Live sandeels - is there a better bass bait ?

• I would be fascinated to know exactly what the overall most successful bass bait of all time is - I am sure this kind of thing can never be proven one way or the other, but live sandeel has to to figure right up there. Going out with the guys from Premier Baits on Friday was a real eye opener as to how a professional outfit goes about getting sandeels from the sea to the customer in an enticingly wriggly state. As you can see in the photo above, the day started off with a some really thick fog, but this quickly broke to give a stunning morning.

• There is no other way to harvest sandeels for bait than good old fashioned back breaking work. There's me tripping up all over the boat as I try and nail the shots, doing all I can not to get in the way, and the guys kept on smiling at yet another "hold it there for a second" or "hang on, can I get in here" from me, the photographer. It's St. Ives you can see in the background.

• If you want to get hold of some of the finest live sandeels you are ever going to see, you need to get yourself down to Hayle in Cornwall and see the guys from Premier Baits. Call Dave Dunstan on 01209 217062 or 07770 688207, or call Saul Astrinsky on 01736 796234 or 07779 316756 - they will also go out of their way to help you with advice on setting up proper tanks at home to store large quantities of live eels. They are getting some very good sandeels at the moment, and weather allowing, you will be able to buy eels off them until at least mid-October. Bass beware !!

• I remember when I used to have a tank here at home for keeping prawns in, and I was always convinced that my wife used to "acquire" a number of them and then eat them without me knowing !! She has never admitted to the crime, but I reckon she is guilty as hell. Any time I mention how much I used to love and cherish my prawns, she goes bright red and changes the subject. What a killer thornback ray bait........

• Above is a sight that any keen fisherman would dream about - a stack of live sandeels just out of the water. You would not believe the work and effort it takes to keep these things in perfect condition from the sea to their (huge) tanks through to the customer. I had a fantastic time with them, and I am going to try and go out bass fishing with them next to do a follow up piece on the guys nailing bass on their own product.

OK, so I gave in...........

• I felt almost no confidence, but I simply could not resist getting out on the coastline yesterday late afternoon and early evening to chuck a few lures. The expectation of actually catching a bass was about zero, but this stunning weather has got to me. Me, my red rod, a few lures (ok, quite a few lures), and my sheepdog Jess. It felt a little like summer until the sun dropped further in the sky, but I have been promising myself not to head out lure fishing for bass until at least April. Are we not eternal optimists though ? And yes, I was right, I saw not a sniff of a fish.

• To be perfectly honest, it was not really a proper fishing session as such - I wanted to get a few photos of the coastline as the sun dropped low, and I also wanted to have a really good walk/scramble around to check out where I reckon the fish might be hanging around when they are in. My feelings are that where I was fishing is going to be a back tide mark, with acres of rocks and weed shallowing out nicely as the tide clears. Yesterday was deliberately timed to be over the low water period so that I could see the lie of the land properly.

• The light yesterday evening did not end up as impressive as I thought it might, but I took a few photos I was fairly happy with. Just sitting there with my camera on a tripod and watching the sun dip over south Devon kind of does it for me really. Nobody else was around, and more's the pity that no bass were around either !! To be fair, the water was about as clear as possible and bigger tides are going to help. But as I said, how can you resist going plugging when the weather is so good ?

• In years gone by I would now be chasing bull huss in a big way around south Devon, with regular trips thrown in to the shallow reefs up in the Bristol Channel (Hinkley, Lilstock etc.) for the thornback ray and spring codling, but I tend not to spend much time these days with beachasters in tripods. It's awesome fishing, and it always will be, but I am restless person by nature and I live for different experiences. And I simply do not have as much time as I used to.

• My feeling is that it won't be long until we connect with a few bass around here. Reports of bass turning up in various places are increasingly frequent - and I don't include Ireland here, that place is a (bountiful) freak of nature. Jealous, me ? I have a feeling that certain methods might work in very specific places around here (cryptic eh ?), and much as these east winds are blowing in lovely blue skies and relatively warm day time temperatures, I am going to feel a whole bit more confident when we get a nice set of spring tides and more onshore conditions to inject a bit of "life" to the sea. We shall see.....

• I would imagine that a few of you watched that mightily impressive Yellowstone programme on BBC2 on Sunday night ? I made myself wait until it was on in HD last night, and I have to admit to sitting there open mouthed in complete astonishment at such awesome programme making. Some of the shots in there were breathtaking. What a place, what a brutal winter. If you missed it, watch it here on the BBC iPlayer. Nick Hart and I spent a day in Yellowstone last summer when we were out doing a job in Montana, and just that brief glimpse of the place left a lasting impression on me. The mighty Yellowstone river was still blown out with snow melt in late June when we were there. It continues to stagger me at how impressive this world can look. Too much to see, too little time.

