. 10lb 8oz yet another double which went like stink!
the pike really turned on to our lures now and the hits were thick and fast! Terry also Landing the best fish of the night at over 16lb, not sure of exact weight but it was 16 something a really nice fat fish! we were all tired now and decided to call it quites and headed back with smiles all round yet another cracking nite using surface lures. we managed the tripple and saw some amazing fish in the process. you cant ask for more than that! Bring on the next trip

Another quiet Night off the Top

2010-06-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

Fished a Local spot again friday with Good friends Adrian and Martin. we set up with big grins accross our faces as the conditions were spot on once again, clear warm water good weed growth and bait fish looking VERY nervous!! could of done with more wind but not the end of the world. kid you not im standing next to Adrian talking about the conditions when we hear Martin shout he's actually had a big hit on his first cast! but to no avail, the pike didnt return for seconds on his Competition Frog (yellow and green) was this a sign of things to come? we walked down to a heavily reeded section where both me and Adrian have seen Big doubles and the odd twenty on previous ventures. i cast my large bullfrog swampy over to a patch of lillies tight to the bank and snags when i could see the reeds all move as something charged from the cover, a massive bow wave came up behind the lure but no take, the fish chased right to my feet where i could see the fish in front of the reed. i crouched down as to not spook the pike which id say was 11-12lb i cast agin to far bank in hopes of this fish nailing the lure when it came past again. but another bow wave from another direction came hurtling towards the swim! i could see another double! Martin confirmed what i was seeing by giigling like a child saying F*$@in hell Danny you have two doubles chasing this lure! i couldnt believe it the second fish being well over 11-12lb id say a 15lb+ you could almost see the look of confusion on the pikes faces after a paniccy 10mins of so trying different angles the pike came head to head and bolted off! mean time Adrian had a couple hits from what sounded a decent fish possibly another double! we decided after half hour or so of fishing the good section to head out of town to the sticks where no one fishes where we could tickle of a few on the way. knowing full well once dark fell we will head back down this way to all my sectret monster holes :-) we walked a good mile and a bit up the venue where all of us had continuall hits from smaller pike all the way up the strates with both me and Adrian landing Jacks to about 5-6lb all great fun off the surface! by this time the light was falling fast and we could no longer resist the temptation of the quality stretches we left behind, so we strolled back and geared up for Big surface action. after a quick drink and a packet of crisp we headed back up to the sections we first fished! it looked a totally different beast now! there is such a atmosphere on this venue when all the factors come together it just seems to get me in the zone where nothing can fail! its truelly 100% the soul of my lure fishing.

soon as we got to my swims Martin eyes up a decent swim, flicks out a moss boss and all of a sudden we hear this massive missed take the noise is heart stopping the water just comes to life! Martin is jumpin around like a idiot and flicks out again! this time he's in...... the drag screaming and rod looped over i run over with net at the ready head lights beaming it looked a double! she was safely unhooked and weighed 9lb 5oz and a cracking start to the night! both me and Adrian wanted some of this action, we headed down the sections with numerous decent fish nailing the surface lures hard and falling off mid fight, sometimes it just happens like that! we hooked 12-15 pike all on for some time but most throwing the hooks! i managed to land a nice fish of 8lb 2oz which really did fight like a demon! Adrian also managed another few fish around the 6lb mark all off the surface it really was a cracking night, with hardly any moon it reallt got dark after 11pm which slowed the fishing a bit, i managed another Pike of 7lb exactly then we decided to head back to the car. knowing full well none of us could of resisted a few flicks here and there on the way back up to the car. me and Martin both managed a few smashes on the way up but nothing landed! by this time i was half past 1 in the morning and Adrian has a hour and a half treck back to dorset. all in all another good nite but could of done with a few more fish but cant complain

Swampys in the Night

2010-06-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

Heres a few pictures from a few sessions of surface fishing last year! this type of fishing is mental and is deffo where my heart is throughout the summer months! not only does it produce consistantly larger Fish but the action is heart stopping! nothing beats seeing a bow wave of a high double surging up behind ya lure and wrestling the pike from the weedy layers! i still remember the first time i introduced Tezo to this style of surface fishing a couple sessions ago and the massive smile accross his face painted a picture only a Lure angler will ever inderstand! i owe allot to my close fishing buddys Adrian and Martin for opening my eyes to such epic fishing dotted accross a few of the venues we all fish!

The picture above is of a fish that weighed nearly 16lb the usuall stamp for this style of fishing, id say as a rule fish from 9lb to around 14-15lb are the stamp of fish we are connecting with on ever session, with a noticable lack of small fish i believe this is due to the clear water enviroment the larger fish hide away untill certain times of day so not to be spotted by the swarms of prey fish. then one the light drops BINGO the bigger fish come out when there is less chance of being spotted, we fished sections where 25-30 jacks a session all around a pound 2lb would easily be done then fish the same section at dark and not see a fish under 10lb! it really is amazing what a difference times make in a session, we see alot of guys who apparently "know all" fish some of our local waters and will swear blind its not worth fishing due to weed and small pike. indeed my close mate Tezo struggled to believe me when i first told him about this style of surface fishing but the proof is in the pudding with numerous fish caught over the magic twenty pound mark and countless high doubles on most sessions! even the prized 30's came to play numerous times which really made ya heart stop dead as Adrian full well knows the feeling of hooking something that CANT be stopped!This is something im keeping a complete detailed diary on this season aswell as my blog so watch this space, hopefully getting Gemma varney onboard as well to get some more amazing photography as well as Henry Gilbey once his work slows a bit. i cannot wait to get out again, soon as this is posted im preppin my tackle ready for assult!

