New Rod Christened!

First update for a little while, sorry for the delay. Just to close off on the Cornish Lure Festival, suffice to say I caught a few fish, but didn’t win! That honour went to local angler Craig Russell with a magnificent 10lb 4oz fish! A great weekend though and I’m already looking forward to next years….big up Art of Fishing for putting this on!

Since then I’ve had a bit of a “firesale” of some tackle to raise funds for a couple of new purchases, the first of which arrived on Friday…a 9’6’’ Megabass XOR Shadow XX 8-32g. I’d been hankering over a new 9’6 rod for a while now, the Red Dragon, whilst fun to build was not cutting it for me as fishing tool and was simply to powerful for what I want from a rod.

So, after making a shortlist of replacements rods, this came out 2^nd but after failing to be able to source the rod I really wanted from Japan (at least not in my impatient timescales) I ordered the above.

So on to Saturday and a trip down to Dorset to give it its first test. Thankfully, summer appears to have arrived at last, so glorious sunshine and crystal clear calm seas greeted me. Not the best conditions but after weeks of wind and rain I didn’t care it was just lovely to be out by the sea in the sun. The tide was low and flooding when I arrived at my first mark. My strategy for dealing with the bright conditions was to try and get a reaction bite, so Chartruse based lures and fast retrieves were the plan and on with a Zonk in “hot shad” to kick off.

My first impressions of the rod were that it was a bit heavy, but in fairness it’s not really, it’s just I am used to my 8ft Branzino which is feather light so anything feels heavy after that!

Casting wise, the more progressive JDM style action of the rod took a little getting used to, but I soon had it sorted and was firing the lure out nicely. Actually casting with the rod is a real pleasure, you just need to let the rod load and do the work which makes for easy effortless casts. Distance wise they were a little up on what I can normally achieved with my 8ft rod, but nothing to shout about until I put on a Tide Minnow 140, which really flew out, a good 20 yards + on my normal efforts. The rod also made easy work of a Patchinko and it was simple enough to work surface lures effectively.

The rod struggled when it came to fishing soft plastics “HRF” style, the additional length and lack of feel and balance point well forward of the reel made it a not very pleasant experience, but to be fair it’s not really designed for this sort of fishing and that’s not why I bought it.

Overall I’m really happy with the rod, it does exactly what I was after and all in all it’s a very good tool for fishing HP’s that’s will cope with all conditions without being overly powerful. I do particularly like this JDM style action on a rod I’ve decided, the action is more forgiving than some of the “Euro” top end rods and it make playing fish an absolute dream.

Talking of fish, I did manage a couple, or 5 to be precise two at dusk on a Sammy and three after dark on a Komomo II of Joker FP. Again I’m learning the lesson that it really pays to fish into darkness during these summer months, I must do more of it!

I forgot to mention my other purchase, a Diawa Caldia 2500 reel which I haven't tried this yet. Until this point I have been a sworn 8ft rod + shimano reel man so I’ve broken all my own rules with these buys, hopefully the reel will be a similar success to the rod!

4th July - Holiday update

What has happened to our summer? I feeling pretty cheated now and getting really fed up of constant strong SW winds and endless rain!

I'm into the 2nd week of my holiday now, and with the weather being so poor its put a bit of a dampner on the fishing side of things but I've made it out a couple of times and found the odd fish, nothing to shout about though and it continues to be hard going.

Off to Cornwall on Friday for the Cornish Lure Festival, the forecast is OKish at the moment so hopefully it'll be a nice weekend with plenty of good fish caught (not least by me!).

Update 6th June...hard going

I’ve had three trips out in the last week and I have to say it’s been pretty tough going, last weekend I fished the west side of Portland for the first time. Access to this area is not for the faint hearted (or unfit) and once down on the rocks the sheer size of the boulders makes moving around and finding decent fishing platforms pretty tricky. This is certainly an area I will be revisiting though, as I’m sure it has good potential, particularly as a HW mark but I wont be going back until I have some rubber soled boots as the hike down is pretty hairy in felt soles!

