Like many winter anglers, grayling fishing, for me, conjures up crisp, cold days on the river bank. Over 2/3rds of my grayling have been caught in the winter with February alone accounting for a quarter. When high pressure brings iron hard frosts and finger numbing cold, grayling are often the only fish that can be…

I’m always looking forward to fishing after Christmas, but this is tempered by the fact that by then I only have about 10 weeks of the season left. Generally, being mostly restricted to weekends, that means ten days fishing, and if you consider that on average, for the weekend angler, conditions are only likely to…

I hadn’t heard anything like this since I was hitch-hiking across Australia on the big Mac trucks, back in the early CB radio days of the 70’s. Fascinating, but this was no truck, this was a Lake Erie muskie boat and the radio was just one of it’s built-in toys.The radios on the Lake Erie…

So here we are at the end of my barbel year. I would dearly love to be able to tell you that I have had a great burst of activity in December and blitzed my remaining target but it was not to be. For the third month running the Severn came up into the fields…

Both of my chosen target rivers, the Severn and the Ribble have been high enough to cause flooding lately. The Ribble has found its way into Ribchester town’s car park while the Severn has carried up to twenty feet of extra water at times, so for some of the time, both rivers have actually been…

Innocent people get hurt when over zealous ‘fans’ turn to terrorising their heroes/victims with the misguided idea of gaining their total attention. While such actions in the human arena are completely unacceptable, stalking within a trout’s territory must be seen as a highly successful way of catching fish. This is ‘sight fishing’ in its finest…

Arriving around 6pm, we had a walk along a favourite stretch and put a little bit of bait in our chosen spots, before retiring to the local pub for a few drinks to welcome in the new season. The river was where I started carp fishing, and still remains one of my number one venues….

Yet how many trout fishers ever read pike literature, or pike anglers read big-game articles? Very few. Perhaps they have missed something by not pooling their knowledge.I am fortunate in that I get to read everything printed in this magazine, and so sometimes I get to see connections that others perhaps might miss. If indeed…

Nowhere is this more true than in the Scottish borders where the sad demise of once-magnificent salmon fishing has caused many clubs to consider alternative means of attracting anglers to their waters – and of course, income to their coffers! As a consequence, over the last few years increasing numbers of anglers have taken advantage…

No, I have a full time job as well (often more than full time), which is the main reason why I was so excited to be going fishing this week AND to be getting paid for it! Well, that’s not strictly true, we did have a bit of work to do. The we being yours…