Surface session

2010-06-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

Well its that time of year again........ fishing yesterday with my fishing partner in crime Tezo armed with moss boss's and got ruined by numerous Big pike i think last count was 16 fish hooked and lost!! with one paticular stretch which produced a 18lb pike last week proving its weight in gold! within two swims myself and Terry hooked and lost 3 doulbes losing them at the bank under our feet just before netting!! it was gutting! conditions where as good as it gets, with cloud cover and super warm temps it was spot on apart from the water being like a sheet of glass, not a ripple in sight! anyone who does allot of topwater piking or even bassing will know dead calm conditions make things allot harder! id say most pike were lost due to the calm conditions as they seem to nail them sooooo much harder when there is more ripple. you can see them approaching the lure allot more causous when calm rather than the usuall bow wave and brutal attacks from last seasons antics!
the final nail in the coffin for me was the fact that Terry had a fish he reckoned to be 6-7lb snap at the back of his Swampy after 4-5 cast he had nothing, so he asked me to have a chuck. everyone who knows me will know i wouldnt turn that down ha ha i had 4-5 casts then this really gentle snap at the swampy and i agreed to it being a shy smaller fish due to the flat calm conditions. then Tezo came over seeing the small take, and i cast again but this time i wasnt prepared for what was going to happen! i cast to the car reeds and lillies and twitched the swampy back and all of a sudden in exactly the same spot smash! thinking id hooked the 6lber the rod looped over and went solid!!...... i could feel massive head shakes and the swim irrupted and up comes a Monster of a pike this 6lber turned into a fish well over 20lb!! it was over 3 1/2ft long 6-7inches accross just sat right on the surface shaking its head as pike always do, it turned and charged off with me attached, i had my 70g tournament rod and Shimano E7 cranked up for abuse and i could not stop it!.... after having to run 10-15 ft down the bank after this monster it threw the hooks in my face! i was gutted! could of cried, i was shaking with the rush of seeing this when i least expected it, and looked at terry who was jumping up and down like a child shouting about what just happened!! the first 2010 surface caught 20 escapes when i didnt even plan to hook a beast like that! all in all a horrid end to a amazing night, but as Tezo said we know where these fish are and WILL be back next week :-) lets hope things come to plan!! im out with the dorset distroyers friday chasing bigguns again with full camera gear in hope of a special nite on the water, lets hope for the wind! full report to come on sat

Weekend Perch Mega session!

2010-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well this weekend saw me up at the crack of dawn chasing dreams!! after hearing of a decent perch coming out of a local canal recently which topped the scales at a whopping 4lb 4oz!!! iv had this horrid niggle in the back of my head telling me "Go on Danny, you know you can tickle Perch out! Goooo Onnn do it!" so i gave in and headed to some likely looking get aways where i knew Decent Perch hung around! armed with my usuall Perch lures 4" grubs 5" shads and a few MegaBass bits and bobs mostly Xlayers and Spindle Worms, and a few Sebile lures but in paticular the Brand spanking new Spintail shad which was kindly given to me by Nick at TopWater. now all i need is the right weather for the Job! well is pissed it down! i was soaked to the bone but with the heavy cloud cover and low mist it screamed Perch! well it didnt let me down after reading the water a bit i decided to hit a nice opening from a island and a bay lined with lillies and weeping willows, it just felt right! after 10mins or so with a 5" Cannibal shad from Savage i got nailed! just off the island in about 5ft of water typical heart stopping Perch head shakes i knew instantly that i hadnt nailed a small Jack!

sorry about the picture, i was on my own and it was humping it down with rain! i managed 5 fish in total, but the best bit was they were all 2lb+.... cracking day out and caught them all on either Cannibal shads or the Spintail shad! they really do hold a special place in my heart! its one of those fish you see in the streams and canals about a inch long and its a maggot killer but when the get over the 2lb mark they really are the Muts nuts! i shall give it a few days and head back with my brother to get some decent pictures. days like this really make the cold and rain worth while!

Gotta be in it to win it!!!

2010-05-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Im recently back from a week off Fishing for Catfish in depest darkest Dorset! we had a whole lake booked for me and my Mate Steve Blackmore who is a Catfish nut and one of the UK's most forward thing carp anglers, he prides himself in wild venues! no puddle pigs for steve! we ventured of to a tiny venue in dorset which is stacked with Catfish, with 5 cats in the lake to just over 40lb!!! and numerous high twentys. . . . its was gorgeous here and was idyllic venues iv visited in years, just what the docter ordered! now iv never ever bivvied up on a venue before and certainly never sat behind bite alarms but i can honestly say i really enjoyed myself! it was a proper adventure and i loved it! apart from some rather frosty mornings which killed the catfishing dead the carp certainly made a good diversion from the slow catfishing! I had 12 Carp all in the mid teens to late teens the biggest being a pair caught almost one after each other at 16lb and 18lb 4oz. the carp came thick and thin to stalking tactics which brings me back to my school days where id sneak up to the lillie pad bays on my local canal and plop a lump of bread on the nose of sun bathing carp! Great fun!

the week went soooo fast and with 4-5 dropped runs on the live bait rods we started to cross our fingers for the cats to come out and play! as you can see in the photo above i am a bit of a forward angler and never let a good chance slip by i pinned a live bait off under the tree on the right of the photo, the laughter from anglers around who came to see some crazy 26 year old devon lad neck deep in a freezing cold lake was great! guys just couldnt believe what i was prepared to do! but as i always say...... you gotta be in it to win it!! :-) well the week finally passed and not a single cat was landed but between the two of us we landed god knows how many Carp and we had some steaming runs from the live baits but to no avail! i really enjoyed the week doing a completely different style of fishing and i cannot say how much fun it was getting that sheer paniced feeling when the alarms screamed on the live bait rods knowing there could be a 5ft long monster which is very angry on the other end! we had sorted some dates for hitting some other venues later this year around the south of england to finally nail the cat! i cannot wait!!

A few hours out before the BIG week!

