FieldSports front cover

• I just received a copy of the latest issue of the fantastic FieldSports magazine, and I was really pleased to see that they have used a photo of mine on the cover - this strange looking fish is a milkfish, one of the fastest things I have ever seen on the saltwater flats. There is a feature of mine in the magazine about fly fishing the ultra-remote Seychelles atolls of these milkies as they are known. I always wanted somebody to pick up on this particular shot to use as a cover, and I applaud FieldSports' bold decision to use it. But then I might be a little biased......!!

• Fishing like this ain't even close to cheap, but I have yet to see any better saltwater fly fishing anywhere. I go on these trips because they are work for me - this might not sound quite right I know, but it's what I do. These atolls are freaky good for fishing, and if you can do this kind of thing, you need to speak to the fly fishing travel company Aardvark McLeod. These guys represent the awesome South African based FlyCastway company here in the UK, and I can not speak highly enough of their operation. You can see some photos here.

• I have just got back from photographing a job around St. Ives down in Cornwall - early this morning I boarded a boat at Hayle and headed out with three guys to photograph them netting sandeels. They caught masses and when I have sorted out the photos I will get some up here on this blog. The north coast of Cornwall was stunning early this morning, and we were only a few hundred years off the beach at St. Ives. What a great bunch of guys to work with.

• Photographing this kind of fast moving action requires that you get in amongst it and shoot the hell out of it, knowing that the moving boat and constantly shifting light will kill a percentage of the photos for you. But if you are prepared to work around the guys as they go about their work then you can come away with some really cool stuff. This is not a job for anybody who likes to spend ages planning their shots or doesn't like getting their cameras and lenses wet - get right in there is the key. Full details of this bait operation next week - are there many better things to use for bass than a live sandeel ?

Nobody does it like the BBC

• The majority of fishermen I meet have an increased level of interest in nature and the outdoors, so I am presuming that a load of you watched the staggering new programme on BBC1 last night - Nature's Great Events - 1. The Great Melt. If not, watch it as soon as you can on iPlayer right here. I love nature related programmes, and I still believe that when the BBC puts their mind to it they make the greatest natural history shows on earth. I spent most of last night's episode with my jaw on the floor. How many of you went "aah, aren't they sweet" when the first polar bear mum and her cub trundled across the screen ? I bet they aren't so sweet when they haven't fed for four months !!

• How on earth is the BBC ever going to replace the timeless David Attenborough ? His commentary always lends an air of class, and I appreciate the fact that there is a gentle but persuasive environmental feel where it is required. Utterly outstanding, and I personally can not wait for the episode next week on the salmon migrations - how cool do the slow-motion shots of the bears waiting open mouthed for the salmon look ? Just imagine getting proper budgets and time to make fishing programmes look as cool as that ? And how about shooting them in full HD ? The mind boggles at the possibilities........

Photo courtesy Jako Lucas

• I mentioned some recent and very good ray fishing around here from the other day, but how about the ray that you can see in the photo above ? Now that is proper ray fishing !! It is a 90lb plus stingray (not sure which type, there are loads) caught in South Africa a few weeks ago by one of the FlyCastaway guides, Jako Lucas. I have worked with Jako in the Seychelles and in South Africa, and as well as being a seriously talented fly fisherman and guide, Jako is also scarily good at rock and surf tactics for the silly-sized kinds of fish you can see here. More keen fishermen should check out the shore and boat fishing opportunities in South Africa - how do you fancy being spooled by a shark that takes exactly 1000 yards (yes, one thousand) of line off you ? I know somebody that this happened to. We have some awesome fishing around us here, but it never gets as "out there" as it does in places like Africa. Insanity prevails.

• Thanks to Stu and a couple of comments he placed on this blog (check here)- please take the time to read the last few posts on his own blog right here, and take serious heed of what can so easily go wrong when you go fishing. Thankfully the guys are all ok, but they were horribly close to a serious disaster. Push your fishing hard, but please play it as safe as you can.

This weather has been due......

• If you have got the weather we have at the moment then welcome to the club - mist, grey skies, drizzle and generally a complete lack of sunshine is all I can see out of my office window right now. But we can't really complain that much with the (relative) amount of sunshine we've had so far this winter, in fact it's been pretty good. If I could be sent a little bit more of the giant golden orb for a photography job with Nick Hart on Thursday, that would be great - but the forecast says otherwise at the moment.......

• I have put a few photos up from the ultra remote atolls of the Seychelles to see what you think of them in black and white - photographing those huge blue skies on pristine flats is as close to somebody like me is ever going to get to paradise, and I hope you notice that I am not complaining (too much) about our current weather. That's because on Saturday I am heading off to photograph some flats fishing out in Belize. Bring it on !!

