So far I have been in Ireland for 2 weeks now and with a one way ferry trip could be for a little while longer, in an ideal world I would be able to come on here and blog about lots of fish being caught with a good few big ones and epic fishing sessions along the copper coast of Ireland and down in Kerry. This however is not an ideal world, at least not for me, I’m sure if you Follow “Henry Gilbeys” blog or follow “Fish on Lures” and “Absolute Fishing” on Facebook as I do you will be seeing wonderful reports of good numbers of fish being landed along with a handful of double figure fish! I have caught some fish myself but bearing in mind I was fishing the same area over the same period of time and sometimes the same exact marks, this just proves fishing for bass is so much more than chucking plastic and metal at the sea.

Don’t get me wrong I never expected to rock up to Ireland start plugging away and start landing numbers of bass, that’s just not how it works, bass fishing takes time, effort, knowledge, dedication and I think a slight obsession for all things bassy. And these guys have got all of this from fishing this coastline in some cases for over 20 years, I’ve been here 2 weeks. For example today I spent about 5 hours fishing this one mark, okay I know that’s a long time on one mark but there was plenty of ground to be covered and my god did it look fishy, casting away perched on single rocks in 30mph wind coming at me side on with the aid of torrential rain for the whole period I was there. As you can imagine with this sort of wind it’s going to be kicking up some sort of waves and oh yes it was, every minute or so I would have a set of 5 or 6 seriously big waves crashing in on me with each one chucking a wall of sea water at me. Anyway about 3 hours in even with waders and full waterproofs you can imagine I’m wet through but no way am I accepting that there is a bunch of bass hunting through this surf over the minefield of boulders that does not want to hit my lure, no way! Between sets I manage to spank out my sasuke 120 right out amongst it 1, 2, 3 winds of the reel and I get hit, straight away I see a big splash on the surface and it’s a bass I start cranking and I can feel it’s a decent fish, I get it about half way in and the fish decides to take a dive and ping went the line, my leader knot went. Now I must say that my Daiwa is very lucky not to have ended up in lots of tiny pieces littered amongst the rocks. The thing is I will be up early again tomorrow morning in what’s forecasted to be the same weather doing the same thing all day, now I ask the question is this dedication or am I just totally mental with too much time on my hands!! Maybe the latter but the more I fish the more it takes over me, even the shitty times as I’ve just described these just make me fish harder and longer. I know I’m not alone in this but I’m sure any normal person who hears of lots of fish being landed while not catching themselves would just throw in the towel!! But there’s something different about lure fishing for bass, something that drives you on and on through the bad it may not affect everyone but when I’m out there fishing against the elements I love it! It’s the fact that they can be so hard to catch that keeps me going as I’m not one who likes to be beaten but neither do I want to be handed something on a plate, so when it finally comes together, all those hours spent finding out what state of tide, what size of tide, day or night, weather conditions, type colour or size of lure, water temperature clarity and conditions and where the fish holding areas are on a certain mark the results can be just epic. It’s simply the satisfaction of the reward from working so bloody hard for something that keeps you going at it, and at this moment in time I don’t really see an end to this obsession!

In my short period of time I have had in Ireland I have been lucky enough to meet some cracking people and they have nudged me in the right direction and given me a few pointers. Being that I was based around the copper coast for the first week or so there is no way I could not pay a visit to Cian in his shop Absolute Fishing in Tramore, I must add for your own safety it may be wise to enter with the exact money in which you intend on spending or it could end up being a lot more, but on a serious note it’s a cracking shop very welcoming and very helpful and Cian makes a decent coffee!! I was also very happy to meet Steven Neely and his dad who were down for a weekend fishing the copper coast and they are two bloody nice chaps and seriously good anglers, I’ve been talking to Steven for a while over the internet so was nice to finally meet face to face, plus they cooked me a fry up so that was as bonus. I must also say congratulations to Steven’s dad John for landing a PB bass of around 12lb.