Brand new look Trout Fisherman - out soon

• It fascinates me to see such a well known and well established fishing magazine like Trout Fisherman being completely overhauled and then relaunched. On March 26th you will be able to see the results of the new look Trout Fisherman magazine when it hits the shops, and here is a sneak preview. I know I work for them, but I have to say that I am hugely impressed by what has been going on, as you can see here. Magazines have to overhauled from time to time, and it takes a lot of hard work and vision to ring these changes. Sea Angler had the same thing a little while ago (see here), and the magazine looks better and better to me every month.

• What makes me even happier is that the powers that be have chosen one of my photos to go on the cover of the relaunch issue. Nice one !! OK, so I might be a bit biased towards their choice, but I really like what has been done with the photo of Nick Hart you can see on the forthcoming cover above. What a strong way to launch this brand new fly casting series we have been shooting recently - with words from Nick of course.

• The whole style of the magazine looks that bit "cleaner" to me, and personally I believe that is a good thing. So much information has to be crammed into these kinds of publications, and the trick is to make sure this info is put across in a way that can appeal to fishermen of very different skill levels. Plus you want a big dollop of inspiration in there. I reckon they have done this here, and the proof will be on the shelves at the end of this month.

• Those Irish bass keep on coming. Keven Brain emailed me from Kerry to tell me of more bass up to 8lbs over the weekend, all returned. I would hazard a guess that he has the spots all to himself as well.

• And from south east Ireland, I hear that my mates Graham, Pat and Cian had a ball over the weekend, with numerous bass coming to lures and baits - the biggest going a cracking 10lbs (on a soft plastic lure), to the efforts of Mr. Hill himself. Check out the full report on Graham's blog here. That is some fishing, and again it proves two points to me - there is no better shore fishing for bass that I know of than over in Ireland, and that they can have awesome fishing all year round for them if the conditions play ball. I can't wait to start "discovering" a bit of the French bass fishing, but it is going to have to go a long way to match the fishing I know of in Ireland. Outstanding stuff indeed. The urge to emigrate has never been stronger !!

• How about the rugby on Sunday ? A day to warm the heart. The first half of England v France had me jumping up and down in delight, and I can't help but feel that those forty odd minutes had been coming for a while now. We just had to let go and play rugby if that makes any sense. It had to happen sometime, and perhaps it was just good timing that it happened against the French at Twickenham, and in perfect spring weather as well. The second half could never live up to the first, but what a fantastic game. I reckon England were almost so shocked at what they had achieved in the first half that they went back into their shells somewhat. Still, we won properly, and the big test now is to see how we perform against Scotland on Saturday. If we play well and win properly, I reckon we are allowed to hope again. Perhaps even dream again. But we shall see............

• While my website is undergoing a rebuild, I have come across a great way of putting up really good looking web-based galleries of my photos, and I have put a few up recently. Check out a load of black and white photos here for starters. For more, check out the links on the right hand side page of this blog, under the "My Photos - various galleries" heading. There is plenty of bass stuff up there if that floats your boat.

Precision casting

• I started work yesterday on a new series of casting features with Nick Hart - these will come out in Trout Fisherman in due course. Nick is working on putting the technical aspects of fly casting into regular fishing scenes, so that the fisherman can take the various casts and learn more about when to actually use them to catch more fish. Casting is obviously a hugely important part of fly fishing, we all know that, but the aim in my mind is always to learn how to smash a few more fish in a given situation. The same could be said of sea fishing could it not ?

• To start the process off, we needed to try and find a "look at this" opening photo to run across a couple of pages (DPS), and by pure luck the weather was with us from the off. There are lots of different ways to shoot casting, and a lot of them are set by the weather and background you have, but the moment I saw the light and situation I could "see" these photos in my head as strong opening shots- the photos above and below are a couple of examples. I made a really contrasty black and white version to see what it looked like, and I really like it, but it is up to the designers at Trout Fisherman as to what they use from yesterday's shoot. Nick is a complete pro at what he does and he is an incredibly easy guy to photograph.

