I would love to say we nailed the bass......

• ......but we didn't !! Andy and I managed to get out over the high water and back yesterday afternoon, and I reckon the conditions looked spot on. OK, so a bigger tide would have been nicer for where we were fishing (Andy's mark, somewhere new to me), but the water clarity and general sea conditions were ideal. Just enough "life" to the water, loads of very inviting looking ground for the bass to hunt over, but sadly the fish forgot to turn up !! We both blanked in quite spectacular style. I sincerely hope you lot had a bank holiday weekend filled with a few more fish.

• Back to the drawing board on this one. What a stunning looking mark to fish though, I fancy this place to throw up some nice bass this year. That is if I haven't gone and emigrated over to Ireland. Enjoy the close season lads !! Will be thinking of you.......

• Not even a hit or a follow, and we tried different lures, different retrieves, you name it, but not a sniff. I would like to be out fishing a lot more than I am currently, but it is just not possible at the moment. I am going to be in the Isles of Scilly this coming weekend, principally to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, but if the weather behaves then of course I will get out and do a bit of fishing and photography with Del. Can't wait to get back over there. Still one of the most special places on earth, and it's only just off our coastline.

• How do you choose a lure from this lot ? They all look so nice !! Andy has got it as bad as the next man, and we laughed about the fact that it is very tough to make a phone call to somebody like Mick at his tackle shop here and not come away with a bruised bank account. I am trying to hard to exercise some decent self-control at the moment and resist buying the Tenryu Super Mix 240, a fishing rod that I really, really want. The Red Dragon Express that I have is still the ultimate (hard lure) plugging rod I reckon (ok, the Rod Bar 270 comes a very close second), but I could do with a little more "feel" for using soft plastics. Give me a while and I reckon I could talk myself into one......

• I spent a few hours on Saturday up at Nick Hart's Open Day, and it was fantastic. Lots of people there, loads of anglers fly fishing on the lakes, and some monster trout being caught, including one of over 17lbs that morning. Plus another over 14lbs. Those are some fish. It is great to see so many people out and about doing something connected with fishing, especially in the current climate. Roll on the summer.

• Still, who really gives a damn about blanking for bass when you can click here and watch the new video to the immense "Guardians of Asgard" song off Amon Amarth's latest album - the monstrously mighty Twilight of the Thunder God (see my original review here). As I have said before, who says music doesn't influence you ? And then you could weep tears of metal emotion to the video of arguably my favourite ever Amon Amarth song, "Cry of the Blackbirds", see here for the video. I should have been a Viking - time to grow the hair again, get on a horse (gonna need a strong one to carry me), grab my sword and dream of what could have been. Back to work........!!

Bring on the mackerel

• No more than a bait fish to many anglers, the humble mackerel is so much more. I can't wait for them to turn up in proper numbers around here so that I can take my daughters out fishing off the shore for them. They may or may not like going fishing in the end, but at least I can give my girls a chance to find out for themselves. They love eating fish, so I reckon if I can get them to catch a few that we can cook up together, at least they can experience the whole thing and then see if they like it.

• I am off to the Isles of Scilly in a couple of weeks, mainly to spend a few days with my wife over our 10th wedding anniversary (where does time go ?), but also to have a bit of time fishing with my mate Del over on St. Mary's. If the weather allows us to, we have some decent tides for a bit of mullet and pollack fishing, and I can't wait to get back over there. One of the most special places on earth, with some mighty fine fishing when things come together.

• I was thinking a bit the other night about my own fishing, and I came to the conclusion that I need to get back into my mullet fishing in a proper way. Light, mobile fishing is what really gets me going these days, and I used to be really heavily into mullet fishing a few years ago when I had a whole lot more time. There are few better fish to go for around our coastline, so I am going to make a concentrated effort to have a few trips out.

• Mullet can do your head in a major way (and I can lose my temper at them occasionally), but when they do take and explode off on that first run, it is something really special. I accept that the majority of our shore fishing in the UK is based around long, heavy shore rods, but most anglers from the saltwater world can not believe the thrill at sight fishing for mullet on what is essentially freshwater fishing gear.

• And on the metal front, another classic death metal band from my past has reformed and released a pretty damned good comeback album. Pestilence were always at the forefront of the extreme metal world, but they seemed to fade away after their last album. But they are back now, and their brand new album "Devouring Frenzy" is heavy as hell and drives into the middle of your skull like a drill. Check out some new tracks right here. That voice (roar !!) is still as instantly recognisable as it always was. Monday morning is always a good time for some decent extreme metal. We had a big family wedding over the weekend up near Birmingham, and Pestilence's metal precision is certainly making me feel a whole lot better this morning.

