Going away for a week with my family

• I am off tonight for a proper week with my family and I can't wait. Life has been bananas here recently and I have not been able to give them the time they deserve from me. The next week or so is my chance to spend some decent time with them before it goes and gets hectic all over again. I am off to go and join them in the Isle of Wight, and although I always see plenty of nice mullet over there, no fishing rods are coming with me !!

• Below is a nice bass that was taken the other day on one of these awesome Slug-Go lures. The fish was caught when we were fishing and photographing up on Anglesey, and if I am not mistaken, is that a big blue sky I have framed up with in the background ? So blue skies do exist then........

• The moment that Nick Roberts of Bass Lures put this fish down to unhook it, I saw the shot and nailed a few frames before the fish was safely returned. You should check these lures out - a lot of bass anglers are really turning on to soft plastics over here, and in the right situations they can be truly deadly. Just ask the French bass fishermen.

• Below is one of my favourite shots from my bassing trip over to Ireland the other day - this was very early in the morning and I had a feeling that the sky was going to get really powerful as the sun began to rise and illuminate the broken clouds. I hit my first fish of the trip just around the corner from where Graham is standing in this photo. I am actually just in the process of booking up a few days fishing and photography back over in south east Ireland for mid September, just after I get back from Canada. I feel we are on for an Indian summer as well.

• I spoke to Graham this morning and they had some awesome bassing on Sunday morning (when I was cursing the conditions on my coastline) for some big fish nearing the 10lb mark. Am I jealous ? Am I sitting here looking for Irish houses right now ? What do you think ? Nice one guys, leave some for us !!

• My mate Cato over in Norway has sent me some links to some really big Swedish and Danish mullet that have been caught on fly fishing gear - could this be the place to go and get the really big ones on the fly ? It looks like it. Check here, here and especially here for some truly outstanding fish. Check out those flats !! I need to see this stuff......

• Anyway, I am going to finish up here and then hit the road, along with some mighty fine extreme metal to spice up the journey. At full blast of course. See you in a week or so. Here is to fine fishing weather and stacks of fish, and a little sunshine please for the Isle of Wight.

Thank you Paul

• I spent yesterday morning with Paul and his mate Mark up in north Wales, plugging for bass - but the fishing was completely secondary to the real reason we were there. Back in February, a young angler called Alan Wright was tragically taken by the sea while out enjoying the sport we all love (see the original post here), and I was asked if a day's fishing with me could be auctioned to try and raise some money for the family left behind. See here for the original details.

• Paul's generosity in bidding for this time with me blew me away, and we managed to get together yesterday to spend a few hours fishing. Paul's mate Mark took us out to an awesome looking bass spot somewhere in north Wales, and the fact that we landed three bass means nothing really when you think about the pain that Alan's family are still going through now, and the extreme kindness of Paul to bid so much money that I hope will help them out in some small way. You are a gentleman sir, and I am honoured to have fished with you and Mark. The photo above is of Paul casting a bass plug out - it makes my day to meet somebody who is so passionate about their fishing.

• Above is Paul on the right, with Mark on the left. Thanks guys for your time, and thanks Paul for your generosity. Any time you are down my way, please make sure you get in touch and I can show you a bit of my coastline.

• I then drove for six hours to get back home to my family - what a stunning place north and mid Wales is, and to be perfectly honest, I feel somewhat ignorant that these couple of days were my first ever in this fantastic part of the world. It was fantastic to see my family again, but tempered with that joy is the sad fact that Alan's family will never see him walk through their front door again. Fishing is the best sport in the world, but spending time around the unpredictability of nature can bring about the odd tragedy. Please play it safe.

• On Monday, I spent the day up on Anglesey with the guys behind the new company Bass Lures (just how pretty is Anglesey ?) - Nick and Bob are responsible for bringing in the awesome soft plastic Slug-Go lures into the UK, and they are also now the UK agents for some of the finest fishing lures ever made, Lucky Craft. Who in bass fishing has not used or heard of the Sammy, the GunFish or the Flash Minnow ? The amount of bass these things have caught and continue to catch is scary.....