2010-05-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

Fished a local venue on friday with Martin Harding, we headed to a section that just doesnt get bothered by anglers as its miles from anywhere! gin clear water stuffed to the brim of weed and lillies and billions of Rudd and Roach! Martin stuck to his usuall Ultra light gear i was using a 40gm wand. i pretty much decided to put some water time on some of my Sebile products which Nick had sent over, mainly trying to abuse the Magic swimmers hard and soft baits. i started off with the 75mm Sebile Magic swimmer in a slow sink model in electric blue and silver. it looked amazing in the water the added feather on the tail really makes these already unreal swimbaits look even better! this lure got the attention strate away from jacks in most swims having follows and a few hits, first impressions were spot on! we came to a old cattle bridge where i hear Martin shout, i walk over to see a fish 12-15lb sat there watching his Rapala Husky jerk suspending mid water. Martin said the pike just blasted out after the lure from the reeds to the left of the bridge. but it was obvious it had seen Martin by the way it just froze! after a few chucks Martin gave up so i clipped on the Sebile Magic swimmer softbait in BlueGill colour and wacked it out to the bridge. it got half way across and smash a small jack 2lb or so grabbed the lure right in front of the Double figure pike still sitting there! i do admit to letting the jack wallow about for a bit in hopes the Biggie came and nailed it :-) once i get the jack in i realised that the little sod had ripped my brand new BlueGill swimmer in half!!!! one cast, one fish!! i was gutted!

iv been using these softbaits for a couple months now and they have all done 10plus fish before having to retire them! this BlueGill was my favorate colour as well :-( well we headed further up the canal where it was looking even more fishy! i had yet another Jack about 4lb on the Sebile magic swimmer softbait in Brown trout. put the fish back and cast out and had another fish over 15 follow the lure it really was a mental afternoon you can fish these stretches sometimes and not see a fish over 2lb and we'v seen to good doubles in a hundred yards! Martin whipped out a few small perch all nailing his 5cm Rapala husky jerk, no big ones all under a pound but good fun all the same! the colour of these perch was amazing deep greens and reds just what they should always look like!
i just love perch fishing, growing up on the Grand western canal iv caught perch since i was 3years old! if only they grew 10-15lb!!! we carried on fishing for a couple hours with simular results perch and jacks nothing over 5lb but great fun and just really good to get out! once again i was overly pleased with the Sebile gear, as always all top lures fitted with owner hooks and fool proof actions!! a amazing brand from across the seas and a real pleasure to use and abuse!! all Sebile gear is avialable from Nick at www.basslures.co.uk check it out!!! well this week iv got a week off in search of the mighty Wels Catfish!!!! we have a whole lake booked just for us! ill be trying my hardest to land my first Lure caught Wels Cat and i literally cannot wait!!

Poppers

2010-05-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in a few earlier posts the surfice fishing is starting to kick off down here in Devon, with weed and lilly beds sprouting up everywhere the fishing is really heating up! theres sooooooo many surface lures out on the market at the mo its hard to choose between the thousands of "catch all" lures out there! iv been throwing one of these puppies around over the bank hols and they dont dissapoint!! iv had the smaller version of the Sebile Splasher for a fair few months now, the tiny Splasher is ideal for smaller fresh water fish and will murder the local chub here soon as the rivers open up again! but this 12cm version is the full monty! armed to the teeth with Owner hooks, and is fully wired for tropical sea's abuse!!

Check out the size of the cupped mouth of this Popper!! once again prime example of Patrick Sebiles forward thinking! this lure is built to last! iv destroyed allot of lures over the years and theres nothing better than seeing tough lures hammered bike pike! these baits are available in 4 sizes from 7cm's to 18cm and all available from Nick at www.basslures.co.uk you really do need to get ya self a few for this summer!! your going to want some serious gear to blast these lures out and give them the proper action! they move like no other poppers, due to the keel weight these puppies will pop and walk the dog all the way in! making it a two in one surface lure built for monsters! as i said another top lure from Sebile

Mini Monsters

2010-05-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Heres a quick picture of a Tiny Pollack from the other day! check out how this small fish has nailed a 4inch slug-go!!! they may only be tiny fish but they are soooo agressive, we had god knows how many tiddlers this size completely nail the lures i love the way this pollack has folded the Slug-go in two! i certainly wouldnt wanna be a sandeel here in south devon :-) i was fishing these 4-5inch slug-go's on Lunker Citys Lunka grip jigs perfect for fishing these amazing lures deeper and quickly! the Pollack certainly loved them!

When its on its REALLY on!

2010-05-02T03:29:00.000-07:00

Well Me Adrian and Martin headed out to some middle of no where rock mark in south devon yesterday afternoon! iv been aware of this venue for a fair few years but never got around to fishing it! it was stunning the water was so clear it was like another country! the water was a gorgeous blue and you could clearly see the sand and reefs hugging the shoreline. with Bass and Pollack in mind we armed our tackle boxes with 3-5inch soft baits and small nordic spoons. with Kaolin grubs and the nordic spoons working the best! once we scrambled down the very wild headland me and Martin found a nice little rock ledge to start on and i kid you not Martin hooks up on the very first cast! things certainly seemed different from previous trips where the cold seas have slowed the sport a bit! Martin lands the first fish of the day a small Pollack aout a pound and a half. Now Martin knows his stuff when it comes to salt water lure fishing far more than i do and fluke or no fluke he then nailed 2 more Pollack in a row!! three casts three Pollack.....

Me and Adrian certainly wanted some of this action! i had a few slams but couldnt connect! Adrian moved to the left of us where the tide was ripping across the rocks a ideal holding spots for Preds, i fished a 8gm Gama Jig with a 3 1/2 inch MegaBass Hazedong in pearl white and smash i got nailed by a fish about a pound again! but it dropped off as i lifted it from the water!! Martin was still nailing Pollack almost one after another! so Adrian clambered over to us to join in the fun! Both Adrian and Martin armed with 3inch Kaolin grubs in the limited Dale Winton coulour but me and Adrian still struggled! Martin shouts "iv got a decent fish" the BassPro rod was bent double! the Pollack was nearly 3lb id say when all of a sudden a massive seal bolts up behind the fish and grabs it!! steaming 60-70ft of braid off Martins reel then breaking him off! Gutting stuff but this happens all the time in deepest darkest devon :-)
After a while the soft plastics stopped working and we stuck on the Nordic spoons with instant action! i found a little gully where i boosted my fish count from 4 Pollack to about a pound and a half to 19 fish with a couple over 2lb! great sport on our light 6ft6 casting rods! Pollack certainly do fight!! shame soooo many anglers fish with pool que beach rods for these fish because they really do scrap! Role on Ireland in july!! i also caught the biggest Launce iv ever seen!! this sand eel was a good foot long, in thought it was a Garfish at first untill i got it in! mental stuff..... i lost count after 36 Pollack, with just as many lost! this really was dream light spinning! darkness fell and we thought the way things had gone throughout the day that darkness would be mental as Pollack really switch on in Darkness! but the tide died on us and we only had a handfull after dark with Adrian getting a Pollack well over 2lb. Martings Headlight then died on us also so we decided to call it quits awesome fun and cannot wait to do it again!!