Winter rainbow trout

• Nick Hart and I did a feature yesterday at the pristine Blakewell trout fishery close to Barnstaple in North Devon - it is a fantastically well maintained place to go and fish, and even with all the rain we had on Monday, Nick still managed to nail a couple of stunning looking rainbow trout for my cameras. We even got big blue skies for the first couple of hours as well. Check the photo above for proof !! These skies look awesome in the winter.

• Conditions were fantastically tough for the actual fishing, so I take my hat off to Nick for getting a decent fish so quickly, almost to order in fact. The water had gone really murky with all that rain, yet I'm still there hoping that a fish was going to get caught quickly so that I could make full use of those blue skies - and come to order it did. Nice one Nick.

• I just saw a good friend of mine who happens to run a charter boat out of my home port of Plymouth - you could not hope to fish with a nicer or better skipper than Malcolm Jones, and it always gives me a real boost when I know the guy running the boat is also a mad keen angler. Malcolm has just got his boat Sea Angler II back in the water after its yearly dry-dock visit, and he nipped over to the mouth of the River Tamar for a quick session over the weekend. Five thornback ray to around 12lbs were caught, all on prawn baits, and Malc said he had one on before he had even managed to set up his second rod. Class fishing. If you want an awesome day at sea, book Malcolm up as soon as you can.

Now this is proper hardcore fishing

• I just had an email from Cato over in Norway, the drummer for one of the finest metal bands on this earth - scroll down to my post from yesterday and you will see exactly what I am on about. Not only can the guy drum like a human spider, but he is also a madly addicted and seriously good fisherman. I still owe him big time for the Norway programme we filmed a couple of years ago - without his knowledge I doubt whether anybody here in the UK would ever had heard of Rost to this day (see here for photos of the mad fishing).

• I thought my flounder job a week or so ago was properly cold (see the post here), but I now see that this was virtually a nice summer's day when you compare it to what Cato and his mates have been doing over in Norway. Look this at this page right here to see a photo or two of what they have been catching - I don't understand a word of it, but the fish speak for themselves.

• Proper ice fishing - I mean going out on the sea ice, cutting holes in it, and smashing some seriously good fish. How about thornback rays to 19lbs and spurdogs to 16lbs ? Awesome fish by anybody's standards, but now bear in mind that a couple of days ago they were fishing in -20 Celsius, right through the ice - no need for any casting either. Now that is serious cold, but the fishing sounds spectacular. Put me into cold like that and I reckon I'd curl up into a ball and start crying, but there is a big part of me that really wants to see this kind of fishing being done, and especially when you consider the fish they have been catching. Looks like very cool stuff to me.

• Cato also tells me that Enslaved have been nominated for a Norwegian Grammy for their outstanding album "Vertebrae" - if they don't win it, I'll be astounded. You see, as I always say, fishing and metal mix together just about perfectly. But perhaps not at -20.........

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.

Big shore caught conger eel landed

• I got a text message from one of Plymouth's best shore anglers this morning, telling me that he had finally gone and done it - last night Rob Yorke landed a 43lb conger eel from the River Tamar, and I know how much this fish means to him. Well done Rob, you deserve this fish, I know how hard you have been chasing a 40lb plus eel. They are a hard fish to come by at that size off the shore.

• Conger eels are one of the most powerful fish we can catch off the shore in the UK, and the 40lb mark is a true milestone to get past. Immensely powerful fish that require serious dedication, personally I have never got past 40lb off the shore, and I have spent far too many hours of my life trying. I know how hard it is to land a fish of this size, having lost one over 50lbs on the gaff when I was at university, so my respect for what Rob has done is huge - the monster I lost some years ago gave me nightmares for months afterwards. I also lost a huge eel when we were filming I think it was for my first TV series, but that is another story..............

• Below is Rob Yorke with a nice mullet he caught from the tiny Channel Island of Sark a couple of years ago when we were across there in winter. You will have to go a long way to find a nicer guy or more accomplished angler than Rob, so I could not be more pleased for him - it is one thing to set yourself goals in fishing, but to achieve them is another thing entirely. He has had more good fish off the shore than a lot of us put together, and I know how hard he works at it.

• I have been asked a lot over the years about the people in fishing that I really admire, and I always answer the same - I have no time for "fishing celebrities or experts", or people like that (the word "expert" is one that I have a particular dislike for in fact). But I do have the utmost respect for fishermen who really know their fishing - the fish, the water, the tides, the feeding patterns and times, weather influences, reading the water, etc. The kinds of things that take years of dedication to accumulate - watercraft, one of the most important and often overlooked things in fishing. These are the kind of anglers that I strive to learn from.