• Check out the Bass Lures website here. You can see Nick and Bob at the CLA Game Fair this weekend, where they will have an enormous tank for demonstrating their various lures and specialist techniques. Above is a rigged Slug-Go lure - there is no way I can describe how awesome these lures look when they are fished, and for the kinds of bass marks we all fish over, they are perfect. On Monday we spent some time out fishing, and I saw bass caught on the Slug-Go - they go mad for it !! A really big fish was also sadly lost on a Lucky Craft GunFish - this lure is lethal, and it was incredible to watch as bass would come at it. It is the noise of a surfacing bass that gets you every time.

• The top lure you can see above is the Lucky Craft GunFish, and the bottom one is of course the Sammy - both slay bass big time. The GunFish in particular is a favourite surface lure of many bass anglers, for it remains very stable even when there is a fair bit of chop to the water. Both lures cast extremely well and I always carry them in my lure box when I am out fishing.

• You can get these lures online here, direct from Bass Lures, or alternatively look at places like Veals Mail Order and Mr. Fish over in Jersey. Be very wary of any cheap imitations of these lures that you might find out there, for they do not work like the originals, and they are constructed very poorly indeed. It is so worth paying the proper price for some of the most successful lures ever made..............and you should see some of the other lures these guys are playing around with, they look lethal. I tell you, this lure thing is a bad addiction !!

• I will be using some of the Lucky Craft and Slug-Go lures during my demonstrations at the CLA Game Fair this weekend - I hope to see some of you there, the weather forecast looks good at the moment and it is a blast of an event.

• I hear from Graham that the Jersey lads caught a bunch more bass on the Monday, at the same place we all fished together on the Sunday morning. Once again the fish were out sunbathing, and they tell me that there were also some seriously huge mullet swimming around, estimated to be around the 14lb mark !!!! The problem is that I have bass on the brain over in south east Ireland, but one day soon I am going to take my mullet gear and have a proper go for the masses of fish we keep seeing all the time. What a place.

• Thank you again Paul - what a gent.

Jersey boys done good

• Below is Trevor with one of the many bass he had today - the boy done good !! He fished his socks off, moving around all the time over some seriously tricky ground, making a real effort to keep putting his lure into "new" water time and time again. Trevor also got done by a bass he reckons was heavily into double figures - he has been using the same lure for all his bass so far, and it is a new one to me. Guess I had better get shopping !! The lure in question is a stunning looking shallow diving minnow type, silver in colour, called the Tackle House Feed Shallow, see here.

• The weather turned out to be stunning today, with ideal sea conditions and fantastic water clarity - we were fishing a huge stretch of awesome looking ground that was lethal underfoot, but more than worth every single treacherous step on the mass of weed, boulders and deep gullies (you would have to go a long way to finding better looking bassing ground, stuff to dream about). Graham took one wrong step and went in over his head - of course we were deeply concerned and nobody laughed at all !! I meant to enquire how he was, but the first question out of my mouth was along the lines of "is my walkie-talkie ok ?" Stunning levels of sympathy..........

• Below are a few photos from today - note a lot of red rods and red Tenryu t-shirts. These rods are off the scale they are so good for our bassing. I need to go and get my gear together now, ready for a dawn start tomorrow morning - guess where we are going back to ? Then I leave the guys tomorrow afternoon to get the ferry over to North Wales for a couple of days. I am so happy that this deserted corner of Ireland is giving up a few of its secrets to the Jersey boys - it is fishing well, but I have also seen it fish a whole lot better. Is it the best shore fishing area for bass there is ?

Back from Norway, off to Ireland - plus some website updates

Canon 1D MK11, 16-35mm f2.8L lens (at 16mm), ISO 250, f9, 1/640th, polarising filter

• I got back home from Norway yesterday afternoon in time to see my two girls before they went to bed, and now I am just about to head off to catch the Fishguard-Rosslare ferry at 6.30pm this evening. Things aren't usually as bananas as this, but working in fishing is never what it seems !! It is getting harder and harder to leave my family behind for these trips away, but at least when I am at home, I am working from home and get to see them plenty. A week after the CLA Game Fair I am going to take a proper week off and spend the entire time with my family, and I can't wait.

