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.

Fly fishing for yellowfish

• I am sitting in Johannesburg airport, waiting for my flight home, so I thought I would use a bit of the time to update this blog with some news of my last few days here in South Africa. This is the first internet connection I have had since my last update. What a trip. What a place. What awesome fishing......

• We have been staying on the banks of the Vaal river at Parys, about an hour and a half outside Johannesburg, chasing these awesome smallmouth yellowfish on the fly. Above is Jako Lucas with a seriously good "smallie" that he took on a wet fly stripped back slowly. Working with these FlyCastaway guides is always a fantastic experience, for they are all outstanding fly fishermen and are huge fun to spend time around. The more time I spend with the guys simply reaffirms my belief that they are one of the best guiding operations on this planet. Check out what they do here, and then get in touch with them if you want to experience some of the world's best fly fishing.

• We spent a bit of time rafting and fishing certain sections of the Vaal river, and the two photos above show Jako landing a nice fish and then paddling down to the next spot. Africa is usually about the whole experience, and I love it with a passion. There is just so much fishing to do.

• Above is Jako with another big smallmouth yellowfish - these magnificent creatures are arguably more loved than trout down here, and big numbers of fly fishermen target them in the Vaal and Orange river systems. You can fish dry flies and wet flies, with upstream nymphing being particularly popular and successful in the faster, shallower water. These fish pull big time. All the FlyCastaway guys are so easy to photograph.

• Here is FlyCastaway guide and all round "freaky good" angler John Crabb bringing a "smallie" to hand as the sun goes down on another perfect African day. Last night they smashed the fish hard on small dry flies, wading right out into the middle of the river. What is great is that the water is warm enough to wet wade - no need for chest waders.

• The Vaal is also full of huge catfish and some nice carp, including this stunner that Jako nailed as he was trying for the yellowfish. We were hoping that it might be one of the rarer and more elusive largemouth yellowfish - these thing grow huge, but they are not as prolific as the hugely numerous smallmouth yellows. Very much worth chasing though.

• You can see from this head shot just how adept the smallmouth yellowfish is at grubbing around on the bottom for the large percentage of its food. They simply light up when the sun is out, and all fish are of course returned.

• Here's that carp barely slipping into the landing net - Jako just managed to fit him in there. The carp are in fantastic condition and John Crabb nailed a few that he saw literally tailing like bonefish. He also got smoked by a big, 30lb plus catfish !!

• This has been a hell of a trip, meeting some fantastic new people, and also catching up with some good friends. I am already making plans for multiple return visits, but not before I get home and actually spend some proper time with my family. These last few weeks have been seriously travel hectic (check backwards on the blog for the info), and I have photographed a huge range of material that is going to illustrate a serious number of features all around the world. Now though I am so looking forward to getting home to my girls and being around for a while - my wife is awesome the way she holds the fort when I am away and I could not do what I do without her. If all goes well I should be landing at Heathrow early tomorrow morning, and then I have about a three and a half hour drive back down to Plymouth. Hopefully the bass are biting big time......

• Far too many people simply have no idea about the world class fishing that is on offer throughout Africa, from some outrageous rock and surf fishing on the southern coastline through to monstrous Nile perch in Uganda. I have done a lot in Africa over the years, and I have every intention of doing a whole load more. This place gets to you in a big way. A lot of the fishing really need not cost the earth - and some really good news is that the incredible beach fishing in Namibia is really firing once again, and the guys are catching stacks of big sharks again, together with the edible species such as kob and steenbras.

• Talking about kob (kabeljou), I am already about to put some dates aside for next autumn to come back down and fish with John Crabb again for some potentially huge kob - they have been caught recently to over 100lbs from the shore. Yes, you read that right, that is a "fish" and not a "shark" - imagine what that must look like. Anybody into serious shore fishing needs to check these kob out. A lot about how they are caught reminds me of our own bass, although this is on a somewhat extreme scale.

Some of my favourite bass fishing photos

Canon 1D MK11, 16-35mm f2.8L lens (at 16mm), ISO 200, f8. 1/125th, polarising filter

• I thought it might be a bit of fun to create a web gallery of some of my favourite bass fishing photographs that I have shot over the last few years - mainly over in Ireland, but a few from the south west as well. Bass are without doubt one of the fish I most enjoy being around, from both a photographic and a sporting angle, and I have built up a vast library of bass related material. Check here for the bass fishing photo gallery. There is also a link to it on the homepage of this blog.

• I shot the photo above on the west coast of Ireland, on the stunning and wild Clare coastline - this is local angler Bill Ryan touch ledgering for bass on a remote beach as storm clouds gather. Check here for a photo essay on my trip over there a while back.

• I have just found out that a couple of "new" fishing programmes of mine were premiered on Discovery RealTime Extra last night - these two half hour programmes, called "Bass Fishing with Henry Gilbey" were cut from the footage of a bass DVD we shot a while back, and I have not seen them yet. But we had a complete blast filming the DVD (my producer/director Shaun is about as good as it gets), and the fishing was insane, so I would imagine that the programmes have turned out ok ..............and you know Discovery, I have a sneaking suspicion that the shows might just get repeated a few times more !!

• There are a whack load more bassing photos on my website, click here to have a look at them. I am looking at all kinds of things at the moment to give me a dollop of inspiration, for the weather is still completely pants here - how much wind and heavy rain are we going to get ? You've guessed it, I'm fed up with it !! I have worn full waterproofs to walk my dog Jess more in the last few weeks than I did almost the entire winter, and that can't be right. As for going plugging...............

• But of course there are some guys who are thriving in this wet weather - check out Nick Hart's blog for a report on some fantastic local salmon fishing they are having at the moment. After reading this, it seems a bit strange to be heading over to Norway tomorrow to photograph the same fish !! But it should be a good few days, they have been getting some really big salmon over there this season, so we shall see what happens. I will keep the blog updated as much connections allow me.

• There is a nice feature of mine in the new Sea Angler (pages 80, 81, 82 and 83), on the steenbras and kob fishing in Namibia (Africa) - I shot these a while ago, but I can never forget the outstanding fishing I have been lucky enough to experience out there. A bunch more photos can be found here as well. Out of this world.

• Dark, sullen skies outside call for a bit of extreme metal, and this is especially relevant to me, as Norway is of course the spiritual home of black metal - you all knew that didn't you ??!! But this particular band hails from the US, and their latest album is so immense that I can't really put it into words - "Assasins - Black Meddle Part 1" by Nachtmystium is a huge release, and you should be adding this to your collection as soon as possible. Check out a few tracks here. The kind of CD that takes multiple listens to fully open up to you, this is a true "grower" of an album. So good it brings tears of emotion to my eyes - just the kind of thing to have blasting at full volume in my car when I leave for Heathrow at 4.30am tomorrow morning. Ah, the joys of the M5 and M4 motorways........