Surface Action

2010-04-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

within the Next month or so the Surface lure action here in Devon should really start hotting up! iv fished various surface lures since i was at school but two stick out by miles in my books..... the Renoski real Frog and the SwampFox! these lure literally murder the weedy shallow venues here in devon and between me and some of my fishing buddys we have managed to pull some absolute monsters from our water on bot these Surface lures! the SwampFoxs being my personal fav this lure as simple as it is will produce the goods everytime! last season i have large Swampys literally ripped in half while out fishing with Adrian and Martin last season! shocking stuff! heres a Photo taken of me last summer it really catches what i love about surface fishing throughout the summer! keep ya eyes peeled for some serious action this season i seriously cannot wait!!!!!

Couple hours out

2010-04-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Fished sunday with my fishing Buddy Tezo a couple miles of our local canal which is really coming to life at the mo as the water starts to warm up! fish already showing interest in surface lure which is fab in my eyes as this year i have some serious scores to settle!! we started off not far from my house slowely working our way out of town enjoying the mild overcast sunday afternoon! i decided to abuse some of the gear from http://www.basslures.co.uk/ which Nick sent over. i was armed with mostly Slug-gos and Fin-S fish shads as i just know they will do some serious damage this season, iv messed about with rigging them in different ways just to see what i can come up with! the one lure i wanted to abuse the most was the Sebile Magic swimmer softbait! this lure truely is wonderful in my eyes! i wrote about it in previous posts.

I left the house with my super smooth Shimano Conquest GT-ti 51 coupled with a tournament rod from Savage. this kit is spot on for general lure work in the UK and has help me land a fair few big fish in the last 12months! the Sebile Magic swimmer softbait was ideal for the just off clear water conditions with cloud cover it was superb! the action has to be seen to be belived, it would take a bit of getting used to if you havent fished texus styled lures with worm hooks before. the temptation to strike instantly is unreal and it just gets my juices flowing everytime i have to contain myself when i nice fish hits the lure! the key is to fish these lures in water where you can see what is happening! its amazing watching how a pike will nail a lure so hard that it will nearly rip the rod out your hands but then swim off with this softbait gently across its jaws..... you need to feel the strike and let the pike have the lure while you gently keep in contact enough to feel when the pike has taken the lure back. then wind down and STRIKE!!! amazing fishing which does take a while to figure out but once you have got the hang of it you will have no problems getting fish to the bank!

Heres Tezo with the biggest fish of the afternoon Just over 9lb and gave a good little scrap, it took the lure in 2-3inches of water it certainly was explosive action! the pike are coming thick and thin now and 2-3 doubles a session are now a regular lets just hope the surface action is anything like last season! ill be keeping a detailed account on the 2010 surface season on here so lets hope those twentys show the heads again!!

Simple's

2010-04-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

Over the years iv used countless amounts of expensive flash new-tech lures and caught on all of them but recently iv been finding myself going back to basics.... when out Bassing last week i found myself once again getting overly excited at the prospects of Garfish!! i love catching Gar specially on light lure Gear. its not a species allot of people have caught so next time your near the coast give them a try. fish a spinner fairly fast just under the surface, wear ya polarised glasses because your see them before you catch one!

i decided to wack on a very simple yet advanced lure, the storm Flutter Stick

This is a Mini Jerk and can be fished very slowly walking the dog between 0-6ft with short twitches of the rod it just comes to life, i fished this for Gar as it was very lifelike in 12inches of water off the headland at Meadfoot once again didnt land a sodding Gar but had lots of chases! still need a bit more sun on the water then they will be out in force, they are one of my top targets for 2010. top tip for gar if your serious about it is buy a loaf of bread and a sardine or mak mash the bread in salt water and mash the fish into the sloppy bread flick this into the tide off the rocks and it will bring in the gar from all across the headland its a deadly trick and will work on just about any fish if you struggling!!

Back to work, but still Fishing

2010-04-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

Had a really nice week off last week and was lucky enough to have some pretty Lush weather..... the week wasnt as productive as previous years but was lovely to just chill and get away from the normal everyday work hassle. between me and Tezo we fished numerous venues with no real monsters gracing us with there presence but still fishing is fishing! i ended the week with some spare of the moment bassing! my Brother and his sea fishing crew have been getting a fair few nice bass to bait on the south coast of devon so i made the plans to visit some of my summer secret marks in hope of some bass action!

The morning started off well and with after looking at Henry Gilbey's recent exploits i was ready for action, how anyone can sit there and thrown and say 'fishing is boring!' when you can get up in the morning and enjoy days and views like this!! im Lucky enough to live right in amoungst some of the prettiest parts of the country and absolute jewls for fishing in both fresh and saltwater.....

within the first hour or so i had two tiny schoolys on 5inch Slug-go's fished un-weighted just twitched through the rough ground! great fun, as low tide hit the weed started to rise and for me this is perfect bassing conditions bit of floating weed and broken rocks scattering the water line! at this actuall spot from the photo i could see fish rolling at the weed edge and at first glance thought it was some ok sized mullet but as i clambered along the rocks like some mountain goat i could see it was actually 2-3 nice sized bass!! my heart stopped and a whipped out my ace card the Lunker City Fin-s in 5inch also this is a deadly lure! i got a few follows which was amazing to see in the super clear water and a couple times i managed to get the bass to mouth the lures but they soon lost interest and dropped off into the depths. i then added a belly weight the the Texposer hook to get the lure down more but no such luck!

in the picture above you can see the belly weight sitting inside the lure, this is the ideal way to fish Slug-go's or Fin-S lures if you need to get them deeper! i fished 4-5 inch lures this day as its a nice size lure to flick around and matches the hatch of sooooooo many baitfish around at the mo! these lures have also worked very well for pike in fresh water, iv got Lunker City Fin-S's ranging from 4inch to the massive 9inchers which ill be abusing for wels Cats this summer! all the Lunker City Range is easily got hold of through www.basslures.co.uk Nick Roberts and his crew will sort you out with the right stuff. Nick gave me a massive load of Lunker City gear to test this Summer so ill post up on how it all goes as and when i get to use it!