• So, from photographing salmon a couple of days ago to photographing bass fishing - it is going to be a blast to get back to Ireland and fish/photograph with Graham Hill, plus Patrick and a couple of guys coming over from Jersey for a few days. If the weather lets us, we should see some nice fish. The photo above is standing atop a mark that Graham and I will no doubt be fishing sometime tomorrow - how on earth am I going to be able so sleep when I am this excited ?

• I spoke to Nick Hart on the way back from Heathrow yesterday, and he told me that Neil who guides with him had just landed a 14lb fresh salmon from the Exe - perfect water conditions for them, but poor for us in Norway. It has to be sod's law !!

• There have been a whole load of new photo essays put up on my website, see this page here to get an overview, and then click on them to have a look. Here are some further details :

Fly fishing for giant coalfish in Norway - click here.

Fly fishing for golden dorado in Argentina - click here.

Steelhead fishing in Canada - click here.

Lure fishing for golden dorado - click here.

Sight fishing for Atlantic salmon in Canada - click here.

• Anyway, I had better get on and pack my car up now. As much as time allows me to, I will do my best to keep this blog updated with news of our bassing exploits over in Ireland. I then spend a couple of days in north Wales on the way home, so it is going to be a very cool trip indeed. Hope to see you at the CLA Game Fair at the end of the month.

My new fishing book in Germany

• I have just heard from the German branch of my book publishers Dorling Kindersley (DK) that my new fishing book has been translated into German and will be on sale there soon - with the new style cover that you can see above. I really like their choice of main cover photo, it is a shot I took out in British Columbia (Canada) last autumn, of the legendary steelhead fishing. Come to think of it, the weather we had out there was very much like our current British summer !! You can see a load of photos from the trip here.

• If you had no idea that I have even got a new fishing book out, then please check here for all the details, and then click here and get yourself a copy. I still can't really believe I did this book, it was a scary amount of work to cram into the last six months of 2007, but we did it in the end.

• I am starting to get my gear together for my Norway trip, leaving Heathrow on Thursday morning - flying to Oslo and then connecting up to Trondheim from there. All I want is perfect light and a load of big Norwegian salmon - not too much to ask is it ? I seriously can not wait to photograph this fishing, and I will keep this blog updated as much as internet connections allow me to.

• I am also getting my gear together for my bass trip over to Ireland, and then north Wales on the way back - I have just under a day when I touch down at Heathrow on Monday to drive back to Plymouth, see my family, transfer and back up all the Norway salmon photos, do as many emails and phone calls as possible, clear the memory cards and portable hard drives, and then drive across to south east Ireland. Tight, but it should all be ok. When you work for yourself and on your own in the fishing world, you need to be able to move fast and remain flexible. Modern technology and communications have helped me no end in my work.

• I'll take my lure and light bait fishing gear, plus all kinds of clothes, from t-shirts to wet weather gear - you never know what you'll get over in Ireland, but we have nailed bass whatever the weather so I am not unduly bothered. I would never even think of going bass fishing without my chest waders and wading boots, and on this trip I'll take my Hardy EWS breathable waders and wading boots, plus a pair of Greys GRX breathable waders as back up. If a mobile style of bass fishing is your thing, you seriously owe it to yourself to get some proper chest waders and wading boots - they will revolutionise your fishing.

• I had a long chat yesterday with Nick Hart, discussing our fishing demonstrations that we will be doing at the CLA Game Fair at the end of this month (full details here). I reckon we have got these ones nailed down tight, and they should be a blast to do, and to come and see of course - hope you can make it, please give us a little clap at the end in case nobody else does !! I really like doing these demonstrations and the feedback has always been very good in the past. It is going to be a fantastic three days at Blenheim.

