It's great when a brand new lure works.....

• OK, so the little bass that jumped onto my new lure last night was hardly going to set the world alight, but I do love it when a brand new lure comes out of the box and works straight away - on about my fifth cast in fact. I have heard increasing amounts about these newish Sebile lures for a while now, and I have taken fish overseas on their big poppers, but I have been itching to try out their more "bassy" looking lures over here. Yesterday evening was my chance to sneak a few casts in before heading off to France tomorrow night.

• Just so you know, I have nothing to do with Sebile - I say it how I see it, but from the first chuck with this new lure I was transfixed. The action on it is outrageous. So what is this lure that you can see above and down the bottom ? To be very precise, it is the Sebile Koolie Minnow SL 118mm Suspending - it kind of looks ok in it's box, but take it out and fish with it and I reckon your jaw will hit the floor. Seriously, it's got an awesome action, and it also dives nice and shallow. It is a classic kind of medium to fast running shallow diving minnow, but it rolls and darts around to the max - you can feel the thing working really hard right through the rod. I haven't got another lure that works like it - not that an extreme action is the be all and end all, indeed I like the "subtler" lures a lot of the time. But this Sebile Koolie Minnow SL has got something. Andy took one look at my rod tip on the retrieve and asked what the hell the lure was............and there was me trying to keep it a little secret !! Shame on me.

• The only place I know that you can get hold of these Sebile lures here in the UK at the moment is Veals Mail Order, contact them here. It is now on their website, click here to see. Make sure you ask for the SL model if you want the shallowest version of it - that's the one I have got here. I am going to give it a damned good thrashing out in France, so check back here for more reports. I am really excited about this lure, and what I really like is that it is not very expensive as far as premium bass lures go. You've guessed it - I could talk myself into anything when it comes to bass fishing.

• This new Tenryu Super Mix 240 I am using is growing on me every single time I cast and fish with it - honestly, I know they are hardly cheap, but I can see where the money goes in these rods. Very different to out and out ultra-fast action plugging rods like the Red Dragon Express and the Rod Bar 270, but the Super Mix 240 is fast worming its way into my affections.

• The were huge numbers of sandeels in the water last night, and the mullet were topping and surfing all over the place. Andy got hit by a bass that let go of his lure, but we reckon we might have cleaned up if we had been using live eel either on a rolling lead or under a bubble float. Perhaps we should have fished the soft plastics a bit harder. The water felt alive all the time we were there, and the light just got better and better. I am sure the photo above will tell lots of you where we were fishing, for it's hardly any great secret. The kind of evening when just being out on the water is about all you could ever need.

• You can take a look at the Sebile range of lures right here (it's an online PDF catalogue, allow it some time to load). I can see a fair few things in there that I reckon might murder for our bass fishing, and I have just seen the new Veals Mail Order catalogue with a few of these Sebile lures in there. My wallet is going to be put behind locked doors........help !! Off to France tomorrow evening, and I can't wait.