Foro If you fish with a leader on the end of your braid, do many of…

I had no intention of going fishing the morning after my day out photographing those farm animals in Mount’s Bay - this blog post here - but I got back home late in the evening and I was buzzing. I didn’t sleep well and the first thing I did when I got up the next morning was start downloading way too many photos off the memory cards. And then because I was still buzzing from the day before I thought what the hell, why not go out for a sort of reset fishing session because watching massive tuna hurt (unlucky?!) anglers is not an everyday thing for me at all…………. I cannot tell you how surreal it felt around 8am the morning after when I had a 6lb+ bass lined up right behind my Savage Gear Dragontail Slug almost exactly like the many bonefish I have seen over the years on a multitude of remote saltwater flats. Seriously, it felt like a real privilege to spot a bass like this mooching close to the bank in what was some of the clearest estuary water I can remember seeing. Initially I saw some movement and slowly turned my head to check if it was a mullet. But it wasn’t. Clear as day it was a decent bass so I tried to keep myself calm - remember, still buzzing from the day before! - and present the Dragontail in front of where it looked like the fish was going to move to. I guess the bass heard or sensed the splash of the lure, because in an instant it moved right in and set itself behind the lure. I am a perfectly useless fly fisherman but I like to think I’m sort of okay at trund

My words won’t come anywhere close to doing justice to how incredible this UK big game fishery is that is now prevalent here in the UK, because bloody hell it was incredible to witness. Having now witnessed a couple of roughly 450lb farm animals landed on (heavy) spinning tackle, I am convinced that I did the right thing taking photos a couple of days ago and staying the hell away from connecting with what is surely one of the most powerful sporting species of fish on this planet. I am perfectly content to have landed a few “small” bluefin tuna on lure gear a few years ago out in Italy when I was doing some work with the lovely Fiiish people……………. I am not the person to be talking about the various regulations and licenses and who gets the right to fish for these incredible fish and so on, but a sport fishery for bluefin tuna is now established here in the UK and I was very happy to get the chance to spend a day this week in Mount’s Bay with a couple of lads from Unleashed charters out of Newlyn plus a few guys from Pure Fishing/Penn. Lures were thrown at some busting tuna but they weren’t having it, so the two bluefin around the 450lb which were hooked and released were taken on livebaits. No trolling was involved which made my day because I have an allergic reaction to “fishing” like this. I am also very much not the person to talk with any experience about which fishing tackle works and does not work for these incredible fish, but the two bluefin which were hooked and rele

If you go back and take a look at Friday’s blog post , I detailed how Ben who I ran into caught a bunch of bass in some bouncy and very weedy conditions. I caught bass before I ran into him, but when I ended up fishing essentially the same ground I didn’t catch. I got hit, but I didn’t connect. For sure I was taking photos a good bit of the time because Ben was on fire, but it was noticeable to me that my various lure/rigging choices were not producing the goods when Ben with his (jig head/J-hook) 13cm 22g Sandy Andy paddletail in the Snow White colour was……………. I don’t know if it was my specific approach over this shallower ground or if quite simply I was fishing like a tit and hadn’t realised. For the most part I was alternating between the Savage Gear Gravity Stick Paddletail 140 (white) and the Slender Scoop Shad 13cm (I didn’t have a white one with me) rigged on one of the Lure Factory 5/0 weedless hooks with a 10g belly-weight to help deal with the wind in my face and the bouncy sea. Two paddletails which I trust implicitly, rigged in a way that I also have huge faith in. I am not remotely competitive with my fishing so getting outfished doesn’t niggle me from that point of view, but what does niggle me is wondering what I was doing wrong. My aim is always to learn from an experience to get better the next time. So I checked the forecast and tides when I got back home, then got it in my head to clear my work and head back there the next day. No two days are ever the sam

I came away from fishing yesterday with a bunch of photographs I am really proud of, but when I sit down and think about the session and the fishing and how it unfolded, once again it’s banged home to me how much good luck is required to nail photos like these………….. First off I hadn’t even planned to go fishing yesterday, but I pulled away from my desk to have a bit of lunch and I suddenly got an idea that somewhere specific might be worth checking out if the webcam in any way aligned with what I thought it should look like. It did. My waterproof rucksack is always ready to go with my camera gear packed in there, so it was a case of wolfing down my lunch, changing over lure boxes in my lure bag from estuary to open coast stuff, grabbing the right rod and jumping in the car. As an aside, I have deliberately left the awesome Favorite Black Swan 852H 8'5'' 16-56g lure rod unused for a while because I wanted to have a bit of time away from it to then come back and check if I still thought it was just about the most impressive lure fishing rod I have fished with so far (review here ). It is. I fished with it yesterday and I couldn’t stop smiling, both at the sea conditions and how much I love this lure rod. The conditions were fantastic with a lovely short sea running, but within a few casts it was obvious that the amount of broken up weed in the water was going to be a real problem. A part of me could have easily walked away from the area, but I know from experience that you can

