Tuesday 3 June 2008

Not the finest fishing session

  • Three of us headed up to the rugged north Cornwall coast on Saturday evening to try for a ray or two, but we ended up with virtually nothing - James landed one miserable dogfish to show for all out efforts. I am hearing of some good ray fishing around the south west, but I guess we picked the wrong spot !! Above you can see James blasting out another bait.

  • We left Plymouth in the pouring rain, and it then cleared up around Bodmin. But when we got to the north coast, it was shrouded in a dense fog that never lifted the whole time we were there. Conditions seemed to be excellent, with a nice swell rolling in and a good tide as well, but for some reason the rays were staying away from our sandeel baits.
  • But just how good are those Daiwa Saltist reels ? I first put them on this blog back in January, see here for my review. I am seeing more and more shore anglers using them to great effect, and at the moment I know of no better 7000 size shore multiplier that we can get our hands on. Mine are loaded up with 20lb yellow Sufix Tritanium, with my current favourite shockleader, rig and trace material - the staggeringly good Sufix Zippy that is now available in the UK. Check here for details. You have to use this line to understand how good it is.

  • I hear that more and more forward thinking bass anglers are starting to get hold of the Tenryu plugging rods that have so grabbed me. Reassuringly expensive, but worth all of it, these rods are where it's at right now for me. Whilst I am using the Red Dragon Express and can't find one single fault with it, arguably the most popular model is turning out to be the Rod Bar Model 270, see here. Think I might start saving up again !!

  • Well done to Nick Hart for grabbing a few hours before work and landing a nice westcountry salmon, see here for the report. I have yet to photograph salmon in the UK, but they are such special fish to be around. My only experience of them was over on the Gaspe peninsular on the east coast of Canada, an experience that totally blew me away. Check out some photos here, and then book yourself a trip of a lifetime with Aardvark McLeod. Read Pete's report of a monster permit on the fly out in Cuba the other day - what a fish !! Just how badly do I want to photograph that saltwater fly fishing ?

  • My mate Cato Bekkevold over in Norway has just emailed me to tell me about some great zander fishing they have just had, for fish up to 20lbs !! Together with a few nice pike on surface lures, this convinces me more and more that Norway has some of the best fishing around. I also hear that they guys are doing really well up at Rost for the halibut, cod and coalfish. See here for some reports. Reports are also excellent for the start of their salmon season.

  • Anyway, enough about fishing for today - onto my other obsession in life, extreme metal. I can't believe that any metal fan does not listen to the awesome band Opeth - I know of no other group which so successfully blends such far out, progressive elements into their own brand of crushing death metal. The lead singer can seamlessly switch between stunning clean vocals and one of the world's most brutal death metal roars as naturally as I can switch between fishing and metal !!, and it makes for a seriously good band. I have just got hold of their new CD, called Watershed, and it is a hell of an album - spin it over and over and you'll start to lose yourself in this stuff, it's that good. The kind of CD you really need to sit down and listen to the whole way through. Listen to some tracks here. I photographed these guys in London a while ago, check through this lot here for some very cool photos of them, a few of which appeared in Metal Hammer magazine.

8 comments:

will h said...

Hi Henry, good to hear your bass exploits. I had my first ever lure caught bass last night after 3 or 4 trying trips of trying; I'm now well hooked. I'm just about to switch over to braid. Couple of questions- do you think that bright green colour of the varivas stuff scares fish off and what knots do you use for joining braid to mono leader and mono backing line? cheers Will

Anonymous said...

Hi Henry

Can't believe it's taken me this long to notice you've got a blog going :)

Haven't been fishing myself for ages but managed a local session at Formy, Merseyside for Bass and another during May on Anglesey. Not much going catch wise but damn, it was good to be out after so long a break.

Stuart Sea Fishing and Walking in the UK

Jon said...

Henry, wot no fish on Saturday? Disaster.

I was expecting a bad day but ended up going to Samphire Hoe for the civilised version of rock fishing. Lots of wrasse around made it an interesting day.

The better news is am flying out tonight for my first of the year trips to Ireland. Bit of a mistake to book it during the closed Bass season but will concentrate on deep spinning for Pollack & may target some gilt head bream in Dungarvan Bay.

Henry Gilbey said...

Will - glad you got one, this bassing is addictive stuff !!

I don't worry about the colour of the braid at all, I have used bright yellow for a lot of my bassing without any worries. I tend to use an Albright knot for attaching it to a short length (maybe 60cms) of 30lb fluoro - there is also some kind of weird knot that I use that I don't know the name of. But the Albright does just fine, see here for a link on how to tie it :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92R9F9ZNi2I

Jon - have an awesome time in Ireland, my mates over there are tearing their hair out with perfect bass conditions but with the bass close season on !! Let us know how you get on over there.

Stu - thanks for reading the blog, hope you like it. Always good to get out fishing.

Doug said...

Hi,

I'm glad the watermarks have gone - at least I hope they have gone.

I do realise that you make a living from photography, but it really spoils a photo to have a watermark logo printed across the middle.

You don't wee watermarks in the magazines, why should you on the web?

You can embed watermarks into the file or use more subtle methods to protect the images if you have a problem with theft.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Doug

Henry Gilbey said...

Doug,

I take your point and I do agree with some of what you say, but I have to do all I can to protect my images. The web is somewhat different from books and magazines. Please note the reduced opacity on the watermarks.........and I am always looking around for better and less obtrusive ways of protecting them.

Cheers,

Henry

Doug said...

I just noticed that they still were watermarked. Very subtle. Now I know they are still there, it will bother me even more ;-)

I'm not a fan of watermarks. Why don't you have them on your magazine photos? The magazine photos can be scanned...

Take a look at Digimarc: http://www.digimarc.com/comm/solutions.asp

You can integrate Digimarc protection into Photoshop and other graphic tools and automate the watermarking process.

Regards,
Doug

Anonymous said...

The problem with the web is that without a visible watermark the screen can always be screen-shotted which negates the fact that a watermark is embedded. If your going to put hi-res / large images on a website the only way to properly protect them is using a visible watermark.

Obviously the smaller ones that are shown on the blogs main page don't need protection as they're only screen res. and not really much use for anything else.

Just my thoughts :)

Stuart Sea Fishing and Walking in the UK