Saw some bass, but couldn't catch them (plus a truly monster pike)

• I went out for a few hours over the high water yesterday morning, to have another look around and see if I could find some bass. I had timed it to fish the last of the flood tide, and the moment the tide turned I waded out onto a sandbank to fish with soft plastics in amongst the tumbling water and deeper channels. As I waded out I saw perhaps ten to fifteen bass laid up on the sand, right next to the main channel, but the moment they saw me moving towards them they quite rightly spooked !! They weren't big fish, but at least they were bass. I also saw a lone sandeel swimming around - bizarre.

• To see fish always raises the heartbeat, and pretty quickly I got hit hard once on the soft plastic lure you can see above, but the fish did not connect - a MegaBass XLayer fished on an 18g Storm jig head (see here for the lures). But then nothing else happened. Typical !! I fished a few hours of the drop and then had to head back home. What a stunning morning when those clouds cleared, and pretty as it was, it had to have been too bright for the fish to switch on properly. That's my excuse anyway. Just me, Jess my sheepdog and a few seagulls - perfect peace, but rest assured that true Norwegian black metal in the shape of Gorgoroth was blasting out in my car on the way back. Peace when fishing, metal when not. Life is a series of opposites.

• I also messed around with this lure above, and in the water it looks incredible - it's a 6.5 inch Hart Gummy Leech on a 22g articulated Storm jig head that I picked up in France. Why on earth can you not get hold of these particular articulated jig heads in the UK ? (a big hint to Shimano !!) I have a feeling that this lure set up might do some proper damage later in the season, and I reckon night time is going to work well where I was fishing......

Photo courtesy Danny Parkins

31lb 14oz pike - 01.04.09

• But my brief efforts yesterday were certainly put into context when Danny Parkins rang me up and told me all about this huge pike he caught yesterday on the Exeter canal. Take a look at the size of that thing !! 31lb 14oz of killing machine, and Danny took this beast on a lure. I have met few guys who know their predator fishing as much as this guy, in fact he is an all round fishing junkie with a serious lure problem. Danny reckons this huge pike is a new Exeter canal record, so what can I say but seriously well done, that is a hell of a fish to catch on a lure and I take my hat off to the guy. I have been hectic with work too much over the winter, and I feel daft for not having got into this pike fishing properly - I have to make time for this, it's world class fishing. Nice one Danny.

• Please take a look at Nick Hart's blog here - I could not agree more with him about this Robson Green bloke talking rubbish on the (primetime) box about the fact that nine out of ten fish that are caught and released then go and die. This proves to me once again that the whole celebrity culture is something to be avoided at all costs. Another nail in the "image of fishing" coffin, this time banged home by a bloke who is meant to be a keen angler. I am not about to post what I really feel here, it ain't printable.

A proper popper

• With the bass season nearly upon us, I wanted to talk about what I believe is one of the best poppers in the business. For those of you who don't know, a popper is a lure that is purposefully designed to be fished on the surface - as you retrieve it, the lure will literally "spit" water (or "pop") in a way that really turns predatory fish on.

• There are various good poppers that can work well for our bass fishing here in the UK, including the Storm Chug Bug, the Yo-Zuri Mag Popper, the Daiwa Saltiga Popper and the Yo-Zuri Hydro Popper. You can get these lures here. No doubt there are a stack more that catch bass as well.....

• But there is one popper that you will rarely hear about over here in the UK, but in my mind it is the best of the lot - check out the Halco poppers here. These awesome lures come from Australia, and it was a friend of mine who first put me onto them. James kindly brought me one back from Oz when he was over there fishing, and from that point on, Halco Roosta Poppers have always had a place in my tackle box, both for bass fishing and for fishing overseas.

• Some poppers you fish with will very occasonally turn over in flight and the treble hooks will tangle up, meaning the lure does not fish properly until you untangle it. Sometimes they tangle up when they hit the water it's just the nature of this kind of lure. But I can safely say that I have never had a Halco lure tangle up on me, meaning that every single cast you make sees your popper working properly.

• The amount of water that these poppers chuck out is incredible. There are a load of tips for fishing them properly, click here to see them. With the great surface fishing they seem to have all over Australia, I take their advice on how to fish these lures very seriously.

