Articles by John Young John Young John Young has been fishing since 1972. He started by drowning maggots for anything that came along but soon donned a floppy green hat and joined the specimen hunting scene. In the late 1970s he started pursuing carp and soon caught his first 20lber on diced potato. Years later,…

Articles by John Young John Young John Young has been fishing since 1972. He started by drowning maggots for anything that came along but soon donned a floppy green hat and joined the specimen hunting scene. In the late 1970s he started pursuing carp and soon caught his first 20lber on diced potato. Years later,…

Many people keep their rods permanently made up these days, often leaving them in the rod holdall untouched from one session to the next. I always worry that when rods are put in a holdall with a tight line, a kink might form in the line where it doubles back on itself between the top…

Articles by Alan Tomkins Alan Tomkins He’s been fishing longer than he cares to admit and writing about it since the mid-seventies, initially for Angling magazine. After the demise of Angling, Alan wrote for the various iterations of Coarse Fishing, and for several years was a regular contributor to Carp World magazine. Fishes, or has…

Catching big fish comes down to a short list of priorities. Find the fish, present a bait to them without scaring them and use a bait that they will eat. In this age of hi-tech baits we tend to take the last part for granted, but is it really just as simple as tying on…

Over the years, I have reviewed many items of tackle for various publications. Although I fully tested out all the items of tackle that I was sent, the published review was always heavily edited to save paper with any reference to any actual fishing trip generally removed.

I am off to fish in the Hardy competition at Bewl this weekend and my advance information is that the water is so warm that the fish are off the feed “big time”! In the final eliminator for the National at Bewl last week, the hopeful competitors caught only eight fish. I thought that Chew…

According to reports, backed up by fisheries staff, the reservoir was fishing well with trout being caught from a number of areas. Recent stocking had distributed fish all over the lake, so we hoped that it wouldn’t be the usual Llandegfedd trick of all thirty boats drifting into the dam just in front of the…

To say that the two days that we spent there brought contrasting weather and fishing would be somewhat of an understatement. On Friday the wind was so light that at times the anglers were becalmed; whereas on Saturday a freezing wind whipped across the water making fishing very difficult indeed. The temperature too was hugely…

Reports had been coming in that the fishery was producing amazing fishing, so it was with a certain apprehension that John and I left Bristol at 4.30 in the morning! I believe that I explained last week that generally competition organisers don’t want mass slaughter of fish, as this is likely to provoke criticism, which…