The Big Perch Quest - Somewhere under the Rainbows

Steve of Watery Reflections dropped me a last minute proposition on Sunday. 'Jeff, fancy coming on a trip early Monday morning after a record perch, all expenses paid, bait and tackle provided?'

Well, I was all set on washing my hair on Monday, but...

River Bream - Rosettes for Everything

Wasperton on the Avon has not been my favourite of river locations having suffered two royal blanks out of my only two sessions there to date. It's not as if those sessions were uninteresting as the scenery around those parts of the Avon is well lush, but I had no action at all in the hours fished and on the Avon, which the EA have pronounced the 'best stocked river in all Blighty',  I do want and expect, knocks, indications, liners, sail-aways, pick-ups, rip-offs, whack-arounds, drop-backs, dips, bobbles, nibbles, dibbles or what have you in the way of that all important evidence of fish being out front - a bite.

Canal Roach - Gone Goozling, Again...

Keith has made me aware of what I am, or rather what I have become. A gongoozler, or someone who watches the activities of the canal network. Not a trainspotter in any sense but an idler in essence - one who watches things happen at lock and basin but at a remove, a distance, observes, is not involved in any direct way, is a spectator, an onlooker.

I am involved though. I fish it and I'm known to the local live-in boaters as an angler. They talk to me, tip me the wink, offer advice and the occasional can of cheap and nasty lager. I give them almost nothing in return as my sandwich of cheery greeting and a chirpy farewell has very little in the way of substantive filling apart from what little tittle-tattle I have picked along the towpath from other boaters and about other boaters and boaty things, which is all the filling they are really interested in.

Gravel Pit Bream - Down't Pit by Crack a' Dawn

I'm really into the gravel pits this summer. It's a rekindled old flame as I always did love to fish the pits down Essex way for carp and tench but when I lived there I never really considered just what it was I had on my doorstep as I wasn't that concerned with catching lumps at that time.