April Week Off

2010-04-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

Well its midway through my April week off and done allot of lure fishing on various venues with all one thing in comman!! crap fishing!! this is the slowest year we'v had in a long time throughout this week! on previous years we'v pulled some right monsters out including two 30+ pike

but so far all we have had is Jacks..... Tezo managed to put a 9lber on the bank yesterday and apart from that yet another day of Jacks, on monday i turned a big double which spooked from seeing me i believe, i was gutted as it was id say around 15-16lb came strate to the bank and turned at my feet! hopefully things will get a bit better as the week roles out

Both me and Terry have been abusing our new rods from Savage-gear, we have been using the new Butch XLNT which have proved to be pretty much spot on.... loaded with Fugi gold label reel seats and Sic guides its as good as it gets for the price in my eyes

We have had them loaded with Shimano Baitcasters, as you can see the Shimano E7 and Core mg. both filled to the brim with power pro. the lures used about are two very rewarding lures which have done me proud over the last couple seasons. the Savage-gear 4play 25cm and the 21cm Butch. both these lure getting toothed up throughtout the week just a shame it hasnt been one of the local Monsters..... there has been a couple big pike caught this week by a local chap one weighing just over 26lb and one just a smidgen over the magic 30!! both fish caught on deadbaits though, well done to Pete

We couldnt have a Week off without finding myself drawn to a Pub at some point!! and its almost tradition on our weeks off to have a sly one or two while the fish are not biting so hard on our Lures! heres a quick snap of tezo and his beloved Holiday Pint at the Turf, it was manic down there being a easter bank hols etc.

Something Different

2010-03-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

Well this isnt strictly Lure fishing Lure fishing..... but i had to put it on here!! i joined my Dad and Brother in a bit of shore fishing on the north sommerset coast for a spot of bottom fishing. for years and years my Dad has tried his socks off to catch a Cod from the shore with not a sniff!! we headed up to some reefs i know of and finally after a good session of over 30 Doggys a Ling and Dad landed his first Cod.....

we ended the night with four cod banked none of any size i had one just under a pound but good to get out and do something different. role on the Wrasse fishing this year! i have tons of new lures that will show the pollack and bass a thing or two this season!! anyway welldone Dad

Next Generation Softbaits....

2010-03-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple months iv been doing some field testing for Nick Roberts at http://www.basslures.co.uk/ and there has been one lure that has really caught my eye! as soon as i saw the Sebile Magic Swimmer Softbait i was in love..... this innovative soft lure is the very next Generation in lures and is proof of thinking out of the box!

I know in the crazy lure world there is soooo much to get confused about but take this from me, this lure is a real trend shaker!! its based on the swimbait style of lures in paticular the name sake Sebile Magig swimmer, which is a hard plastic swimbait made for serious abuse! iv used soft plastics for years to great effect but this lure really Ups the game! they come three in a pack in two sizes 5 and 6inch they come with one heavy duty worm offset hook and 6 ballast weights (the compound rings you can see on the shank in the photo above! these can be added or removed to suite your style of fishing. leaving the weights in the middle as shown in my picture this allows a nice easy sink rate, falling horizontally through the water. if you push the weights forward to the kink in the offset hook it creates a tighter wiggle and will fall nose first, ideal for a feeding bait fish presentation! push the weights back into the lure to the bend in the hook and you create a very irractic style great for when fish are wanting panic baits... check out Patrick Sebiles Youtube Videos on this product http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKKm4HMHLog

This view really shows the good sections which make this lure soooo different! this is going to be a firm favorate for me this season! ill keep everyone posted on these fantastic lures on this blog, deffo one to watch!! you can get these from Nick at www.BassLures.co.uk in a good range of colours, to suit fresh and saltwater needs.

Busy few weeks

2010-03-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

Well iv had a bit of a mental few weeks at work but its all worth the wait as its my Annual April week off to hunt some monster pike........ Previous years have always served me well and as some of you who followed my other blog or brouse the Lure Anglers Society forums this week off has produced two fish over 30lb to myself and numerous 20's! my Hols start friday the 2nd April and im very much looking forward to time on the banks with my fishing Buddy Tezo.

The WOW factor.....

2010-03-01T09:04:00.000-08:00

Now being a crazy lure angler i have my fair share of lures stashed away!! some are manky chewed up softbaits, some are fancie sparkly Rapala's etc but i own a few lures that are just beautifull to look at and it almost seems a shame to let pike ruin them........

every now and then you see a lure that just blows you mind!! Nick Roberts from Top Water Lures sent me one of the smaller Lucky Craft Real Bait Premium's in "Amago Female" colour!!!!......

This Photo really doesnt do this Lure any Justice.... it is by far the most Stunning Hand made lure iv seen! its different to the likes of USA's Musky snax lures, dont get me wrong they are fine BUT this Lucky Craft Lure from Japan is mind blowing...... every single detail is shockinly spot on, the eyes look real its even got muolded teeth! the paint job is stunning and it really is a work of art!! the box it comes in says it all! this is as good as it gets in my eyes, shame i cant read any of it as its all in Japanese ha ha. Nick if your reading this please please feel free to send me more ha and if you know of anything that beats the quality of this i truelly wanna get my hands on it!

it weighs 36gm and is the usual swimbait style lure with a amazing action that is amazing, this model is a floater and with a few cranks and jerk of the rod tip its down a few feet and brimming with life! Lucky Craft also make Real Californias which are the bigger brother to this lure, very simular to the Spro BBZ's but 100 times better qaulity concerning paints and style. even coming in a velour presentation case! both lures can be purchased from www.basslures.co.uk have a brouse see what you think

