You might remember I set myself some targets for the winter – perhaps to catch a 1lb dace, and certainly some more 2lb roach. So far I’ve nudged up my personal best in both species with a 14oz dace, and a 2.1 roach. The Oxford river doesn’t seem to hold many two-pounders – going by…

March 15th is a very special event in the calendar of the brown trout enthusiast. Those months of waiting and wondering, of tying up deadly patterns and of dreaming about big bends in the rod, suddenly come to an end with the opening of the new season. Up in my northern neck of the woods…

Scottish and Irish pilgrims have had spring pike fishing available to them for aeons but English non-travelling pikers have much to discover. Having said that, I really do hope that the ability to fish for pike on their spawning grounds, right through time they are actually breeding, will not blind those same anglers to the…

Boat fishing is something of a mystery to many anglers. Most would agree that the ability to get afloat can pay dividends and yet very few anglers actually take the plunge and give it a go. Those that do fall mainly into two categories; the experienced boater who’s learned the art of boat fishing the…

He had brought me to this stretch in the winter a couple of years ago, then we had fished the opposite bank. I thought it strange that we had to fight our way through tangled undergrowth when the other bank had a clear path and so asked him what the difference was. He told me…

When I caught my first 30-pound pike in October 1974 it was one of ‘only’ 8 thirty pound pike caught within the UK that winter. Today, significantly more such fish are landed each season yet the overall standard of sport has declined. Today’s pike angler catches fewer pike than his predecessor did in the 1970’s…

This verdant area is where a spring bubbles up from the rocky ground. Not a particularly unusual occurrence you may feel – except that, in this case, the spring is the source of a mighty river. A river which is the largest in Scotland, an important navigational asset, hugely consequential in tourism-related terms but perhaps…

Well – not exactly January – the first trip was actually Boxing Day, when desperate to get out, and after days of heavy rain I headed off to Oxford. Sightings of rivers en route confirmed my suspicions – they were extremely wide! But I had this thought that however high the river, the fish would…

Stan normally organised the squad. For instance he’d say ” I want Kevin on No1 peg, I want Ivan on No2, Ian on No3 and so on. We would then fish a three hour session before he would move us around, and then we would fish another three hour session with the rota altered. So…

What saddens myself and many other anglers is the practice of stocking some southern rivers with rainbow trout. When I questioned one river keeper who wished to be nameless he said “The members of the syndicate pay a lot of money, and they want their moneys’ worth in dead trout” I am sure that when…