Winter blue sky front cover

• I was really pleased to get the cover of the latest issue of Trout Fisherman magazine, as you can see above. Check out my photos on pages 14, 18, 19, 20, 21 , 22 and 23 - Nick Hart wrote all the words. The blue skies on the cover were like what we had down here over the weekend, but they are forecasting a decent storm coming in later today. We shall see....

• I am sorting out an exploratory bass fishing trip down to Brittany in north west France - there is a particular area that really interests me, and some of the people I met at the Salon de Peches show the other weekend down at Nantes are helping me out with tides, contacts and dates. I can not tell you how much I am looking forward to the chance of photographing and fishing for bass in France, it is such an awesome country, and I hope that this trip might be the start of another love affair - like I have for Ireland and the fishing over there.

• I told you yesterday about the bass that were caught by my friends over in Ireland over the weekend - check out the photos on Graham Hill's new bass blog. Keep an eye on this one. Over time I fully expect his blog to become a place that I am going to have to avoid looking at too much in case I do what I keep thinking about - dropping out, moving over there to live, and just fishing my socks off until the day I die !! Not very realistic I know, but hard not to think about doing.........

• I have just been sent a PDF of a photo essay of mine that is in the awesome Norwegian fishing magazine Alt om Fiske - I really like getting my work in this publication. Granted, I don't understand a word of it, but it looks fantastic !! The salmon photos of mine were shot out on the Gaspe peninsular over on the east coast of Canada - pure sight fishing for Atlantic salmon in the clearest rivers I have ever seen. What a lot of fly anglers don't know is that most of this east coast Canadian salmon fishing is really cost effective, and it takes hardly any time to get over there. Flights are usually dirt cheap as well. Talk to Pete or Charlotte at Aardvark McLeod about going there.

• I also received a copy of the German fishing magazine Blinker yesterday, and in there is a big feature of mine on the frankly scary-awesome lure and fly fishing for giant golden dorado in Argentina. I am especially pleased with the big double-page spread photo of mine that they used, of a jumping dorado with a popper in its mouth. Heading to this particular location that is in the feature is not cheap, but they are virtually fully booked up because it is THE best place on earth to chase the biggest golden dorado. These magnificent fish are still one of the most impressive freshwater species I have ever come across, and I really want to do a lot more with them. Again, if this kind of fishing floats your boat, talk to Aardvark McLeod. I would never do this kind of thing if it was not an important part of my work, and I never thought for one second that when I started out working in fishing that I would get to see things like this. But as I always say, it ain't ever close to what it seems.........

Front cover in Germany

• I have been working on a freelance basis for the big German fishing magazine Blinker for some time now, and above is my first front cover with them - it is of Nick Hart holding a well-conditioned rainbow trout. I reckon the photo works well on the cover and I am always over the moon to get a cover. Blinker has a huge circulation throughout parts of Europe and it is always full of really good looking articles - I wish I could understand them as I reckon I could learn a lot, but my German is seriously non-existent !!

• This shore fishing for bass with soft plastics has got me really intrigued, and I have already been looking around for different lures and jig heads. Just how easy is it to spend too much money on our fishing ? I reckon Graham, Patrick and Cian are going to land some truly monster bass right through the winter if they get the right conditions over in Ireland, and I would bet that the majority are going to come on the plastics. Not that hard lures are suddenly not lethally effective (of course they can be), more that a couple of locations they are fishing demand some different tactics. I truly believe that they have the potential for awesome bass fishing right through the year, taking into account the Irish close season of course.

• Sometime next week I will do my best to get a couple of photo galleries up here from my September and November Irish bass trips - I came away with plenty of photos that I need to illustrate my articles etc. Fishing can be such a visually stunning thing to do, and most times I consider what I do to be the best job in the world - ok, so not every day is going to go great, but just having the chance to work around the best sport in the world is a privilege, and my focus is on making it look better and better all the time.

• Have a good weekend all, I am off over to north Cornwall with my family to spend a weekend walking, golfing (yes !!) and messing around on the beach - whatever the weather, we don't care, my two girls have got full waterproofs and they love being out and about. Jess can chase seagulls for hours on end. I might also get the chance to check out a couple of potential bass marks I have been thinking about, under the pretext of "let's walk this way, it looks nice" sort of thing. You always need that fishing head on.....