Perch Lures

2010-03-01T05:53:00.000-08:00

Above is the MegaBass Zonk77 what i mentioned in the last Perch trip post. this is one of the ever growing "new school" lures from the East (japan) MegaBass are at the top of the food chain concerning top quailty lure fishing kit! all of which is very popular with the bass anglers in the USA and growing here in the UK. This lure is spot on for Uk lure fishing for chub/perch/pike as its a ideal bait size and has some awesome features which make it a cut above most of the simular style stickbaits.

note the hinged diving vane, which creates a cracking aggressive swimming action, no dout this will produce me some cracking fish this season...... it also has moulded cut outs on the back to give it even more disturbance and vibration, something iv rarely seen on lures apart from the "old school" Ryobi mugger from yester year, made famous by John Wilson

Above is the MegaBass Xslayer, which i used over the weekend rigged on a 6gm owner jig. It has a wicked action when fished in and around cover!! you can really walk this lure to where the fish and holding! i noticed the way it sits on the bottom with its tail pointing strate up letting you bottom bounce without snagging every twig or weed in sight! notice the moulded ribs which create extra vibration and also a rattle chamber just above my thumb in the piccy! this lure has already proven its weight in gold with the bass Lads here in the Uk and Ireland and soon as the weather warms up ill use allot more of this type of lure. it can be rigged on a jig or fished on Texposers or dropshot so who knows what it will produce this year!!

both the above lures are from Nick at Top water lures and can be purchased from http://www.basslures.co.uk/

Here is one of the all time classics..... and with out fail a TOP pred lure!! iv used Rapala for 20 odd years!! and Shad Raps have always caught me some amazing fish, from the legendary Super Shad rap through to these 5cm shad raps. These 5cm models are the bomb for perch and chub and one simular to this is what i used on a recent canal trip, it was in a BlueGill colour and the perch seemed to love it! its got the classic Rapala swimming action and dives to 4ft perfect for canals. this model is factory standard but as you can see in the piccys from the last session we Mod our lures Ady and Mart both use Storm lead spots to make these lure neutural in the water so they can suspend not just pop up to the surface!! in one of my previous photos you will see Marts Rapala Risto Rap with its mods in place, they really do kake such a differnce to the amount of fish on the bank!!

attention to detail is where its at....... these things make a BIG difference

Tackle Talk

2010-03-01T04:59:00.000-08:00

Recently me and my fishing Buddys have mostly been Targeting big Perch from various venues from ponds, rivers and canals around the country and over the last couple months had some amazing results including a coupke PB's being caught!!

I thought id take a bit of time to go through some tackle that has worked for us. ill talk about some lures and also the set up i prefer to use!

Ill start with my Rod and Reel of choice, those of you who may of fished with me or have seen my reports for the LAS will know i like to use the VERY best gear i can get my mits on!! im a firm believer in using the best, there is sooooo much lure fishing gear out there at the mo! some amazing stuff but also some utter rubbish!! I religously use Shimano Reels!

My favorate for Ultra-light lures and smaller lures is the reel above. the Shimano Conquest 51GT-Ti this is the smallest Baitcaster Shimano make, and has to be seen to be believed!! only holding 65yards of 28lb braid and as you can see my 5cm Rapala shad rap is actually longer than the reel!! i have a handfull of rods which this reel cant even be screwed onto due to the reel seat being so small you cannot do the rod up to grab the reel!!

It will literally cast just a trace and i have to have 4 of the SVS breaks on to slow the spool down because its spool is so light and is to fast for my general lures. it suffers from only having a tiny handle it feels wierd when you first use the reels, almost toy-ish but due to the retrieve speed it ballences out well and after a session it does exactly what i like in a reel!! it has 10 ARB bearings and is smoother than anything iv used before. with 8lb of drag it will cope with anything you will hook in british waters! Im a Baitcaster guy but Martin and Ady both use fixed spools which is more comman for UK ultra-light and generally the way to go if you want to do this exciting style of fishing. there is plenty of quality fixed spools on the market so its a personal preffernce as to what you use. just remember some of the top end imported shimano's are mega money!! £350+ but you do get sheers quality which is hard to beat!!

Terminal tackle wise id use 20-30lb braid due to the venues i fish sometimes being fairly rough and snaggy!! matched with again 20-30lb wire trace..... you can by all means go allot lighter as i know allot of guys are fishing Ultra-light with 10lb braid and 15lb traces etc. but remember lures arent cheap nowadays and a snag is a bad way to get rid of your best lures!! plus no one wants to snap off while playing you PB pike or Perch do you......

Road Trip...

2010-03-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

Well after a mental week at work opening a new section in Exeter Screwfix fishing kind of took a back bench.....

but finally managed to head out on friday!

i went out for a Curry thurs night with my Brother when the phone went off, Martin Harding has txt me asking if i was upto much over weekend after chatting we decided to push the boat out and make the long drive up the M5 and M4 to a venue where Both Ady and Martin had done extremely well for Perch!! i have heard both of them talk about this canal allot over the last 18months and was looking forward to adding yet another venue under my belt! the thoughts of a UK canal where the pike isnt the top pred makes my juices flow!! Perch are on my hitlist untill next month where ill be back onto monster pike (hopefully)

We managed to find some amazing looking water it all looked too good to be true!! it certainly looked cracking

there was a shockinly strong wind, which made casting light lures a bit more tricky!! we saw plenty of small perch to half a pound mailing our lures!! i had a box full of lures given to me by Nick at Top Water lures which im field testing for him i was using A lure from MegaBass called a Zonk77 ideal for smaller pike and BIG perch and the seemed to like it with 4-5 small perch nailing it instantly!!

Me and Marting were armed to the teeth with the usuall dinky Rapalas and jigs etc we knew we would produce well!!

it started off fairly slow with lots of tiddlers and one 2lb Jack pike to me when we decided enough was enough!! that dreaded "one last cast" ended up being 12-15 casts and Mart shouts "im in!!" i turn to see him playing a nice perch about one and three quarter pounds but it had a few friends following him!! i could see a few well over 2lb!! i cast out the MegaBass Zonk77 and it was smashed instantly by a fat 2lber...... both of us had massive smiles mow as it was all falling into place!!