Canon 1D MK11, 24-70 f2.8L lens (at 45mm), ISO 320, f4.5, 1/200

• The River Tamar is big fish country - hard to fish unless you know the tides and conditions, and tough because you are going to blank more often than you catch when chasing good fish. But nowhere in the UK has thrown up more big eels over the years, including Martin Larkin's current shore record of just over 68lbs. We all know there are far bigger fish down there, but getting them out is another matter entirely - fish that can swim as fast backwards as they can forwards are somewhat expert at exploiting weaknesses in your gear, and also at getting back into some kind of sanctuary. I hate to think of the number of times these things have smashed me to pieces, with a certain degree of disdain as well !!

• The most famous big fish marks in the Tamar are Devil's Point and Mutton Cove - both spots chuck up big conger eels, plus lots of decent thornback rays and some nice cod in winter, plus anything and everything at times. You have to fish these places to realise just how deep and tidal the water is.

• Rob said he fished for only two hours last night, with Mark Bryce, and the successful bait was mullet, a known big eel bait. He said he hit the fish and literally held it as hard as he could, to stop it diving back down and breaking him up. It must have been some sight to see that thing coming up in the headlights. Mark helped Rob get the eel out of the water. Well done guys - that is a serious fish.

• While those two were out fishing, I was watching one of the most exciting Wimbledon finals I can remember - while I really wanted Federer to get the six titles in a row, I have to say that Nadal deserved his victory. What a match, I could hardly watch for the whole fifth set it was so tense. It must have been amazing to actually have been there and watched it live. It has to have been some of the best men's tennis ever played - you would not find me facing one of those serves, I would be going down fast with a convenient calf injury to get out of the way of those howitzers.

• Is that more rain I can see out of my window ? Surely not...............thoughts of emigrating are becoming all the more frequent.

Chest waders - live in them

• If you have yet to experience wearing breathable chest waders for your fishing, then you are missing out big time. The fly guys have been using lightweight, breathable chest waders and felt or rubber-soled wading boots for sometime now, but not that many anglers in the sea fishing world have switched on to just how useful they are for a lot of our shore fishing - and especially when you head out lure or bait fishing for bass. Some of you might not mind getting a soaking when you are fishing close to or actually in the water, but personally I like to live in my chest waders and keep nice and dry. The photo above from the other day is a perfect example of the need for chest waders. Please note that I used a long lens to compress the scene, and that the water is actually breaking safely behind where Mark is standing.

• Not only are they good for keeping dry when you are wading, but they are great for those (frequent) times when the weather takes a turn for the worse. I simply can not imagine going bass fishing without mine. I also wear them for a lot of my mullet fishing, plus every single time I go out to photograph fly fishing, and they are even perfect for a lot of our standard shore fishing. Think of the shallow reef marks such as Lilstock on the Bristol Channel and then think how useful it would be to be able to wade out a bit if you could. I reckon my chest waders are as important to me as a decent rod or reel, and as such, they are worth every penny. In the winter I wear a fleece bib and brace lining from the fly fishing market to keep me warm.

• Yes, you can pick up neoprene chest waders very cheaply these days, but personally I would rather wear nothing than have to wear neoprene for my fishing. Heavy, non-breathable, hot and horrible !! Look around though and you can usually pick up a good deal on a pair of breathable chesties and wading boots. You can't go far wrong using the Greys G-Series waders and the GRX wading boots. The boots are sized to allow for the waders, so just choose your regular shoe size.

• If you want to spend more, then I can really recommend the Hardy EWS waders and EWS wading boots - I use and abuse these all the time for my fishing and photography and I can't talk them up enough. Sure, they cost a bit, but as I said earlier, I reckon waders are as important to me as a good rod and reel. I hate to think how many hard miles I have walked in mine so far, and they are standing up strong.

• Some friends of mine had a few nice fish up on the Bristol Channel on Saturday, including a 6lb cod and a few thornbacks. This is a good time of year for the rays up there, and spring cod are always a real bonus. Southerly winds and medium tides are perfect for the really shallow reef marks - I have always been convinced that the thornies are put off by the noise or turbulence of rough conditions when you are fishing very shallow water, hence winds in the south being so good. My biggest thornback ray came from the Bristol Channel when it was flat calm, indeed all the best rays I have seen up there have been when the winds have been from the south, coming from behind us and flattening off the sea.

• Check out some serious pike over on Nick Hart's blog - Chew Valley is an awesome place, and Nick and I filmed a TV programme there some years ago now where we had some big pike on flies. I am due to be out tomorrow in fact to photograph some lure fishing for pike, so I'll post here if it all goes well. Although I have not fished for them for a while now, pike have always held a fascination for me and I can't wait to see them again.

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 !!