Articles by Russ Symons Russ Symons Russ Symons has been an angling Photographer/Writer for over thirty years, the last twelve of which, writing about and photographing the sea and its fish being his full time occupation. Progressing from a black and white darkroom in the attic of his Plymouth home, to the exacting colour requirements…

Articles by Russ Symons Russ Symons Russ Symons has been an angling Photographer/Writer for over thirty years, the last twelve of which, writing about and photographing the sea and its fish being his full time occupation. Progressing from a black and white darkroom in the attic of his Plymouth home, to the exacting colour requirements…

If you ever get the chance to examine a gravel pit that has been drained down have a good look at the shape of any features. Unlike the text books, they will not be of even width, length, depth, or even composition. There will be areas which might attract fish more strongly than others. Although…

Zero stretchOne of the major advantages of braided lines is the almost total lack of stretch. Braids typically have between 3 and 5% stretch, compared to the 25% of nylon lines. This means that hook sets are far superior to nylon line, particularly at very long range. Believe it or not, at distances of greater…

The saying ‘use a big bait to catch a big fish’ is generally attributed to carp bait pioneer Fred Wilton. Now while there is more than a grain of truth in this, there are many times when large baits will not score. For the most part, even large fish fed upon quite small prey and…

Most pike waters have only limited spawninghabitat for the pike and if you are not in one ofthese places your chances of catching are severelyreduced. So my aim this week is to try and point youin the right direction. With a little bit of effortthe Spring haunt of the pike can be quite easy to…

Whereas some anglers can fish for a single species constantly for years on end, I came to the conclusion a long time ago that my attention span was too short to allow me to do this. This realisation turned me from being a carp angler to fishing for a number of species and has certainly…

For some reason, up until that time I had not really considered fishing for big bream, but this year everything clicked into place and I just HAD to have a little try. No extensive campaigns or anything like that you understand, just a few days out to try and break my duck. My good friend…

Well, of course it isn’t, life will go on, but if we forget about all the bull, this might be a good time to reflect on what has been and what might be in the future. Hence, the title of this article. With only six months to go, I hope to dig deep into my…

Each year some fish will die, and so it doesn’t take many years for there to be very few fish left. So the older and bigger you get, the less of your year class will be left. This does not always follow, some times conditions will lead to an exceptional year class being formed. An…