Once upon a time, in what now seems to be the dim and distant past, virtually all sea fish were expertly landed by the boat Skipper wielding a wickedly sharp gaff. Nowaday’s almost the only time that you will see a gaff used regularly is aboard a conger or shark boat and even then, most…

Mimicking Natural Baits.The power of natural baits such as maggots and worms is well recognised, as to a lesser extent are baits such as caddis grubs, wasp grubs, mealworms etc. However one thing they all have in common, is a tendency to be attractive to all species. This means that often such baits may be…

A shout for a Butt Pad will often send the Charter boat skipper and maybe one or two anglers in the charter party rummaging in the bottom of tackle boxes and bags to try and find a pad for the poor unfortunate who is hanging over the stern, rod bent double and a fish of…

Until recently, little was known of the Lake of Menteith as a pike fishery. Fred Buller in the Domesday Book reports a pike of 35 lb being taken in 1965 by Charles Cowan, but no further details are given. Most people will have heard of the lake because of its fame for being the only…

How many times have you finished a session in the darkness, made a quick check of the swim for tackle left behind, only to find when you get home you’ve left your bank-stick behind? Many of the better bank-sticks are coloured black, not at all helpful for showing up in the dark. To make them…

Time spent caring for tackle and putting everything in its place is a job for someone else. While I was doing that I could be fishing!The art of being a successful lazy blighter is to be organised, so the mess which is my reel collection box is only a mess to other people. I know…

Tying a brightly coloured plastic bead to the end of your line before putting the reel away at the end of each trip might seem like a small, seemingly insignificant thing to do, but it does have a number of benefits beyond the easy way to find the start of the line……… which old bats…

The tackle set-up is the same as that described in the previous piece, with a 9-weight outfit and floating line being my standard choice when targeting fish of double figures upwards. The leader makeup does however change, with my standard set-up being 18″ of 12lb mono, 24″ of 10lb mono 24″ of 8lb mono and…

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…

Much has been written during the past few years on floater fishing, and various tactics have been developed to continually deceive carp and a whole host of other species. Why then have I written a piece on fly rodding for carp, as it is certainly not new? Well, the answer to this cannot be found…