I’ve spent the last few hours compiling a set of photographs from the collection that I have made over the last ten years whilst guiding for bass on the coast. I wanted to create an animated slide show of all ten seasons but I’ve decided just now that its an impossible task. The main reason being that having to leave out, and not include, so many magical moments would leave me feeling very unhappy and unsatisfied. It would, and never could be, complete in my mind.
Sitting here and running through the directories of photographs from each season, (>150K) which I further broke down into folders by customer visit or project, the volume of material and memories is at times overwhelming. Days and moments, fragments of time that were, and have been of such significance to me that to try and explain the depth and perhaps the meaning is simply beyond me. I had forgotten the sheer number of experiences, the learning that I have been lucky to have shared over those ten years.
I do know this though, it has been ten years of many things for me (good and bad), but when it came to bass fishing on the Wexford coast the good days, the really great days, were created by positive people who made it happen for both of us and also any of the people around us.
You made life easy with a genuine unaffected freedom of spirit and a generosity that is truly unique to the special moments of time spent fishing in good company.
If you can, or want to, remember fondly any of those days or those moments then perhaps you don’t need a slideshow in order to remind you!
Our successes have included both good and tough times, not always of course inclusive of fish. Think for a moment of Wexford, the colour of the sea and the fish, the sky and sand, the rain and the wind, the cold, the approaching wave, the sun and the taste of salt in a warm mist, the frustration, the effort, the patience, the disappointments, the take, the miss, the connection that you identified, once again the fish and the pleasure of good memories.
Thank you all very much – Jim Hendrick