• It seems as though the bass are around in fairly good numbers at the moment, but the weather is preventing a lot of us from getting at them. A friend of mine managed a decent plugging session before these big winds came in, and he had some nice bass to about 4lbs, plus he was smashed by a really good fish that crash dived on him and did him in the rocks. There are some nice fish coming from Jersey, but again when the weather gives way a bit, and the same over in Ireland. There seem to be a decent number of smallish bass on baits around South Devon at the moment (with the odd good one thrown in), but the sea is going to have to calm down for the lures to work again. There is so much colour to the water at the moment that it looks more like the Bristol Channel in close.

OK, joke over - give us back our summer

Canon 1D MK111, 70-200mm f4L IS lens (at 90mm), ISO 200, f11, 1/500

• Above is a photo looking across to Constantine and down the north Cornwall coastline, from Wednesday morning this week. I was on the beach with the kids and managed to get a few photos of the big skies and rough conditions just before my two young daughters turned totally blue from the cold wind. But as I said the other day, we are nothing if not hearty us Brits, and my girls were swimming/paddling in a rock pool as I took this photo, in little wetsuits of course. With the sea running at less than 15C, I reckon that is pretty hardcore - but you won't find me swimming in these temperatures, it's far too cold.

• I am really feeling for our charter skippers at the moment - this is a busy time of year for them all right now, and the weather is dire, plus it is forecast to get even worse. They are saying that we might get gales to severe gales tonight and tomorrow. These winds are playing havoc with their trade, and I only hope that we get a prolonged settled spell sometime soon. The fish are out there, but we can't get at them.........

• I am off over to Norway on Thursday, to photograph some salmon fishing up near Trondheim. I believe that it will be 24hr daylight when we are up there, so it should give me a chance to really push things hard and get some awesome photos. I have been wanting to photograph the salmon fishing in Norway for ages now, so this is my chance to get things started. I am travelling with a couple of guys from Hardy & Greys Ltd., so it should be a blast.

• I then get back to the UK four days later (the 14th), and the day after that (the 15th), I am driving over to SE Ireland for this bassing photography trip. It's not too bad a drive at all from Plymouth, about four hours to Fishguard, jump on the StenaLine fast ferry over to Fishguard, and then less than hour over to where my mate Graham Hill lives. I have done this journey loads of times, and I expect to be doing it plenty more in the future - the fishing is that good over there.

• I am travelling back from Ireland on the StenaLine Dunlaoghaire to Holyhead route, to do a couple of jobs up in north Wales, which I can't wait for. I will have more info in due course, but you can guess that it revolves around bass fishing !!

• And then straight after I get back from north Wales, I am heading up to Blenheim Palace for the CLA Game Fair, where over the three days (25th, 26th, 27th July) I am doing some fishing demonstrations with Nick Hart. The Game Fair is always huge fun, and if you have any interest at all in the outdoors (fishing, shooting, hunting, animals etc.), then you should try and come along. Please come and find me if you do, I will mostly be around the fishing area. If you have not been to the Game Fair before, you will be staggered at just how huge this event is, and there is far too much to do and see in just one day.

• I have just found out the exact times of our fishing demonstrations, and these are :

Friday 25th July : 12.15 - 12.45

Saturday 26th July : 13.00 - 13.30

Sunday 27th July : 10.45 - 11.15

• Remember to check out the photos from my recent trip over to Montana, check here for them. What a place, and both Nick and I are itching to get back over there sometime soon. In the meantime, speak to Aardvark McLeod about a trip somewhere nice and warm, with plenty of good fishing !!

• To sit perfectly alongside this vile weather, how about some old school, classic-style death metal to warm you up ? Hail of Bullets play it proper, and that means awesome riffs, sick vocals and a warming glow of nostalgia working its way around your body. If you remember the band Asphyx, you will recognise the vocalist immediately. "....Of Frost and War" is the title of the new album from Hail of Bullets, and you can listen to a couple of tracks here. Track this one down and I assure you that any die-hard metal freaks among you (and I include me here) will be banging your heads in time to this one. Ah, they don't make 'em like that anymore.............