• I am convinced my end that huge blue skies can work well in various shades of black and white, if there is enough detail from the clouds to provide a load of depth and contrast. Don't get me wrong, I love the extremes of colour that flats based photography can provide, and I am really hoping for endless blue skies out in Belize, but I will also be looking out for any black and white opportunities that I see out there. On these kinds of work trips (might as well try and work in some cool places) I have to try to nail as wide a range of material as possible.

• I am travelling out to Belize with a friend of mine called James, and he just happens to be one of the most awesome fly fishermen I have ever worked with. The guy is extremely modest and would never acknowledge this, but he has got a serious talent for smashing serious numbers of fish on the fly, indeed I believe James has landed over 100 different species of fish on the fly so far. Now that takes some doing. I have worked with enough talented fly fishermen on this earth to know how well James can fish.

• The target species in Belize are going to be (weather depending) tarpon, permit and possibly snook, but we will wait until we get there and take into account our guides' advice. James and I are travelling via the international fly fishing travel company Aardvark McLeod - I do a lot of work with these guys and they always impress me in a big way. Not all fishing overseas has to cost an arm and a leg.....

• On Saturday, James and I are flying out to Miami, overnight there, and then we head down to Belize the next morning. We have four and a half days' for fishing and photography (sleep is not an option, that's for the flights home), and then we arrive back in the UK just in time for the first match in the Six Nations. English rugby worries the hell out of me at the moment, but surely a massive revival is just about due ?

Happy Christmas to you all

• A very Happy Christmas to all of you - I hope you have a fantastic break, and here's to 2009. I am going to take some time off now to be with my family, so I'll post back here in a week or so. I can not wait to spend some proper time with them all and see my two girls opening their presents on Christmas morning. This is what it's all about. I have just spent the weekend looking after my daughters while my wife was in London, and we had such a blast. You will be glad to know that I have so far managed to resist jumping up down on their Iggle Piggle or Upsy Daisy teddies......

• I have managed to put another online photo gallery up from my latest trip over to Ireland, right at the end of November - click here to have a look at some of the photos from yet another awesome bass trip. I hope you enjoy them, and there will be plenty more to come next year I am sure.

• Check out the brand new issue of Sea Angler magazine - look on pages 46, 47, 48, 49 and 50 for another article in my modern bass fishing series. I am really pleased with the photos that their designer chose to use. Make sure to watch out for the next issue as well, for they are going for a big relaunch of the magazine, and I can't wait to see how it looks. The magazine goes from strength to strength I reckon.

• Above is another shot from my playing around with black and white conversions - I took this on my first ever trip to what I term the "ultra remote Seychelles", and it took me a couple of looks through my files to pick this one out. Personally I am blown away by this simple photograph in black and white, but I would be interested to know what you think.

• The photo below is also from that same trip, of my friend James holding onto a barracuda he had just nailed on a fly on the flats. An awesome angler and a very easy guy to photograph, and again, a shot that I really like in black and white - not something I would have picked put immediately, but the sunlight glowing on the tail I reckon gives a really strong "in" with one's eye.

• Have a good one - thanks for reading this blog of mine, it means a hell of a lot to know that so many people keep checking back here to see what is going on, and the numbers keep on growing. Remember that you can also subscribe to my blog via Feedblitz on the right hand side of this page. Have a wonderful Christmas.

Front cover and some Irish bass thoughts

• Above is a current cover photo of mine on the front of the US magazine Destination Fish - this strange looking fish is a bumphead parrotfish that was caught by South African fly angler Rob Lewis out on Providence atoll in the ultra-remote Seychelles. I believe that I might have been the first fishing photographer to document these creatures being successfully targeted and captured on the fly, on the flats, and I have got a bunch of awesome photos. I really like their choice of my photograph for the cover (well I would, wouldn't I ??!!), and I imagine that it certainly "jumps" at you from the newstands. There is only one guiding company on this earth that I trust to put you onto this kind of world class saltwater fly fishing, and that is FlyCastaway. Fishing like this does not come cheap, but if you can do it, talk to Pete or Charlotte at Aardvark McLeod. Check out a bunch of my Seychelles photos here, here and here.

• I have naturally been thinking a lot about my recent trip over to Ireland - was there anything more we could have done to nail a few more bass when the weather went really still, clear and settled ? Usually I would have fancied our chances big time on the baits, but the weeks leading up to my most recent trip had seen insane amounts of rain, and a lot of the bait marks were far too coloured up to produce the goods. I have just heard that in fact they are starting to fish well again as the freshwater starts to clear away. Sod's law !!

• I know that Andy is just about coming to terms with his first Irish experience, and I hope to get him back over there next year. On our penultimate morning he got hit on his lure, and then immediately saw a huge bass jump behind it. This fish came at his lure a couple more times, but would not take - Andy nearly fell off his rock, and put the size at "well into double figures", and bear in mind that this guy has personally witnessed fish to 13lbs plus being landed over in Cornwall, so he knows his bass. Much like Graham back in July, Andy proceeded to talk fluent Swahili for about an hour after he saw that huge bass......