• Above is a photo my brother Julian holding a nice barracuda I caught out in the Bahamas on a Halco Roosta popper, the original one in fact that James first brought back for me. Note the somewhat chewed popper in the fish's jaws. I swam out to a reef to nail that fish, and then when I had played it out I swam back to shore, with the rod in my teeth and trailing the fish behind me, to ask my brother to hold the fish for a photograph. But when a big shark swam underneath me as I made my way back to shore, I did have second thoughts. Check out a load more photos here.

• These Halco poppers cast like bullets, in fact I have never come across a popper that casts so well. Lures like the Storm Chug Bug might catch bass, but nobody could ever say it goes out there that well. Use the 105 size Halco Roosta Popper and you will be able to cover a load more ground very efficiently.

• But the problem is that I don't know of anywhere in the UK that imports these lures, so you will need to check out various Australian tackle shops online, or contact Halco direct and ask them. It is really worth tracking these poppers down.

• The larger 135 size is a killer for fishing overseas, for species such as jacks, GTs and big golden dorado. The White Redhead 135 worked really well for me out in Argentina the other day, until that is a couple of really big fish decided to smash me up and steal my beloved lures from me. Look carefully through these photos here and you might spot the lure in action.

Fishing lures

• OK, so the above is hardly the greatest fishing photo ever taken, but I wanted to try and show you an example of how simple fishing can be, and how much lure fishing around the globe shares such a similar approach. Please note the lures above - a Storm Thunderstick (left), a Daiwa Saltiga Popper (middle) and a Yo-Zuri Hydro Popper. If you ignore the fact that the lures have had their front treble hooks replaced with much stronger 5/0 ones, what you see here are some of the exact lures that worked really well for the monster golden dorado out in Argentina (see a load of photos here), and these same lures will catch plenty of bass for you as well.

• Think about what in my mind is THE fastest growing branch of UK sea fishing - light tackle lure and bait fishing for bass. All these lures are proven bass catchers. Predators are often remarkably similar the world over, and plenty of them will hit the same lures in the same ways as each other, albeit the size of fish may vary greatly.

• So yes, I grant you, it is very hard to resist buying every single kind of lure going when you see all those shiny new ones winking at you in your local tackle shop, but how many do you really need ? (easy for me to say, I am an avid collector just like the next man)

• Personally, I would not go lure fishing for bass around the kinds of marks I fish without three kinds of lures, and even then I do recognise that I have a lot to learn about fishing soft plastics for bass (more news to come on this through the year, I have some seriously cool products to try here) - I always make sure that I have a few poppers and "walk the dog" lures (for surface fishing) and a variety of shallow diving lures that are going to work at no more than about a metre or preferably less below the surface. Nothing yet has persuaded me to think otherwise about most lure caught bass coming from the upper levels of the water when we are shore fishing.

• And I made a classic mistake when I went over to fish for and photograph these monster golden dorado - I left a lot of lures at home because I thought they would be too small, when in fact most of the lures that really did well were just like the ones I use at home. Thanks to the guys on the trip for coming with such well-stocked lures boxes and for allowing me to trash some of them.

• What really surprised me was how well this new Greys Missionary 6 40-100g spinning rod was able to deal with the lighter lures, in fact it blasted them out with ease, even with the 50lb Sufix Performance Braid that I was using and abusing. This stuff is seriously good braid and the rod has fast become a personal favourite of mine.

• Some of the lures that worked well for the dorado and also work well for our bass were the Storm Chug Bug, the Yo-Zuri Surface Cruiser, the Daiwa Saltiga Popper, the Storm Thunderstick, the Yo-Zuri Hydro Popper, and of course, my all time favourite surface lure, the fantastically successful Halco Roosta Popper. You can by a lot of very successful UK bass lures by clicking here. Do not forget to buy some of the lethal Maria Chase BW lures in holographic silver - this thing smashes bass hard !!

• And forgetting fishing for a second - if you have any serious interest in photography, you owe it to yourself to buy what I believe is the best book on the subject that has been released for a while now. "The Moment it Clicks" by the world-famous photographer Joe McNally is a fascinating and very informal look at how he set up some of his best shots, for he is a true lighting genius. I am in complete awe of a lot of the stuff he has done. I know that you can get the book by clicking here. I took it with me on the way down to Argentina and I could hardly put it down - it is that good.

• And for a bit of culture on this rather dank Friday, below is a shot of some tango dancing that I came across on a street in Beunos Aires. This dancing is just incredible and I only wish I had not had to rush off to the airport so quickly. Another good excuse for going back. A few more tango dancing shots are at the end of this web gallery here.