On the day though fishing was slow, there were a few fish around as I had a few follows and plucks but they seemed quite tentative. I eventually hooked a small fish that came off in close and I gave up at sundown as I didn’t fancy negotiating the path back up in the dark.

This weekend and bank holiday I took advantage of the time off to get a couple of trips in to my more regular haunt, Friday was bassless but I had a few Pollack and wrasse to show then on Monday I fished for 5 hours and into darkness before eventually snagging a small bass on a Sammy. So that’s my first fish off the top for the year and my first on a Sammy which is already my favourite topwater lure now.

I’ve not just been fishing though, I’ve also spent a bit of money in the last week on a few bits and bobs, including:

Costa Del Mar glasses - £150 is A LOT of money to spend on a pair of fishing shades so are they worth it? I’m not sure really, the lenses are great (I bought amber ones), colours contrast amazingly and they make fish spotting easier, but given I am not really sight fishing the overall benefit is limited so in short, I’m glad I have them, I like them but if I lost them tomorrow I’d probably revert back to normal cheaper polarized shades (like my Sainsbury’s ones I was wearing before).

Snowbee sling bag – Brilliant, why did I not get one sooner?

Scierra C4 waders – Comfy and don’t leak, that’s a good start but lets see how long they last before I pass judgement!

So the overall “bass to cash” ratio of the last week puts me definitely back in the category of all the gear no idea but with two weeks off looming at the end of the month culminating in the Cornish Lure Festival I’m looking forward to putting that right!

Dorset 18th May

Has it really been two months since my last post? Well work and weather had pretty much put pay to all my efforts to get out over the last couple of months, except one aborted trip which turned into a “recce” of a new area rather than a serious trip. To be honest though I don’t think I missed much as the reports from all areas suggested the fishing has been slow to get going so far this spring.

Still, over the last week or so, the weather, the fishing appear to have dramatically improved, so with a well earned day off I packed my gear and headed down to Dorset.  Conditions on arrival looked good, with just the faintest of tinges to the water clarity. The tides were less promising however as I would be fishing over high and the first couple of hours down, never the best state of tide for this mark but nevertheless I started off full on confidence and pleased to be out fishing. 

After half an hour of no interest though, my mind started to wander so I switched from the hard’s to an xlayer with a view to bagging a wrasse and at least avoiding a blank. I had a couple of casts with a few tentative plucks before a decent take which I stuck into and the rod hooped over. I always have the drag tightened right up when HRF’ing but this fish took a good 10 yards against this drag in its’ first run and I soon realised it was no wrasse but nice bass. A couple of minutes later and this was on the shore coming in at 59cm and around 5lb….great result and that was me well pleased. 

No more fish showed to this method though so back on the hard’s (a mullet feed shallow to be precise) and in a flurry of activity I landed two small fish, lost another and missed a couple of takes before it went quiet again. Then an hour so later just as I was thinking of packing up I tried a few casts with a Savagear Sandeel and quickly had two more fish to around 2.5lbs. 

So overall a cracking session and one that gets my season underway properly…. I’m really looking forward to the next few months now with work easing off and the house chores done I should be able to get out much more often than of late!

24th March - Dorset blank

Just a quick update on progress, I've finished the rebuild of my Tenryu so I took for a test drive down to Dorset on Saturday afternoon. It was an absolutely beautiful day, more June like than mid March but no bass wanted to play ball.

Still it was nice to give the rod a workout, or more truthfully the rod gave me a workout, its an absolute beast! It shows hows lure tackle has progressed over the last few years, when this rod came became available in the UK it was being touted as the best lure rod around, but now after a couple of years of using 8ft fairy wands, this felt really long and heavy. Still it will chuck a lure a long way so useful for those days when conditions are really bad (or good, if you're a bass!).