• The photo above is a more "regular" casting shot of Nick roll-casting a line along the margins, but even then these things take a lot of thought and pre-planning. I am always on the lookout for different angles and views, and I thought this photo worked pretty well with the orange line coming down through the frame. The aim is to provide a photo that can say a lot in regards to the words that Nick writes, and this kind of thing does that.

• With a more technical shoot like this, it is vital that my creative attempts marry up properly with what Nick knows is technically right and wrong in a cast. This is the beauty of digital photography. On a shoot like this we can photograph a load of stuff and then check everything on my laptop to make sure any glaringly wrong stuff is deleted. Not that Nick would ever make a bad cast !! Imagine me doing the fly casting ?!!

• As I have said before, working in fishing is never what it seems. This job of mine really gives me a huge kick, and I love almost every part of it (except for paying taxes especially), but my own fishing time now compared to pre-kids and pre-fishing work is somewhat of a scary reduction. In all honesty though I have never loved fishing more than I do now, and just getting to be around it all the time does me just fine. The world's a fascinating place. I am off to Belize at the end of next week on a photo job and I can't wait.......more details in due course.

Tournament casting

• A couple of friends of mine have just got into a bit of tournament casting, and I think they surprised themselves when they went to their first casting tournament in Cornwall on Sunday. They are both seriously talented anglers who catch more fish than a lot of us put together, and they can both put baits where they need to most of the time - but with a lot of anglers, there is always the question of "how far is my lead actually going ?" (and on the flip side, a lot of anglers wildly exaggerate how far they are casting. 200 yards with bait ? Dream on !!! Most guys have no idea how far 200 yards actually is.)

• I used to do a fair bit of tournament casting when I was at university down here in Plymouth (those were the days - as much time as I wanted), and I was taught how to pendulum cast by a really kind local angler called Kelvin Bedford. Never once did he clutter up our minds with endless technical rubbish, rather he helped me and a couple of mates to simply develop our casting to the point where we were doing pretty well. My mate Chris could chuck a lead an awesome distance.

• I did ok at a few casting tournaments (and I had huge fun doing so), but I had always promised myself that if I ever went casting instead of fishing, then the casting would be knocked on the head immediately. I caught myself one day heading off to practise casting when the weather and tides were perfect for fishing, and that was the last time for me. To this day I have never done a pendulum cast when I am out fishing, and I still believe there is no need for it at all on the beach or the rocks.

• Yes, learning to pendulum cast properly was a very good thing to do, but a full pendulum cast belongs on the tournament field only. It creates huge power if done properly, but it is impossible to hold on to a full blooded tournament pendulum cast when you are in a proper fishing situation. I have still yet to meet an angler who can execute what I would call a "really good pendulum cast" when out fishing. Instead I have had to duck far too many times as people give it a go and do nothing but endanger themselves and us guys around them. Leads and baits flying around all over the place is downright dangerous, and far too many anglers simply are not compressing their rods at all (look at the photo above - that is Julian Shambrook bending a rod properly). No compression ? No distance.................

• But, and this is a big but - learning to pendulum cast taught me one vital thing : how to bend a beachcasting rod properly. I learnt what it took to compress these things, and from that knowledge, I then developed my own kind of out and out "fishing cast" for those times when a bit of distance is required. It delivers huge power if needs be, but it is always under control and I am never swinging a big lead and bait around my head and causing danger to guys around me. It works just fine, it gets me out there if needs be, and I can repeat it again and again.

• And as we all know, more often than not we end up casting right over the fish !! Casting is a blast, and if whacking leads over grass is your thing, then that is fantastic. Me ? I've done it and I did fine, but personally I am more interested in learning all I can about the fish.

• Anyway, I need to tell you about another great extreme metal release - they keep on coming this year. 2008 is going to go down as a great metal year (that keeps denting my wallet far too often). And Norway has to be the most productive metal country on this earth. Satyricon have been around for ages, and they keep on putting out quality albums that offer a great mix of cold, harsh, but ever so catchy and memorable black metal (or whatever you want to call it), and their latest CD "The Age of Nero" is no exception. Pounding drums (Frost is awesome), a unique guitar sound, great production, and a bunch of songs destined to pummel my ear drums for many happy hours. This is a monster. My youngest daughter was 2 yesterday, and she loves it - how much more of a recommendation do you need ?