I’m more relaxed and healthier now and as I look forward to spending the next few years here in Wexford, saltwater fly fishing, I’ve found a different groove. With a few occasional trips to other parts of the Irish coast during the season with friends or in my own company I am extremely eager, content and satisfied along this bass coast.

There remains a lot on and in my mind about bass angling. I often wonder that if I hold my words and thoughts for long enough in my head will something eventually form and only then emerge?

Something I haven’t understood before, something I haven’t been able to reach. Something that I can just see…

Since the death of my father, I’ve needed time to comprehend the significance of his absence.  To come to terms with the gap, the gap that my frequent memories try to fill in this ‘hole’ in life. But these remembered moments often leave me grasping at many further things that are beyond me, things I need to finally understand with conviction. I’m getting sentences but they remain beyond my comprehension. Like the solution to time which you find in a dream, it often makes perfect sense when you sleep, until you wake to find you can’t speak it!

Theses ‘memory’ challenges have certainly have made me more reflective on the value of my time spent fishing for bass, and I can’t help but feel they are connected. The memory of the present.

Time and more time spent fishing, bringing me closer to understanding and nearer to the clarity of the ‘value’ that is the hidden secret at the heart of my bass fishing.