Fishing on islands

• I have always had a thing for fishing on islands - I am not sure why this is the case, but I guess the idea of being slightly cut off and even further away from what we might call "civilisation" appeals to me. I will never forget spending a day over on Dursey island on the west coast of Ireland for a TV show we made a while back. I don't remember any particularly big fish, but I do always remember the sense of adventure at getting that ropey cable car over there and then walking until we found somewhere that looked worth fishing. If you want to fish this part of the world, I would seriously recommend reading this photo essay here on my website, and then contacting the people whose details I have put in there.

• How about the insane cod and coalfish fishing we filmed off the coast of Norway on the tiny island of Rost ? See what I mean ? A long way from lots of people and the fishing was off the scale it was so good. Check out a load of photos here if you don't believe me.

• The photo you can see above was shot early one morning last year on the Minquiers, a huge reef system that lies a few miles off the coast of Jersey. I have been in love with the different Channel Islands for years now, and there are plenty of smaller islands around them that can be accessed and fished if you know what you are doing or go with experienced people (if you have seen me trying to navigate a boat, you will know why I choose the latter option !!). I have dreamed of going to the Minquiers for ages, and it was a huge thrill to spend a night out there. Check out how good that water looks for bass fishing - it was tough when we were out there, but anybody with half a brain is going to get excited about tide, reefs, islands, rips and eddies when it comes to bass fishing.

• Above is Jersey bass-freak Trevor Sangan fishing a popper off the back of the little island we stayed on at the Minquiers. What a perfect morning. There is also the famous Ecrehous reef system that lies off Jersey, plus numerous others. The bass guys over there have got access to such a vast area of fishable waters. I know that they guys here are always happy to help out with local advice, and they stock the rods, reels and lures that smash the bass big time.

• It just so happens that this exploratory French bass fishing/photography trip of mine that I am in the process of planning will most likely be based around an island or two. Perhaps the fact that islands get me going to much is partly down to the fact that you have to cross water to get to them, and that crossing of water always gives me that slightly increased sense of adventure. I don't care if it involves a boat, a ferry, a plane, a kayak or even a bit of a swim (preferably not), that crossing from the mainland over to an island always increases the heart rate. Fishing is an exciting thing to do in my book.

• I can't talk about islands without mentioning one of the most stunning places on earth - the Isles of Scilly. OK, so they don't have bass fishing, but they have insane shore fishing for species like mullet (monsters), pollack, huss, wrasse, conger etc. Accessing the different islands out there is like entering a new world every day. It's been too long......

• And on a different note, I watched a programme last night about the English 2003 Rugby World Cup campaign - mainly to remind myself of how great we once were, and to try and rid myself of all this heartache at being an English rugby supporter at the moment. The emotion of those days came flooding back and I think my wife caught me wiping the odd tear from the corner of my eyes - "got a bit of dust in there". She thinks I'm mad, but those were the days were they not ? We were world beaters once, with a team full of awesome rugby players who could do what it took under the severest of pressure. Can we ever be like that again ?

My best (red) fishing rod of 2008

• Being perfectly honest, I don't end up buying many fishing rods these days - working as a consultant for Hardy Greys means that I get to use and abuse plenty of different rods, but good as most of their gear is, they would be the first to admit that (at the moment), they do not make specialist bass plugging rods. Loads of UK tackle companies make very good spinning rods that will work just fine for a lot of bass fishing, but none that I am aware of actually make what I would now refer to as a "specialist bass lure rod", or in our terms, a plugging rod.

• But do you really need to get into all this specialist kit ? Entirely up to you, but let me say that 2008 saw me finally come around to realising just how much we have to learn about ultra-modern bass fishing, and on that front I am referring to the gear as well. My friend Graham Hill and I have spent far too long over the years talking about what we would ideally like to see from a plugging rod, but neither of us really knew who to turn to. I was hearing more and more about bass fishing over in France, and I had seen plenty of catalogues, but still I had never actually held a rod that I felt was a proper "plugging" rod. I mean a rod that is purpose designed to work with modern lures, not an all round spinning rod that is designed to chuck virtually anything.