• I manged to get a bass over the 6lb mark on this penultimate morning, but as Pat grabbed the lip of the fish, it turned and shed the hooks. It hit me right next to a rock and really put on the gas, but these red Tenryu rods have serious power in reserve for when you need to play them hard. So we did not get the photos, but at least the fish went back just fine, that is always the most important thing to me. I de-barb all my treble hooks on my bass lures as I believe it is far better for the fish, and unhooking is just so much easier and more efficient. The less time spent trying to remove hooks, the better the fish recovers. I do not believe that I have lost any fish due to doing this - the bass that got away would have got away with or without barbs, and I would hope that the majority of bass anglers crush the barbs on their trebles.

• That morning also saw a rather excited Pat doing his best not to fall off another rock with excitement - with all this nearly falling off the rocks, you probably think they are all overdoing the Guinness, but in fact Pat saw a bass he reckons was nudging 14lbs swim right beneath him in the crystal clear water. The fact that the fish was not interested in his lure was mildly frustrating to say the least.

• Whichever way you look at it, this recent Irish trip was still a huge success - we saw plenty of decent fish, and for the most part the light was excellent and I managed to get a load of photos that I am really happy with. The photograph with Pat and Graham being hit by a big wave is in fact one of my favourite I have shot this year (see this post here). I could see that Pat had a fish on, and I knew that Graham would get right in there to help his mate land it. Moving as fast as I could over some seriously treacherous ground, I dialled in -1 stop of exposure compensation to my Canon 1D MK111 camera/70-200 f4 L lens combination as I walked/crawled/scrambled over the seaweed covered rocks, to prevent blowing the exposure with all that white water against a dark rocky background, and the result was an awesome sequence of shots that in my mind show the kind of bass fishing on the edge that a whole load of us enjoy. Being in the right place at the right time comes from a lot of practise and a certain amount of luck, but mostly it comes from knowing when not to fish. Believe me, I want to fish all of the time, but this is my job, and I need to get the kind of photos that are going to sell for me time and time again. Nailing a photo like that is as much of a thrill to me as catching a decent fish - yes, I am in love with my job, and I am proud to say so. I am also lucky enough to work around some fantastic people, and I am forever in their debt.

• I am flying out to South Africa on Thursday evening, so I had better get on with clearing some work and then getting ready for this trip. It has been far too long since I was in Africa, and I can't wait to see those vast skies and smell those unmistakable smells of the most awesome continent on earth............

My new fishing book is on sale from today

• In a shameless act of self-promotion, I believe it is my duty to inform you that my new fishing book is on sale as from today - available at all good book shops I presume, or order it from here. It is very exciting to have my second fishing book coming out after all the hard work that went into it. Stashed full of some very cool fishing photography, this new book I reckon is an invaluable guide to all kinds of fishing, places, methods, tackle and other assorted nuggets of useful information. Check out the cover above.

• Like any lure addict, I have just ordered a few new bass lures to put in my already overflowing boxes. Do I really need them ? Probably not, but it makes me feel really good to have new models and colours sitting here ready for the off. Somebody once described plugging to me as a chance for boys to play with increasingly expensive bits of high-tech plastic - boys with toys basically.

• I am out tomorrow shooting a feature for Trout Fisherman with Nick Hart. so hopefully we might see a little bit of spring sunshine to light the piece up. It's always a blast photographing with Nick, and both of us are in a high state of excitement about our June trip out to Montana.

• It's good to hear of a new nice thornback rays and spring codling coming from the Bristol Channel, an area I really like for shore fishing. Those murky waters can produce some great fishing when things come together, but the last few winters have been relatively tough. Check out places like Hinkley, Lower Light, Brean Down and Sand Point for thornies and codling. Whole squid baits always sorts out the big rays, but I would never travel up there this time of year without some decent peeler crab as well. The tidal ranges up there are incredible.

• I had a long chat last night with Gerhard of the South African fly fishing company FlyCastaway and they have got lots of seriously exciting plans. I love working with these guys and I reckon they are some of the most talented and adventurous fly fishermen I have ever met. I have photographed with them extensively and we have plenty more to do together in the future. Gerhard also gleefully informed me last night that the South African cricket team are now no.1 in the world rankings - surely this is not right ?

• Gerhard told me that the remote Seychelles atolls they are working on are continuing to fish their proverbial socks off, and especially Providence. A client recently lost a black marlin estimated at over 450lbs after a 2.5hr fight, on a fly rod !! They are catching lots of those extraordinary bumphead parrotfish on the flats, plus plenty of huge GTs, bonefish, triggerfish etc. This vast atoll is simply incredible and I have been lucky enough to have been there twice with the FlyCastaway guys. Check here and here for a load of photos and info. I can't think of anybody on this earth who has as much remote Seychelles material as me.

• If you can, get yourself out there to fish this paradise. Talk to Aardvark McLeod and they will sort a trip out for you.

• Remember, my new fishing book is on sale from today - another shameless plug !!