Big Zander Quest - I found my thrill, at Old Bury Hill (later)

Wandering around a wild water with all my provisions on my back and stalking never before caught fish is my idea of angling heaven, but on the other hand it has to be said that commercial fisheries without proper facilities are a real let down...

Big Zander Quest - I found my thrill, at Old Bury Hill (earlier)

Rising at three in the morning to prepare bait & tackle for a 4:30 departure and then embarking upon a one hundred and twenty mile journey on a maiden visit to ye olde english estate lake in pursuit of a monstrously large specimen of a certain imported 'pest' that at close of play, at end of day, must be thrown back! may seem like the height of folly to those unfortunates who never had their forelocks licked by the Angels of the Angle when they were but babes in arms

In Pursuit of Winter Barbel - Double Trouble

Keith and I got out to Stratford and Lucy's Mill for a barbel session last night - the river was in what looked like fine fettle for the species with the level falling after recent rains but still pushing through at quite a rate - the water a rich brown with frothy suds coming off the weirs and drifting around the mill pool. Perfect conditions, I thought, for my new and very pungent bait which would slowly emanate its magic slick of attraction way downstream and bring the barbs upstream in search of it.

In Pursuit of Winter Barbel - Butt Waving at the Full Moon...

I really should have packed down the roach gear a little earlier in the evening and started the barbel session sooner because by the time I'd dismantled and re-mantled the made up rods from zander ready to barbel ready, with all the tying and threading that operation requires, I'd missed half the prime time around dusk and it was almost dark when both rods were finally cast and the general area ground baited.

My Quest for the Magic Two - Rock Steady Beat

Before setting out yesterday for Stratford upon Avon and my beloved Lucy's Mill with Lee Fletcher, I'd spent the morning preparing myself for a two pronged assault upon two species of fish - roach during the daylight hours and then barbel around dusk and into darkness. The roach prep was easy - nipping across to the local superminimarket and purchasing a loaf of Warburton's blue was about it - the barbel prep rather more involved, as you can imagine.

Buggering Bouncing Bobbins (or words to that effect...)

All of a sudden some really good perch are turning up to the fishing challenge competitors - Andy and Danny had a nice haul of them up the cut the other day with the best brace falling to Danny's rod and these around the two pound mark - that they went out for roach is neither here nor there - they had worms as backup and the perch were obliging.

That was the Week, that Wasn't

This last fishing week has been a ragbag of apparently disconnected short sessions without any great result from any one of them but all, in some way, instructive. Last Sunday I managed to wangle a whole day at Stratford only to arrive and find the place all but un-fishable due to the high winds blowing straight up river - five degrees change of direction either way and it would have been sheltered enough for comfortable quiver tipping, but as it was the rods were trembling so much that bite registration was nigh impossible.

Canal Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - A Blessed Relief

The prospects for the success of this late winter campaign of mine hinge upon two things, firstly that the local canals contain two pound roach, which is an established fact, and secondly, that the Avon at Stratford contains them too, which is a fact I have to establish myself. It also requires that I be able to catch them.

Canal Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - Nothing for Something

You may have noticed in recent posts that I am now the owner of a pair of buzzers? Well, I haven't used buzzers in decades - the last buzzers I owned were a pair of the first Optonics ever to hit the shops in the early eighties. At the time they were a revelation to those inured to the struggle with Heron buzzers and their ilk, of which I'd a home-made pair built at great labour expense and ingeniously I thought, out of ex-GPO telephony components and bean cans, deliberately designed to equal the remarkable ineffectiveness of the originals...