• I have to give a lot of credit to Mick at Mr.Fish over in Jersey for putting me onto my ultimate plugging rod. There are various people that I talk to on a regular basis within the tackle industry, but it was through Mick that I first started to hear about these red Tenryu rods. Mick took himself off to France and did his own research - remember that the man is a serious bass junkie himself. We spoke a bit, he told me how good he believed they were (and bear in mind here that there are a lot of talented, forward thinking bass fishermen in the Channel Islands), but still I had not actually held one. But I had spent enough time and effort looking for the rod that I felt had to be out there, and I decided to take a punt on it - "go on Mick, here are my card details, please send me over the Tenryu Red Dragon Express". It was like a light bulb going on in that head of mine..............

• My thoughts have not changed one bit from when I first got hold of this awesome fishing rod - in fact the red rod keeps growing on me every single time I use it. Few rods I have owned over the years have given me as much pleasure as this one. See my original thoughts on the rod right here, from when I first got hold of it. I stand by everything I said. They are not cheap, but I am so into my bass fishing that I would have paid more if required - this rod does exactly what I want from a plugging rod, and sometimes I actually try to prevent people I fish with from picking it up, because I know that one wiggle and one cast and they'll be getting one for themselves. It has happened on several occasions. I still get emails from anglers asking me "I am using so and so spinning rod and it works just fine, so can the Tenryu rods really be that much better ?" Take it from me, they are a whole different world apart from what we have been used to. The sooner we accept that here in the UK we could really learn a whole load more about our bass fishing, the better we are going to get at it.

• I am not saying that every single angler who fishes with lures for bass should go and get one - make up your own mind, assess what you want, and take it from there. There must be something about them though, for more and more of these red rods are creeping into all the photographs I take of bass fishing. See here for example. Of course there are lots of spinning rods out there that will do the job really well (check back through my blog in 2008 for some thoughts on these kinds of rods), but it just depends on how far you want to take it.

• So without a doubt, my fishing rod of 2008 is the Tenryu Red Dragon Express - but I am now thinking about getting the Tenryu Rod Bar 270 as well, and I'll explain why. The Red Dragon Express does me perfectly for my shore based bass fishing, and I feel totally comfortable with the length of it - roughly 10' long. But I have used the Rod Bar 270 a fair amount as well, and it is an incredible bit of kit - and it is roughly 9' long. My own personal opinion is that the modern soft plastics that we are really getting into can be worked that little big more effectively with the 9' rod and a tiny bit more give in the tip. The Rod Bar 270 is as lightening quick as the Red Dragon Express, but as an overall bass rod I think perhaps it offers a more rounded solution to some of our bass fishing. I would be really happy to own both, and I can see myself using the different rods on different spots. Come on, I'm a fisherman, and I love fishing gear as much as the next man. My lure addiction shows no sign of abating for starters......

• So I had better start saving up for the Rod Bar 270 then !! This is serious money to spend on rods, but it is what I do and love, and I reckon they represent excellent value for money. I spend a lot of time with outstanding fly fishermen all over the world, and they have no problem accepting that if you want the best, you have got to pay for it. Take a top of the range Hardy, Sage or Loomis fly rod - they cost that much because they really are that good. Same with a rod like the Tenryu. Traditionally us UK sea anglers do not tend to like spending much money on spinning rods, for to us they have tended to be mere "add ons" to our more regular (and sometimes very expensive) high-tech beachcasters. But the world is changing, and a load of technology and thought is being poured into lure rods the world over. And us UK sea anglers are slowly but surely catching up................

• Del rang me from the Isles of Scilly with tales of more big mullet, including a stunning fish of 6lb 10oz - to any of us this is a proper mullet, indeed I have never caught one that big, but Del did say that that particular fish managed to grab his bait just before a very interested 10lb plus fish got there. These are problems I would love to be dealing with, believe me !! I know so many good mullet anglers over here, yet so few of them seem to get their head around the potential for huge fish over in the Isles of Scilly - and I can say that about Ireland as well. Too much to do, and too little time.

• I had a good day up with the guys at Hardy Greys on Monday, and what came out of it could be really exciting further down the line. Plans like we laid of course will take time to come to fruition, but if all goes well then we should be doing some cool stuff. Further news as and when I can say will of course come through this blog.

My best fishing line of 2008

• There are many outstanding lines out there these days, indeed you have got to go far to find a really bad one I reckon. If I use mono lines, it has to be Sufix (Tritanium, Zippy, Synergie etc., all outstanding), but with the amount of bass fishing I do, more often than not it is going to be braid that I end up fishing with.

• If I had to put my money on the table and come up with the best all round "regular" braid, then I still reckon Power Pro is it. This braid will work for our bassing just fine, indeed I have used Power Pro all over the world and it keeps on nailing fish. I see that Shimano have recently bought Power Pro, so I will be interested to see what happens here, but whatever does, you can use it with complete confidence.