While Martin was wrestling this nice fat perch a decided to dip into my field test box and there was a nice Megabass Xslayer soft plastic looking at me in purl white, ideal for Perch!! these lures are spot on for UK fishing and i know my Buddy Henry Gilbey has used Xslayers with great success!! check his website for in depth write ups on MegaBass Xslayers http://www.henry-gilbey.com/ i rigged my Xslayer on a 6gm owner jig head with triangular offset which just hooks anything within a hundred yards ha ha ha it ballanced out really well! perfect action BUT could only get tiddlers to want to know it!! watch this space on Xslayers i know a venue that will have 3lb Perch jumping on the bank for them!!

we ended the Day with 10 Perch over a pound and a half, and 5 of them 2lb and over. with tons of tiddler perch chucked in!! i also landed two pike, sodding things cant get away from them!! ha

Adrians Perch and my Chubbly

2010-02-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

Perch Stronghold

2010-02-10T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well this weekend me and Adrian Jacobs managed a long awaited trip out due to poor weather!!
Pretty much every venue we had in mind was either flooded of coloured up from rain in the week, so we decided to look for venues we knew would produce, i sujested we head to a Perch spot mention in a previous post! i had taken Adrian here before but no big Perch seemed to want to show on the last trip and Adrian asked me to put him on decent fish!! (kiss of death) so knowing the distance he had travelled to fish together i had to come up trumps!!
we got to the venue, conditions pretty much amazing just off clear water cloud cover settled winds ideal! we got to the venue with only a bunch of lads tucked up in the corner we had the whole place to play, i stuck on the trusty shad and Ady stuck a sonic on after a while casting to our hearts content with not much to show we headed around the bank to the far side of the venue, this is where i had a couple last session (Jules telling me there was a few Jacks in there!) i casted a shad out and all hell broke loose!! a massive splash and lunge from under my feet a decent enough pike grabs the lure ripping through the venue, there was a few people on there that day! the puddle pig danglers didnt look too pleased with me connected to a double figure pike tail walking accross there lovely swims ha ha ha! well this jack turned out to be 15lb 5oz not bad for a perch session!
anyway back to this weekends action we headed to the same spot and continued casting out our lures when Adrian shouts im in! his rod was making alsorts of shapes completely looped over almost knotting! this was no perch!! thinking he blagged that same Pike i had before but this just didnt seem to fight, it just cruised up and down the margin he couldnt get it off the bottom this fish was huge! after 5mins of panic and confusion the hook pulls....... we can only imagine it was a big fat puddle pig!
so i moved off around the corner and once again Ady shouts im in! this looked promising, i could see it was a perch by the time i got there he had landed her. 2lb 14oz of cracking perch!! Adrian was now a happy bunny!
we fished the other pond for a bit with nothing showing it had started off well but slowely got worse and worse! we decided on a change of venues but on more chuck in the big Perch spot! exactly the same swim and Adrian shouts again!!! this time we both could see a impressive perch had grabbed his twintail jig! this fish was gorgeous!! plus BIG 3lb 3oz spot on, and Adrians PB perch!! what a venue...... both me and Adrian having PB's from here!!
we headed up for a quick chuck in the canal not far away, where there are some locks full of massive perch! i was upset by the distinct action on my own rod and went strate to the best spot!! casting out a Savage-gear grub into the lock. all of a sudden i get smashed by a huge perch its going mental really pulling my string! i peered over the edge to see my prized perch was actually a rogue Chub!! i had no idea chub haunted this canal....... i was gutted it wasnt my PB perch but happy to land a decent surprise chub!!
see photos above of our day out

This Weekend

2010-02-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

Right this is now going to be all current 2010 trips.....
We have all have shockingly bad weather since christmas and new year!! i for one had neary 7weeks of solid ice on my canals and even ice on the rivers.... so much for warm sunny Devon ha ha ha
so the last couple weeks have generally been the start of 2010 fishing for me and my fishing mates.......
this season is hopefully going to be full to the brim of exciting fishing from sea to the fresh water!
very much looking forward to feild testing some gear from the states for Nick Roberts www.topwaterlures.co.uk
as said also going over to Ireland this summer to crack the Pollack on lures cannot wait to spend the week over there with Adrian Jacobs.

2010-02-10T08:26:00.000-08:00

Perch

2010-02-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

My goal for 09 was beat my Lure caught Perch PB!!
Perch arent a species iv done much fishing for over the years... and after years of catching thousands of perch using lures some perch even nailing my big 8-9inch Pike lures!! eyes bigger than there bellies!
i finally got myself around to sorting my ass out and actually targetting Perch, with Ok-ish results on local waters when at the start of 2009 Julian Chidgey from Korum gets in contact saying do i fancie hooking up and fishing some local venues as he now lives locally and we are both avid Pred anglers.
we met a couple times and had a chuck with lures, first trip being one of the night sessions which also opened his eyes a bit! we then managed a trip out to some local drains with pike in mind and both of us landing jacks to a couple of pound, i have one hit and cranked it strate in thinking it was another tiddler jack pike! it turned out to be a Perch just over a pound taking a 6inch Savage-gear cannibal shad! thinking it was a fluke jules took a quick photo and we carried on, Jules mentioning that this venue had recently produced allot of decent perch to local guys which got my mouth watering, this was just the push i needed to crack the perch for 09!
we moved spots and instantly hooked pike the sport was good considering the hot pure blue skys! then Jules borrows one on my shads as the pike seemed to like these lures (before he actually slings the lure up a tree!! ha ha ) and he gets a hit instantly! cranking it in as if he had a jack on again! but NO its a good perch weighing over 2lb i believe! this really got me thinking and Jules put me in the right direction for perch venues he knew about, that was it i had to catch my PB perch!!

