Mr, Thrussell Jnr, thanks so much for inviting me to the party, it’s a real pleasure to be here and I’m hugely excited to be part of the WSF team and bursting to share my lure fishing experiences.
If I attempt to summarise why I’m here, it goes a little bit like this…….
When I was five, my Father arrived home with a Salmon, when I was six, I watched him catch one on a lure called a Kynoch Killer. When I was seven, I discovered my Father’s tackle box full of lures such as Tobys, Mepps and Devon Minnows. At that point I think I had grasped the rudiments of angling, the rod, the line, the lure and, most importantly, the chance of a monster.
As children, my Father took my brother and I fly fishing on wild waters in Scotland and Wales. I couldn’t find anything more exciting than a fish rising to a fly. I tied flies as a child and won awards for a few innovative fly tying designs. Innovative I say, but in reality I hadn’t really understood the fine art with many of my patterns having hackles trimmed with scissors.
My family had a holiday home on Anglesey, to me the finest coastline of all and arguably the best fishery in the British Isles. I drifted all Summer in search of fish. My father taught me how to hook lobsters from the rocks on spring tides at night and I learnt about every single creature on the foreshore, in pools, under rocks, buried in sand, in holes and up gulleys.
Since these early adventures not a day has passed when I don’t think about fishing. Even in the most serious moments, I find my mind wandering to that rock pool, that clearing in the weeds, that dark swirling hole or that flooding white water skipping over the sand banks.
Photograph courtesy of Henry Gilbey
I like angling for many different species but 20 years ago I caught my first bass and I have been suffering ever since.
In 1997, I travelled to America with my girlfriend (now wife) and her family. We went to a Walmart store just outside Savannah and I spent a good while coming to terms with what I saw. I wouldn’t leave and ended up buying a lot of fishing gear to fly home with me. Like a lot of anglers heading overseas I wanted to understand whether these never seen before, remarkable bits of fishing tackle might have an application in the UK. I set about testing a whole variety of American lures with great success. I suppose it was at this point that I began to recognise that the UK was not really keeping up with trends abroad.
In 2002, a friend of mine showed me a soft plastic lure called a Lunker City Slug–Go. He claimed it was deadly for all manner of predatory fish and fundamentally, you could fish it through the snags.
I remember feeling quite giddy when I saw the Slug-Go’s oily sheen and slender, lifelike profile. At the time, I was live baiting a lot for Bass using anything I could catch, small Pollack, Blennies, Rockling, Prawns, but the target bait was always live Sand Eel.
Initially, I tried Vingling for Sand Eel using an old bread knife but this proved to be back breaking and I lacked the patience. I tried cast netting, but they were always too quick. Eventually I turned to using a small seine net which I had created from one of my Grand Father’s discarded push nets. I fixed cork rings along the upper float line and an old interwoven chain as a lead line. I would tie one end of the net to a bait digging fork anchored in the sand and walk the net in circles in the pools that formed behind the sand bars at low water. It was a massive effort to find the Sand Eel. Sometimes, if they proved too elusive, a days fishing could be annulled. Catching live Sand Eel was tough but keeping the Eel alive was even tougher.
Photograph courtesy of Henry Gilbey
Could the Slug-Go soft plastic lure replace the need to gather live bait? I tried it out and quite simply, yes, it could. I pulled 48 bass from a shallow mark over two hours with the Slug-Go lures using a slow, intermittent retrieve combined with the odd rod twitch. I was fishing with three friends who were using live baits. I recall them catching one fish each. That was a real turning point for me and I started to use lures more often and as a consequence, my catch rate rocketed. This got me really thinking about the possibilities in the UK to introduce modern, lure fishing techniques.
In 2006 my wife and I were climbing the corporate ladder but the economic outlook was grim and we started to think about a recession- proof plan. We both loved fishing. The question was whether we could make our passion our business?
We decided to take the plunge and in 2007 established www.basslures.co.uk retailing the Slug-Go, amongst other innovative lures we had sourced from abroad. Since commencing trading, Bass Lures has established itself as a pioneer in modern lure fishing and our customer base is growing rapidly day by day.
After retailing for a year, we subsequently established www.topwaterlures.co.uk, our distribution arm which over the last seven years has handled brands such as Megabass, IMA, Lucky Craft and Fiiish in the UK and Ireland.
Both businesses are growing fast in line with the huge growth we have witnessed in modern lure fishing in the last decade. We’ve also travelled a lot and watched lure fishing evolve from all corners. It’s ever-changing and the market swings constantly. We’re very lucky, whilst fast paced, it’s an exciting industry to be working in, if you can keep up!
The post Welcome to my lure angling blog appeared first on World Sea Fishing - Sea Angling Webzine and Forum.