• But, and this is a big but - earlier this year I began using the top of the range, high-tech Varivas braids from Japan, and I can't help but say that these are another step up. A "regular" braid like Power Pro is fantastic, but these premium Varivas braids are in a class of their own. There are various reasons as to why I use them so much now for my bass fishing, but in reality I just like using them, plain and simple. They just feel right.

• Braids don't come cheap as well all know, but they do last for ages if you underfill your spool and avoid loads of the dreaded wind knots. The absolute top of the range bass braid from Varivas is on the spool you can see in the photo above - a dull kind of grey colour. When I first felt this braid, I could not believe it, indeed I have never felt a line like it. A true 8 stand braid (as opposed to 4 strand), it is something else - the exact name is Varivas Avani Sea Bass Max Power PE, and you can get it right here. I said it wasn't cheap, but it is unlike any braid you have ever used. I use the 20lb for bass fishing, and I also have a reel filled with the 15lb for mullet fishing - honestly, this braid is so thin you can hardly see it !! In fact my mate Del rang me from the Isles of Scilly later yesterday afternoon to give me the update on his mullet fishing - three fish up to 6lbs, and guess what line he is using for it (and raving about) ? Yes, this exact braid in 15lb breaking strain.

• But it is the very slightly thicker and more "regular" feeling Varivas Avani Sea Bass Braid that you can see on the reel above that I have been using most of the time. Cheaper than the Max Power PE stuff, you can get it here. I really like the 23lb breaking strain in the green colour, with a short length of Varivas fluorocarbon leader to my lure. This braid is outstanding to fish with, and one fill up lasted me most of last year without any problem at all. You can horse fish on it. In my mind this braid is a kind of "ultra premium" regular braid (sounds like unleaded), while the Max Power PE is plain and simple "the best".

• My personal favourite for the moment has to be the slightly cheaper Varivas Avani Sea Bass Braid in 23lb breaking strain - I know the Max Power PE is a better line overall, but it is just so thin that sometimes it freaks me out. It is up to me now to get my head around using a line as thin and different feeling as this, because I know it works better for my fishing. But in all honesty, you can use both with complete confidence for all your bass fishing - they are that good.

Flounder fishing in amongst the icebergs

• OK, so icebergs might be a little bit of an exaggeration (us fishermen, never !!), but when did you last see masses of floating ice in a south west estuary ? I can't remember ever seeing it, but considering that we were set up before dawn after the coldest night down here for twenty years, it's hardly surprising. Along with the flooding tide came rafts of floating ice. I was a bit gutted not to get some big blue winter skies to show it all off properly, but the forecasted cloud cover came in far earlier than they said. I would not have been that shocked yesterday to have seen a polar bear come floating past on top of an iceberg, it was that cold. OK, so not somewhere like Canada cold, but it was proper UK cold at least.

• Still, it was a challenge for the guys to put baits out in between the rafts of floating ice, and a few sets of gear were lost - not to rocks but to the ice. How often can you say that in the UK ? Check out all the ice floating past in the photo above - mad !! Kingbsridge is such a pretty part of the world, and while I can not say that flounder are really my thing, I always love being out and about photographing them with a bunch of mates. With all these cold east winds and resulting clear seas we have had down here, at least the flounder fishing has been keeping lots of anglers going. The forecast says it will change over the weekend, so I will be interested to see how this might kick start our winter fishing.....

• The guys did well to catch a couple of fat winter flounder yesterday in some tricky conditions, and thanks to Yorkie and his magic frying pan and kettle, we were kept warm with hot bacon sarnies and fresh cups of tea. The man is a legend !! Amazing that he can cook so well when he is out fishing, when I hear from his wife Debbie that Rob's culinary skills at home are what might be referred to as "limited ". Damn fine sarnies though, and thanks to Andy for giving my sheepdog Jess a bit of his - she wasn't getting any of mine !! Those eyes looked at me like I hadn't fed her for weeks, but I know Jess too well......

• To talk of warmer climes - I had an email this morning from John Crabb, a Flycastaway guide and one of the finest all round anglers I have ever had the pleasure to fish with anywhere on this earth. I have worked with John in the Seychelles and also out in South Africa last year. John nailed a monster ragged tooth shark of around 500lbs (yes, you read it correctly - five hundred pounds) over the Christmas period down at Jeffrey's Bay, and another FlyCastaway guide (Tim, awesome angler as well) landed one of around 350lbs !!! John's shark took him under an hour to land, and that is some feat of fishing. Check out a photo of a somewhat smaller (but still monster) ragged tooth shark that John nailed for my cameras last year, right here. The guys also nailed some nice kob as well - jealous ? Me ? Never........complete and utter fishing insanity. Bet they didn't have to dodge rogue ice floes though !!

