I woke this morning early and lay awake remembering and thinking about the fishing we had last week.
There were days during the week when not only was the fishing beyond belief but so too the circumstances and the environment. I left Dublin airport last Saturday morning, the 4th of October, with David and Julien as the crew, I had devised a plan that saw me guiding the guys around and through the weather all along the Atlantic coast.
We would not be stationery for any long period of time unless things proved otherwise
Within one hour of our arrival at Cork we were hitting fish, we stayed at Bella Vista in Cobh on Saturday evening and tried on Sunday morning before we began our western escapades – Sunday morning proved to be a damp squib!
Throughout the week, each day during the early evening, I made my regular phone call home and of course the weather proved to be a major part of that conversation. Wexford and the south east was being hammered by heavy rain and thunder storms on a daily basis. We had avoided this by being flexible, adaptable and by my having several alternative options open to us along the coast.
These options are not only knowledgeable angling solutions but also timing solutions, flexible accommodation solutions, food and drink and quality of fishing environments, transport and others. All these things need to add up to provide a quality experience that also doesn’t create a sense of ‘chasing’ the fish. I have achieved this through weeks and indeed years of hard ground work both fishing and researching over long periods of trial and error. At this time I have created a ‘network’ that provides me with a continuously evolving customer experience that fits the variable demands of the bass fishing environment.
This type of knowledge and experience doesn’t come easy nor is it given to you second-hand, its earned the hard way as a bass fishing guide through months and years of personal investment and effort. I guess that’s why I believe that bass angling information, determined through personal investment, places both a different sense of responsibility and ‘value’ on that information in comparison to say if it were simply volunteered to you. This is what makes you different as a guide, this depth is what is reflected through your services and how you go about your business.
Neither my customers nor I are ‘condemned’ to only one option should it prove blown out. We go..we find the fish!
In a week where Julien LaJournade broke his personal best bass from the shore with a double and then two days later beat that double again by at least a kilo! In a week where we caught and landed all fish 'drop and drifting' on sub surface stickbaits and surface lures or flies, in a week where we never had to resort to lifting any jigheaded plastics, in a week where we were regularly stunned into silence by the beauty of the places we found ourselves, in a week where I lost count of fish and cared less about size, in a week it was a week of a lifetime.
This morning I’m waking from a dream, slowly!