If you are reading this then I have to assume that you have at least a passing interest in lure fishing for (European sea) bass, but what I don’t know is how or why you got into it, how long you have been doing at least some of your fishing like this, and where you are on the journey as such…………. My first forays into “proper” lure fishing for bass were based mainly around shallow reefs. Partly because the kind anglers who helped steer me into this raging addiction fished a lot over shallow reefs - typical bass ground for sure - and partly because what little I knew about these amazing fish had been banged home to me that they are creatures of reefs and surf. As indeed they (partly) are. It would probably be an interesting sort of AI study to track something like the Sea Angler magazine over its long history and see how the lure related bass articles have changed and developed over the years. The rise of social media has obviously given us access to a far more global range of information, but if we forget about the algorithms and unpleasantness, from a purely fishing point of view we are getting to see way more of what is going on out there. How long for example have some of the French (sea) bass anglers been deliberately targeting their numerous estuaries in the different ways which we are increasingly seeing? If you were a French angler it would probably have been banged home to you that much of the fishing for them was based around inshore reefs and tide rips that required

Mark and I had a situation yesterday morning where we wanted to return to an area which is gradually starting to reveal way more secrets to us than we had initially thought, but the wind had changed direction and when we got there the water in close to the shore was getting a little choppy and coloured up………….. Especially as the bigger tide kept dropping away. Things were somewhat quiet for a while as the water got ever shallower and less clear. A while ago I think I’d have walked away when I saw water clarity like that, but bass seem to have little problem doing their hunting thing when the water’s a bit murkier. I wonder if it’s often us the anglers almost talking ourselves out of it? Which I have done on multiple occasions I can assure you. Not so much these days though when I am moving as subtly as I can around out of the way/quiet estuary waters which I think is really important if you want the best possible chance of witnessing bass mooching around tight to the shoreline in shallow water. We got to a point in the tide where I must admit I began to question our being there with the fundamental change in conditions since the last time we fished it. Because the bass I have caught on the Savage Gear Dragontail Slug have hit the lure so hard and with such confidence when I have been fishing it where I would a regular creature bait, I am naturally sticking with it for the time being while I learn how much more versatile this thing is. When I am fishing it like a creature bait

For all the different weather and surf/swell apps that I am sure most of us use to try and get a good idea of what’s going on out there as regards bass fishing conditions, they are not at all foolproof. I had a quiet little corner of the world in mind because I liked the tide size combined with what sort of sea the Surfline app was telling me was going to be bouncing around. Pack the car up, hit the road, only to get near to the intended area and find out that whatever sea had been running wasn’t running much anymore…………. Do I say sod it and fish it anyway, or do we put the thinking caps on and come up with an alternative? Mark came up with a call to move to an estuary location we both know fairly well, so I made a quick turnaround to change over to the lighter stuff and hit the road again. We have tended to fish this particular estuary spot to take advantage of a nice run of current, but both of us have also seen signs of good bass moving around in some very shallow water. I went for the current and Mark held back and decided to fish the shallow stuff as we had both been intending to do someday but hadn’t done it yet. I won’t bore you with a full breakdown of the session, but I managed a few bass in the current on a 10cm Berkley Cullshad rigged on an extra wide-gape 3/0 weedless hook with a 10g belly-weight (I bought mine here if that is any help). Nothing epic, but when your initial plan goes up in smoke I always think it feels so good to move somewhere else and catch a few

I know I’m getting old, but perhaps I am a bit old fashioned as well? When I brought a bass to hand that I caught at range on a 35g Seeker yesterday, I estimated it at about 3lbs before unhooking it and letting it swim away. Not for one second did I think about the overall length of the fish, but I think I might be in the minority these days. Obviously I notice that more and more anglers are using an actual length or estimated length of the bass they catch when they talk about them. “Had a few 50s this morning”, or “got one off the top, might have nudged 65cms” and so on, whereas with me it’s still “had a nice one about 5lbs”, or “weighed it at 14lb 8oz” (in my dreams!)............. I have always assumed that as anglers we are somewhat obsessed with weights and lengths of fish because we are predominantly male, but as far as I am aware it has only been over the last few years that the length of a bass has become almost the norm instead of the weight of a bass. I am not actually sure how or why this has happened but I guess it’s something to do with the BASS measuring tape and their helpful “Weight For Length Conversion Chart” together with a lot of anglers coming into bass lure fishing mixed with the prevalence of social media. Or is it simply that it’s so easy to carry a measuring tape or specialist roll up measuring thing like this one here ? Lightweight digital scales are so much smaller these days, but I would still argue that a means of measuring the length of a fish is