• My late Del also rang me from the Isles of Scilly yesterday - they had an extremely rare frost, that is how cold it was, but the winds have swung around for him and the mullet are back in and on the feed big time. He has a fantastic mullet of 7.5lbs a couple of days before Christmas, plus got smashed by a proper monster, but then the winds swung around and killed the fishing for him. Just Del and his mate fishing over there, and nobody else. Heaven, pure heaven.

A few nice fish around

• There were a few decent fish caught over the weekend down here, so I guess that big southerly wind we had on Friday night did a bit of good. It played havoc though with Del over in the Isles of Scilly, but even so he landed a few mullet up to 5lbs - the bigger fish were there, but with so many maggots coming out of the weed he was unable to bring them larger fish within casting range. Still, a 5lb mullet would do me just fine !!

• A friend of mine landed a 28lb conger eel for a mate of his on a rock mark in South Devon that I used to fish for bull huss a lot, with some success as well - I had them to just under 14lbs off there myself, and I saw them landed to over 15lbs. My mate told me he nearly got washed in landing the eel, and they lost a bigger fish as well. Take it easy on those rocks when a bit swell is running.

• I also heard of a 12lb thornback ray and a 12lb plus cod from the River Tamar - it can be a frustrating and difficult place to fish at times, but the Tamar has a long history of chucking up decent fish. Virtually all my best shore caught cod came from Devil's Point at the mouth of the Tamar, fishing usually an hour and a half either side of low water on all sizes of tide. I never found any kind of pattern to catching cod in the Tamar, and it was more a case of if you could hold your bait out there in the tide, you were in with a shout of a decent fish. Daytime, night time, small tides, big tides, rough weather, flat calm weather, rain sunshine, doesn't matter - peeler crab always worked for me for the cod, with prawns killing for the thornbacks, but the prawns catch the cod as well.

• Flounder fishing has never been my thing, but the guys have been catching some nice fish. A friend of mine has had two flounders of 3lb 12oz already, plus numerous other big ones, and the signs seem to be good for the Kingsbridge estuary especially to switch on sometime very soon. Good to hear that the famous River Teign has been producing so many quality flounder again.

• Below are a few more examples of some black and white photographs that I have been playing around with. Any comments are more than welcome, and please bear in mind that I am not always sure how these low-res JPEGs look on other computer screens - I work on calibrated screens in my office here, and there is always a degree of loss of detail when you down-res an image to put on the internet. They look very good on my screens (but then I would say that !!) at full size, so please bear that in mind when you look at them.

• I photographed this stunning girl in southern India a few years ago, in a local village close to where we were fishing for mahseer (see here for some photos) - I have never seen anybody look through a lens with such ease and confidence.

• The above photo was shot in Zambia when we were chasing the outrageous tigerfish on the fly - what a fish, what a place. A bunch of photos from that trip are here. It's those skies that work for me here.

• This kid was fishing with a dropnet off the local pier on Los Roques, an archipelago off the coast of Venezuela. I tend to obviously major on shooting fishing, but I also like to look around for different photos when I can. See a bunch of stuff from Los Roques here.

• We blew yet another tyre heading back to Kampala in Uganda, after smashing the Nile perch at Murchison Falls in a major way. A bunch of locals gathered around to see what on earth a couple of white guys were doing with a dusty Landrover, a spare tyre and a jack. The kid you see above just looked so serene and calm. See here for more photos.

• I am not completely sure whether fishing gear works in black and white yet, but I do really like the photo above that was shot out in Canada a few months ago. A very simple composition, but something about the angles always worked in my head.

Fishing in black and white

• As a photographer, I see the world in colour - having had no formal photography tuition or anything like that, I have no history with things like black and white, but as a medium is has begun to interest me a lot more. I love learning new things, and playing around with a bit of black and white photography is forcing me to think about completely different aspects to a photograph.

• Below are a few examples of some stuff I have been playing around with - I am not sure where this might go, but I have a few ideas, and it would be interesting to see where fishing in black and white could be taken......

• Any thoughts or comments are more than welcome. Fishing is such a colourful, vibrant thing to be involved with and it might seem a bit strange to take such wonderful colours out of a photo, but I reckon it can look very cool indeed with the right photo. I suppose about the most outstanding black and white fishing based photography that I have recently seen is of course in the many striking Simms adverts, shot by a photographer called Tibor Nemeth. Now that is some proper black and white stuff to aspire to !!

