Sometime around 8-30 am on the old A5 I left the blue-black smoke pouring from a badly maintained lorry and a car towing a caravan for the peace and quiet of a Shropshire country lane. As I drove down this quiet leafy country lane my mind went back to my childhood days in the countryside;…

What is it about a fish that will take a free swimming live bait, plugs, fly, spinners, float fished baits or a substantial fish, crab or squid bait legered hard on the bottom. Could it be that the Bass is a fish which allows you to fish however you want to, or is it the…

It’s a swim that has thrown up a few good catches recently and when I got to it I could see why. The swim in question is only around three and a half feet deep, running over gravel, and quite pacy. This time of year I hate drawing sluggish river swims, as all the fish…

River Ribble – Good chub and barbel being caught on pellets and meat bait Anglers fishing with Muddler minnow in the fast broken water catching some nice chub.A perch of 3lb 3 ounces reported from Balderston by Manchester angler on three gentles fished on a size 14 hook but not confirmed. Sea trout being taken…

Now call me a cynic, but if the floods were so bad, why did we ever only see pictures of York and Worcester? Obviously, flooding for the local people is terrible, but methinks the media were having a bit of a slow news week! Unfortunately, the outcome of these floods is likely to be the…

I will concentrate on carp in this piece but may stray to other species if space allows. Right, where do we start? Well, the many articles written in the weekly and monthly angling magazines about winter carp fishing are correct, with respects to the basics, so I will start with them. First of all do…

After running around on numerous wild goose chases over the years the dream of finding a magnificent unfished spot is slowly diminishing. I know that such places do exist and have found a few, but they are rarely quite what they seem. As for the stories of uncaught monsters, well I tend to switch off…

The super Braids are one third the diameter of monofilament and consequently need far less sinker weight to nail your bait to the bottom, making life a lot easier all round. No more moans and groans about pulling up a 2lb sinker every time the bait gets washed out or the Skipper wants to re-position…

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…

Having last month covered in some detail river characteristics and timing your fishing to coincide with peak activity, let’s look at where best to find fish feeding and sheltering from flood water. The first thing that strikes you as you walk by the side of a river or a stream carrying extra water, is the…