Northern Excursions

Judy's daughter Zena had a flight to catch last Friday Morning from Manchester, bound to Chicago. We decided to use the opportunity, as Judy was now off work for the college summer holidays, to stay up near the Lake District at Arnside, one of the country's premier flounder marks, and then take in a visit to some friends expecting their first baby up in Baildon, near Bradford, and then over to Whitby for a little fossicking, a round or three of beer drinking and of course, a cast or two of some long desired beachcasting.

Small Stream Adventures: Perch Perfect

I'd been cueing up a trip to 'The Ditch' after its resident perch population ever since discovering by happenchance, a fresh and hitherto unknown contingent living happily in one of its pools. Now, I needed to secure a perch point on the challenge scoreboard, to pass the current British record weight for the species currently standing at five pounds and fifteen ounces, and I thought that perhaps, if I was very lucky, that there might just be enough

Commercial Sense: Sunday Evening Feeding Frenzy

I didn't intend to fish casters at all but I'd managed to successfully turn 2 pints of red maggots into casters by accident. The two pints were in separate tins; one full of old maggots and one of freshly bought, but the old maggots had got wet so I left the top off overnight so that they'd dry out.

I forgot all about them...

And it rained the next day...!

Nothin' Doing at Waspo

It's been a bit busy of late. All of a sudden all the little things that can keep a man from his fishing have occurred simultaneously, I even wasted good money on a pint of maggots in expectation of a normal fishing agenda and now they are a pint of rudd food...

Small Stream Adventures: New Discoveries

This morning I took the opportunity to revisit the stretch of the stream, where, at the same time last year, I had originally discovered a population of good sized roach and perch. It looked exactly as it did then, but blimey, how it's changed since winter

Commercial Sense: 10 minus 1

That's how many species I caught today...

According to plan I should have been bagging up on at least one and hopefully three target species; those that would get me points on the fishing challenge scoreboard, but I'm afraid nothing ever runs 'according to plan' with me. In the end I actually did manage to score two points, only I scored them for species that I have already scored for...