• And as I was typing this blog, I got a call from my mate Del (better known as Trotter) over in the Isles of Scilly - he was trying to keep calm as a load of big mullet were mooching around. "Just checking things out" were his words, but I don't fancy the chances of his taxi clients getting picked up later this afternoon. Trotter said there was loads of rotten weed around and the weather forecast is looking really good for him. I am going to try and get over there in January to photograph some of this outstanding fishing. I also have a feeling I might hear of a nice mullet or two over the next few days.

Some big Isles of Scilly mullet

• My mate Del rang me up from the Isles of Scilly this morning to give me an update on his recent mullet fishing exploits - and the old boy's been been doing pretty good !! Mullet to 7lbs last week, and a nice fish of just over 6lbs this morning, before the winds swung around on him and killed it for a while. That is some outstanding fishing, yet so few anglers have any idea that the Isles of Scilly produces some awesome mullet when the conditions are right. It is coming up now for their best time of year on the mullet and I am hoping to get over if time and weather allow, sometime over the next couple of months.

• Below you can see Del bringing a nice mullet to the net from a filming trip we did over there some time ago now - there are few places I have been on this earth that are as pretty and unspoilt as the Isles of Scilly. Del and his mate have got all the mullet fishing you could hope for to themselves. How about the outrageous shore fishing for pollack as well ? One of my all time favourite species off the shore, and one of my favourite places ever. You can't go there and not fall in love with the place. If you are lucky enough, it will be Del and his taxi that picks you up from the airport - he runs Island Taxis. Del is always really helpful towards visiting fishermen, especially if the bribe involves good quality mullet hooks.

• Not that we get excited when we are out fishing or anything. Below you can see Del frantically making hand signals to me about some rather large mullet he was seeing - fishermen never exaggerate !! I remember filming this particular episode in fact, and we saw some cracking mullet swimming around, but the crew kept spooking them because they needed to be around us all the time. I had to ask them to hang back and let Del and I do our stuff, and as far as I can remember, we got a mullet or two for the camera. I might have got somewhat overexcited as well - mullet tend to do that to me. Proper fish.

• One of these days the phone is going to go with Del telling me about a double figure mullet he has just caught - it is going to happen. An old friend of his had one of just under 10lbs a few winters ago, and Del has had a proper double in his net before, only for the net to break and the fish get away (you need a bigger and newer net). I remember that particular phone call being more of a counselling session than anything else !! He is seeing some huge fish at the moment, often just out of range, but the fish will make a mistake soon enough. Del told me his mate got smashed to pieces by a seriously proper fish last week on those big tides.

• Seems to me that a lot of fishing is really beginning to pick up at the moment, especially on the bass and mullet front - the extreme amount of rain we had in August has to have had a far greater effect than we tended to think. My mate Andy had a couple of nice bass on Sunday morning on the Cornish coastline, including a fish just under 5lbs and a tidy one that came off, all on lures. I would have been out with him normally, but I had my in-laws staying with us for the weekend and I wanted to be around. They are very cool people. But I knew that Andy would catch bass - the tides and conditions were about as spot on as I can remember all year.

Monday morning - back to it

• By rights I should be posting a photo of the current dire weather conditions, but I can't face that on a Monday morning. Instead, here is a shot of one of my most favourite places on earth, the Isles of Scilly. Yes, we love to talk about the weather here in the UK, indeed some would say that we are mildly obsessed with it, but come on, let's be honest here, just how bad has this "summer" been so far ? Can it get any worse ?

• I had an awesome week on the Isle of Wight with my family, taking full advantage of any sunshine we got to head to the beach and go fishing for crabs, blennies and prawns with my two young girls. Luckily they still think their dad is quite sane when he jumps into the water and comes out clutching a crab in his hands !! How long they will think I am relatively cool for is anybody's guess though. But we had a blast - on one day we would all be whacking the suncream on, and on the next my wife and I would be walking across the beach in a bracing 50mph breeze. We got the lot and I loved it.

• The week started off fairly costly though as my sheepdog Jess cut her paw really badly on a rock and we had to take her to the vet to get the wound stitched up properly - not cheap, but vets know we'll pay virtually anything to look after our pets. Jess is still not allowed to go for proper walks, it was not a nice cut at all, but hopefully soon she will be fully healed so I can take her fishing again.