I'm pretty happy with the build though, it was interesting to do and although far from perfect I learnt a lot and reckon I could do a really top job next time so I think I'll buy myself another "project" at some point. There's a few pics of the finished job below.

No fishing for a couple of weeks due to kids birthdays etc, so by the time I get our again water temp should be back up to 10 degrees and the bass should back properly so hopefully no more blanks to report!

10th March - The season starts here!

Well with a lovely spring day forecast, I decided to forego the plaice fishing and as normal, went for the lures instead, so a trip down to Dorset was in order. It really was a gorgeous day, I love the first trip of spring and feeling the suns warmth again after winter. Summers on its way and its all good from here on in! Anyway I went for my usual spot to start the season as timing of the big spring tide was perfect for here. I arrived about three hours before low, just as the flow was picking up.

Three hours later I got my first of the season, not a monster but that's me off and running. Last year I really struggled early season so it was nice to get the first one under my belt. Taken on one of last years favorites...the komomo II in Joker FP.

The rod build is coming on, I've nearly finished varnishing the blank now. This has been a bit of a faff as I've tried a couple of techniques. I think a rod turner would really help but without one of these its been tricky to get a decent finish, but after a couple of experiments I think I've got there. A few evenings on the rings this week and it should be finished for next weekend...hopefully I'll get out to give it a bash.

W'gwan....rod building!

Well it’s been a while…but my two month winter break is coming towards its end and I think the first lure trip of the “season” is just around the corner. Water temps are on the way up and I’ve seen reports of bass being caught pretty much all the way through the winter so it definitely worth a try now.

 Not many new additions have been added to the lure box over the winter as I’m sticking with my principles of keeping the numbers of lures I own to manageable levels (a deliberately vague description to still allow for those impulse buys though!).

One nice new one however, which I’m looking forward to using is this Feed Shallow 128 in a white/pearl colour. I love pearl lures and don’t own many so this was a welcome addition to the armoury.

There has been 1 major addition as well, a Tenryu Red Dragon Express, I swapped this for my old 8ft Rod Bar which had been usurped by an 8ft Branzino and so was unlikely to get much use.

I was after a longer rod for those days when casting distance is a bit more important and I think the RDE (which was one of the first Tenryu’s available over here and helped spark the “red rod” boom), will be just the ticket. The rod was pretty well used when I got, with the blank being touched up here and there with red paint. My original plan was to have the rod professionally rebuilt, however with my preferred builder being a bit snowed under it was going to be a three month wait. That’s just too long for a man of my impatience so I have decided to embark upon a bit of project and rebuilt it myself. I’ve replaced a couple of rings in the past but rebuilding a complete rod is a first for me so it could be a bit of challenge.

I’ve made a start, the first job is to remove the rings and strip away the red paint and give the rod a new identity! It’s slow going but coming away fairly easily and so far I have not trashed the blank! I did think about using a paint stripper to do this but was unsure if this would damage the blank so I decided to err on the side of caution and am using a sharp modelling knife.

At this stage I am not going to replace the reel fitting or foam grips. I really like the look of the Matagi range of fittings and would love to kit it out with those but mainly because I can’t quite figure out their website and am again because I am too impatient to wait for delivery from Japan I’m leaving this for now…I can always go back to it later.

I’ve ordered rings, whippings and varnishes though. Varnishing the blank neatly could be tricky but I’ve read a few tips on line and have a plan. I’ll take some photos of the build process as I go through it but for now, this is progress to date.

Hopefully the blog will see some more frequent action again now, I never did make it out for those winter cod and the fishing in the Bristol Channel has died right off so that’s that until next autumn. There’s always talk of a spring run but unless you can be bothered to get hold of peelers (which I can’t!) it never amounts to much. There are reports of plenty of plaice from Chesil though so I might just sneak one of those out before getting the lures wet again…we’ll see.