within the next few weeks i headed out still with perch on my mind when i fished one of the local canals where i had seen perch to over 3lb before, i stuck on the cannibal shad and slings it under this bridge where i see this shape come up behind my lure!! it had to be a pike that big!!...... but no, it was a perch and right in front of my eyes i watched this perch well over 4lb nail my shad comlpetely swallowing the 5inch shad! i crapped my pants striking and it was on.... i comlpetely paniced in the gin clear water i could see everything! this perch charged off i was in!!! BUT i had the drag set for full on "Pike punish" mode on my baitcaster, the perch pulled off the hook and skattered taking his 4-5 mates with him!! i could of cried.....
the very next day i headed out to the venue where Jules told me to try with revenge on my mind!! this day just happened to be one of those red letter days where everything just fell into place, the weather was spot on the day wizzed past to that couple hours before dark i sat on the bank of this Perch Stronghold excited and nervous as the things i had been told pointed to this being a cracking first ever sessiuon on a venue!!
in two and a half hours i bagged up a impressive nearly 20 perch, 10 0f them over one and half pound! 6 of those 10 being over the 2lb mark!! i was gob smacked, it takes allot to make me speachless but WOW what a session!! the biggest perch weighing 2lb 15oz and my lure PB! Massive Thanks to Jules for putting me on the Fish......
photos to follow

Everyone knows Fish Sleep at Night!!

2010-02-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

The lure of The Night

This season really opened my eyes up to the Lure fishing world! Big thanks to Adrian Jacobs and Martin Harding for completely turning my Lure fishing world upside down!!

on various trips early 2009 Martin had mentioned how ideal one of my local areas was spot on for Night lure fishing! and how right he was........

Both Martin and Adrian are from Dorset and often make the hour and a halfr trip down here to so we can all fish together and WOW what results 09 showed! Adrian himself has a impressive record of never catching a chub under 4lb at Night!! and both of them doing very well for Chub, Pike and especially Bass!

I have fished locally with surface lures for the last 12-15years throughout the warmer months with amazing results lots of fish to doubles and the odd 20 showing its head through the lillies! so we decided to try night Lure fishing on a few local venues rivers and still waters with instant action it was crazy iv never seen such aggression towards lures from both Pike and Chub! Chub wise my results didnt mirrow Adrians with plenty of chub to the magic 4lb mark but no monsters!! also a tiddler about 4-5oz !! But i seem to be able to contact pike everywhere i go! and on certain venues it was un-believable!! this was by far the most exciting Lure fishing iv ever done! its pitch black with only moon light to see where you casting, after a while i got to the point where me and Tezo's sight got used to only fishing at night! but it was still tricky! i cannot explain the feeling running through your body when you skipping a MossBoss or Jitter Bug accross the surface in moon light when you see this monstrous bow wave lunge up behind the lures and all hell break loose when a double figure pike nails the lure off the surface!! No slurps off the top like some day time surface action, all hugely aggressive takes it was heart stopping action!!

I kid you not the best fishing iv ever done with my lure rod in hand! nearly every trip out seeing at least a couple doubles on the bank and numerous 20+ pike landed to 24lb 7oz throughout summer 09! i will be keeping a seperate diary this year just for night luring, so watch this space!

Also getting involved in the action was Adrian and Martin with adrian getting Snapped off twice in two sessions by 20lb+ pike on there run!!...... i witnessed a fish a week later come to the net with Adrians Tiny Jitter Bug in its mouth well over 25lb!! Adrian also landing his PB night pike of over 15lb! considering this is a tiny venue full of weed and lillies with sunken trees its not for the faint hearted!

ill stick reporst up soon as the warmer weather returns!

2009 Highlight!!

2010-02-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Done it again!!!

Well as i said ill cover a few bits and Bobs from 2009, I have to start with what i consider my Best lure fishing moment yet! Me breaking my PB pike, those who follow LAS or may have seen in various mags i caught yet ANOTHER 30lb+ pike on the Lure last season!! in my annual april week Piking quest i ventured to one of my local venues where i caught on the second day my PB pike of 31lb 14oz, it was amazing! such a beast of a fish! this is my second 30 from this venue and a different fish to the previous 30lb 4oz pike. I caught it on one of my favorate lures which has caught me hundreds of good pike over the last season! the Savage-gear 4play! I was fishing with my fishing partner Tezo who helped me land the fish of a life time, once again Tezo was there to help out on a truelly amazing catch which i was lucky enough to land!!

Blog stuff

2010-02-10T05:18:00.000-08:00

This Blog is going to cover all the basics from Tackle to Techniques, Ill post pictures of new and old gear explaining the pro's and con's of Modern Lure fishing!

There will also be reports added by my Fishing friends from accross the country covering all aspects of lures and lure fishing! Bass/Perch/Pike/Pollack/Chub will all be featured in this blog, kind of a Mini rod race for British Preds!!!

Ill also add parts of 2009 to this blog as allot happened last year which didnt make my old blog http://www.dannylureanglerparkins.blogspot.com/ as i said a fair few PB's broken by myself and friends!! ill be working closely with various people in the UK lure world to hopefully make the UK market allot better, I will be putting some lures from accross the pond through there paces thanks to Nick Roberts from http://www.topwaterlures.co.uk/ and http://www.basslures.co.uk/ we will be Getting our hands on some decent imported lures from the states and japan. please please do check out his sites to see what he is doing for the UK Lure market! Hat off to the guys for making the step towards Better newer gear, it can only be a Pluss for us here in the UK

Ill hopefully get back out with Henry Gilbey in 2010 as he is awesome to work with! As well as getting out and about with my usuall bunch from the L.A.S http://www.lureanglers.co.uk/ I am the Southwest Chapter organiser for L.A.S and will be sorting out a few meets for Guys based in the southwest.

Ill be also heading back up to Yorkshire to visit family and of coarse Fishing the amny canals and lakes, as well as a Holiday to Ireland with Adrain Jacobs Pollack bashing in the west coast!!

The 2010 Diary of Danny & Friends

2010-02-10T05:08:00.000-08:00

Hello Guys

Im Danny Parkins, as some of you may know i have already created a blog but its been very out dated due to computer problems!!!

so this year Im going to create a weekly diary of my Lure fishing Adventures around the southwest and UK. I will be doing lots and lots of new and Exciting stuff lure fishing this year and have plenty of fish to settle scores with!! 2009 was possibly my best season ever!!! with numerous PB's broken, so hopwfully 2010 will be just as good!