• Anyway, back to work with a vengeance, and life is about to get properly hectic again. I am off over to Jersey to photograph some bass fishing later this week for a few days, flying straight out of my local airport here in Plymouth - very handy.

• Another week or so here after Jersey and I then head over to the east coast of Canada to photograph some more of this awesome Atlantic salmon fishing they have in these incredible crystal clear rivers. Sight fishing for these fish blew me away last year, and I can't wait for this trip. There are a load of photos from that trip here, and you can find a photo essay here. Like last year, I will be travelling with Pete from Aardvark McLeod. And I rather bet Pete is hoping that we will not be sharing rooms so he can get some sleep - I tend to take a while to adjust to time differences and I seriously struggle to keep quiet when I wake up at 3am all the time. All I want to do is get out there and get the pictures, and I can't stand having to wait for dawn !!

• Virtually straight after this trip to Canada, I am turning around and heading back over to south east Ireland to get a load more bass fishing photos - plus some fishing of course !! As always for this kind of trip, I will be getting the Stena Line ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare. This is such a good way of getting to Ireland as you can carry all the gear you need and not worry for one second about weight restrictions etc. Check out a load of photos from my trip there a while back, see here.

• I have been keeping in close contact with Graham over in Ireland, and when the weather has relented they have been catching some fantastic bass as always. Jealous, me ? Never.....

• I am getting back from Ireland in time for my eldest daughter's 4th birthday - where does time go ? Then a week or so here at home before heading off to South Africa for ten days to photograph some rock and surf fishing near to the Mozambique border, and then some fly fishing for yellowfish on the Vaal river. See here for some yellowfish photos that I shot a while back. I can't wait to get back to Africa, it has been too long. There is no place on earth that feels the same as Africa.

• And then in October I am trying to plan it that I will be here in the UK for a decent length of time. It's all very well shooting all this material, but I then need time here to sell it properly, and I am also rather hoping that an Indian summer might just come along to give me a few more weeks on the bass fishing around here. Not much is happening right now with near gale force onshore winds, but a friend of mine had a load of nice bass on bait early last week before the monster winds. The fish are there, but too often we can't get at them. I am hearing of a few fish to plugs as well, but again, only when the weather allows it.

• I heard last week from my mate Cato over in Norway that a friend of his had just landed a 50lb halibut on the fly !!! I am really pleased to hear of this being done in Europe, so well done to the angler concerned - to actually go out and do this far out fly fishing takes some doing, believe me. I know that big halibut on the fly are a real possibility out at Rost, where we made a fishing programme and also I shot a load of monster coalfish on the fly, see here for the photos. April, May and into June are your best times for a go at the halibut.

• Make sure to check out Nick Hart's blog here. Not only has he gone and revamped the look of it, but you should check out his post here about an open day he is holding at Exe Valley Fishery on Saturday 30th August. Get yourself along for the day, it will be a blast.

Too much weed and colour.....

• OK, so now I am getting seriously frustrated - the winds last week knocked any bass fishing on the head for me, but I felt there was a chance of an early morning trip on Sunday morning to fish the last of the flood tide. I knew the forecast had to have been a bit out though when my alarm went off at 4.30am and it was peeing down outside and blowing pretty hard, but I picked Andy up and we headed out to the cliffs. If he had suggested we head home at that moment I would have done so, for the conditions were not good at all. Even in the half light you could see the surging sea, murky colour to the water and weed everywhere, but we gave it a go anyway.....

• I was gobsmacked to see Andy catch a bass on about his third cast, and so we fished on for a while. But the amount of weed in the water and the horrible colour put paid to any further chances of a fish, and to be perfectly honest I think Andy did great to catch the one fish he did. Where on earth has our rather pathetic attempt at a summer gone ? Is it just me or are we getting a lot more west and especially north west winds these days ? I really dislike north west winds for fishing.

• Remember that I recently put up an online gallery of our Irish bassing exploits from a couple of weeks ago. Check here for them, and indulge yourself in the big blue skies we got towards the end of that awesome week.

• You might be able to see that Andy has gone and bought himself one of the red Tenryu plugging rods (check them out here). I told him not to pick mine up a while back, but he did, and he has gone and got one - yesterday was his first chance to fish with it, so perhaps that is the reason he was so keen to scrabble down the cliffs and fish in those horrible conditions !! As you can probably guess, he is raving about the new rod.

