Trip 1:
Lesson learned: fishing adventures come with battle scars!

Two weeks ago, I came back from a trip with puncture wounds, scrapes, and, of course, an infected finger and a stomach bug to top it off. Took me a full 14 days to recover, but hey, that’s the price of chasing Bass in the wild!

This time, I played it slightly smarter: I spent two nights in the pod (no marathon yomping), had antiseptic cream on deck, and carried enough hand gel to sterilize a hospital.

Hippies for neighbours this week, Ye man

The first night was warm and calm. I chose to take my Tailwalk 87ml 5-25g rod, Daiwa Luvias, 2500, reel, 16lb Allies braid, and 14lb Allies Fluro, the Cox and Cawl (difficult to open mini clips), and a selection of Allies special lures. A bit of finesse for a change and no badooshing, I’m addicted to this type of casting.

The tide was decent, fishing from low to high, with just a tiny bass to start with on the new £3.50 TECKNIK topwater lure (Nice one, Alley Express, for the budget win again!). All was quiet until high tide, when I had to battle through the super noodles of recent weeks.

As the tide finished flooding, the bass came on the feed, a 46cm and 55cm biggy that had my heart racing! It was quiet and hard fishing due to the oddles of noodles.

Once again, the Noeby Sasuke found the fish that others could not:

The next night was cooler and the sea rougher. The predicted rain was persistent, the sea surf rougher, bashing me about a bit, but a nice 50cm saved the night.

The Monolures white surface lure is accounting for this one:

Trip 2: Looking after a dog for a week (Imposed on Me), Babysitting.

Enter Bear the Cockapoo, my son’s lovable, hyperactive, utterly undisciplined fishing “companion for the trip.” As we travelled the two hours to our destination, I thought this might be hard.

It didn’t take me long to realise that this dog is a kamikaze nutcase launching himself off rocks, swimming like a maniac at dusk, and generally making me fear I’d have to explain to my son and his family how I lost his dog to the sea. Desperate times called for desperate measures: I tied him up. (Don’t worry, I checked on him every 10 minutes… but relaxing? Forget it.)

For this two-day trip between Bear’s chaos and the steroid-fueled noodle weed (thanks to our hot summer and mysterious sewage releases?), the fishing gods abandoned me. Total blank apart from a few pollack in the daytime, Bear, barking and trying to bite Pollack as they landed.

And let’s not forget Bear’s other talents:
Sheep-poo perfumery, he loves rolling in shite (my tent, sleeping bag, and clothes now smell like a farm). The cheeky barsteward, “if I farted, he looked at me in disgust and moved away.”

Sand-and-paw interior design (my car may never recover).

Verdict? Love you, Bear, you’re a great, energetic, affectionate menace… but I’ll be fishing solo from now on.

Dog Epiphany & Eco-Worries:

Overlooking the coast, masses of surface weed

This week, Bear the Cockapoo taught me a valuable lesson: as much as I love dogs, I don’t need a four-legged fishing companion. The chaos, the sheep-poo cologne, the kamikaze rock jumps, and the car mess, nope. Maybe a highly trained Red Fox Lab or Portuguese Water Dog would be different, but let’s be real… mess is mess, and I’m too set in my ways. Solo fishing it is!

But bigger worries than an unruly pooch: The sewage-stoked “noodle weed” choking our coast. From Criccieth to Nefyn, it’s a slimy, unfishable mess worse than I’ve ever seen. Between last month’s hand infection, stomach bug, and now this steroid-weed takeover, it feels like our waters are screaming for help.

With hotter summers, a growing population, and infrastructure that can’t cope, are we headed for a Welsh Sargassum crisis?

Mexico’s beaches are ruined by algae blooms, with seaweed five feet high in some places. Will ours be next? This isn’t just about fishing—it’s about our coastline’s future.

Time to demand better. Who else is worried? Save our seas, no more sewage.

(P.S. Bear, you’re still a legend… but stay home.)