I’m not very good at all this social media promotional stuff and so on, but I did some filming up in North Wales a few months ago with some good people from Savage Gear UK - and the results are now up on YouTube in the form of a bass fishing video called “ The Ultimate Sea Bass Fishing Guide | Henry Gilbey’s Guide to Bass Fishing ”................ I am rather proud of what we have achieved, especially considering the bad weather we were up against which seriously restricted where we could film and of course the actual bass fishing results. I had almost forgotten quite how much I despise watching myself on screen, so I have watched this film once and I don’t intend to watch it again. I get the easy work in that I get to fish and yap to the cameras, because in reality it’s the team around me and of course the editor who put it all together and make the short film look as good as possible. A lot of respect and thanks from me to some good people who worked bloody hard to pull this one off. Hope you enjoy and many thanks for taking the time to watch it.

Best value for money lure rods I have ever come across? I have considered messaging my Favorite contact to ask if the company had made a mistake with its pricing for these two lure rods, the Favorite Blue Bird Sharp Jig 862M-T 8’6’’ 5-20g and the slightly shorter and lighter again Favorite Blue Bird Sharp Jig 832ML-T 8'3'' 4-16g . For ease of typing and reading, let’s call these rods the 8’6’’ 5-20g and the 8’3’’ 4-16g………….. I’ve fished with enough lighter lure rods now to know what does and does not float my boat. Which might not float your own particular boat of course. Top of the tree for me remains the incredible Favorite Black Swan 852M 8'5'' 6-24g lure rod (review here ) because I think it covers so many different bases if you can get away with a lure rod rated 24g at the top end. Open coast, estuary, creature baits, surface lures, soft plastics, hard lures, I don’t really care - this thing does them all in my opinion, and it does them so bloody well. We have two different types of lure rods here though. These Favorite Blue Bird Sharp Jig rods are exactly as one of the words in their name suggests - Sharp. If you ever wanted to know what I think a “sharp” lure rod actually is, these things are that in spades. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because a rod is designed to cast lighter lures it can’t also be FAF (Fast As F&%K). You can have a massively powerful lure rod which has a slow or moderate action, just like you can have a light lure rod with a very fast and

Just when you think you’re getting to grips with the whole sight-fishing ninja thing then fishing does what it does so well - brings you right back down to earth with a sharp bump! As per my blog post from Monday , I was feeling like fishing was giving me one back after my biggest sight-fished bass so far. Had I cracked the code? Was I winning at life? Was I hell…………. I hadn’t intended to go fishing the other day, but I went for a run first thing and it was such a beautiful day I just had to. I spent the entire 8k run thinking about what I could do on such a small tide over high water with such still and bright conditions. There’s an area I have walked a few times but not really fished, and I really like the look of it. It’s out of the way and requires a bit of leg power so I’d be very surprised to see another angler around this area. Exactly how I like it. There’s plenty of ground to cover and start to get to grips with, and during the course of my morning run I came to the conclusion that a really small tide might benefit me because the shallower water should “hold” for longer before draining out. I arranged to meet a mate where I believed we could leave a couple of cars okay, then we made our way around the edges of a good few fields and down to the water’s edge. First thing I saw was a mullet sunbathing in amongst the bladderwrack. I moved on and around and left Andy setting his gear up. I was moving and scanning well back from the water and once again I had turned to the

Not for one second did I think that sight-fishing for these amazing fish would become yet another part to this endlessly fascinating puzzle that we call lure fishing for bass. It’s not a common occurrence with my fishing, but from time to time I end up somewhere with the right light and water conditions and so on, and I get the chance to watch bass and occasionally put a lure near them. I have spent loads of time all around the world taking photographs of fishing that revolves around seeing and casting to the fish, but apart from mullet I never imagined that I would one day be seeing a few bass and actively fishing for them………… I was out fishing with Mark way up an estuary where we have never seen another person let alone another angler. Sometimes on the smaller tides you can see a few bass moving around as the water really starts shallowing off, and around the right time I suddenly spotted a proper bass mooching along the water’s edge. I kept as low as possible but the bass suddenly saw me and veered off left where the water got a little deeper and murkier. Now I don’t know if the fish which Mark then hooked was this exact bass - bloody hell it was a good fish - but he’s suddenly hooked up on a Sleeper Craw and some line’s coming off his spinning reel. And then he’s suddenly not hooked up as the fish comes off. Was it the bass I saw? Seems more than likely, I’d have loved to have seen that bass landed. So we kept at it. Eyes and ears very much open, a bunch of blind casts in