• Above and below are a couple of photos of the Tackle House Feed Shallow lures, in a white kind of pearl/silver colour that I really like for bass fishing over foul ground. This is without doubt the bass lure of the moment, and I know my mate Graham is still mourning of the loss of his to a crocodile of a fish the other day. Oh well mate, sing to me again next time and I'll get you a couple !! Check these awesome lures here. The fact that these lures swim so shallow and so seductively is pure music to my ears, somewhat unlike Graham's singing. Notice that you will never find me singing as I am completely tone deaf and have a voice like a howler monkey.

• My mate Del rang me from the Isles of Scilly last night to tell about a stack of blue sharks they are catching on the boats. This is awesome sport on light gear and I love hearing about these magnificent fishing being around. Del also told me that he saw some big tuna jumping clear out of the water very close to them, and these kind of sightings are being regularly reported down there. It can't be that long until somebody heads down there and has a proper go at them on rod and line. I would imagine the shock of seeing a big tuna jump out of the water was akin the shock at me whacking him with a pillow over in Mozambique because he was snoring so loudly. Honestly, it ain't normal.

• And on the metal front, check out the new album by Soulfly, called Conquer. Check out some tracks here. This thing is growing on me. Now if only the original Sepultura line up would get back together and rip our heads open like they used to. I first saw "the original" Sepultura years ago when they toured their album Beneath the Remains for the first time, and they tore the Marquee Club up big time. Those were my stage-diving days !! I photographed them a while ago (check here), but once Max left it was never the same.

• I am not going to talk too much about the cricket and the fact that have just lost a Test series to South Africa - was it just "luck" that Gerhard called me from there about half an hour after they had beaten us ? Me thinks not................Michael Vaughan was a fantastic skipper and I am really sad to see him step down as England captain.

Plugging for pollack

• I went to try for bass again around the low water on Friday evening, and again the conditions looked good - not quite as promising as the day before, but still very favourable. It was just me and my dog Jess and nobody else. After all the rain we had, I never had a drop of it out fishing and there was even a really pretty sunset as well. What an awesome way to spend a Friday evening - out on the rocks with nobody else in sight.

• Low tide was around 8.40pm, and I really wanted to try the last few hours of the back tide and then an hour or so up, but unlike on Thursday, I never even saw a sniff of a bass. Why ? I have no idea. It felt good, I liked the slight jump in the size of the tide, and it just screamed bass at me, but all I caught were some small pollack. At least these honest little things tend to jump on the hook when a blank is looming, and while I love catching (proper) pollack from the shore, it's the bass that I am after.

• Pollack are actually a species that more anglers should chase - I don't mean the little ones that are hitting me all the time at the moment, but the bigger fish that you can catch from the deeper rock marks. I love fishing for them in Ireland, but the best shore fishing for pollack that I have come across so far has been out with my mate Del in the stunning Isles of Scilly. Hooking big pollack in over twenty five metres of water on deep-spun jellyworms and sandeels is about as much fun as fishing is going to get. I also really like using lighter spinning gear to chase them from the millions of rock marks over in Ireland - I still believe that there are many thousands of spectacular fishing spots over there still waiting to be discovered. I only with I had a lifetime to spend looking around...........

• The tides are now building nicely into next week, and I'm going to try and fit in as much bass fishing as weather and work will allow before heading off to Montana in a couple of weeks. The great thing about going plugging is that you can do lots of short, sharp sessions that can fit in well around a "normal" life. I love the fact that you are always doing something - it is a very "involved" way of sea fishing, and moving around the rocks and gullies all the time to look for places to cast really keeps me thinking. Staring at rod tips chasing bigger fish is what makes us sea anglers what we are, but light tackle, mobile fishing is where it's at for me at the moment.

• I am booked up for a week's fishing and photography with my mate Graham Hill over in Ireland for July - the tides are fantastic and all we can do is hope for a bit of decent weather. There is a strong chance of some awesome bass fishing at that time, both on lures and on bait. Check here for the sort of fishing I have had with Graham over the last few years. Any keen sea anglers should get themselves over to Ireland for their shore fishing. I can't get enough of the place.

• After that week with Graham, I head back via North Wales to do a couple of bass related jobs up there. This should be a blast and I can't wait to see this part of Wales, I have heard so much about it. It should be really interesting.

• And then at the end of that week in July it is the CLA Game Fair where Nick Hart and I do fishing demonstrations together over the three days. If you have any interest in fishing, hunting, shooing or the outdoors, you should get yourself along to this fantastic event, held this year up at Blenheim Palace. I always look forward to this weekend - what a shame it had to be cancelled last year, but this one is the 5oth anniversary and it will be a blast. If you come along, I'll be around the Fisherman's Village most of the time, so please come and say hi. You could even come and watch the demos that Nick and I do !!