You see, on some waters tench can become incredibly easy to catch, whilst on others they can really make you tear your hair out. There are a few factors which tend to give rise to easy tench fishing. A good head of fish is obviously important, but not always enough to make them feed on…

So what does that tell you? Simply that they have moved inshore to the feed-rich sandbanks to feed up and build their strength up for their Summer-long sojourn in the sunshine. If there is a ‘duffers fortnight’ in sea fishing, this is it. Sometimes catches of a hundred fish a boat are not unusual on…

One learns quite a lot that way. For example, one gets to recognise certain fishes and the way they travel a stretch, and I am sure that many anglers do not realise just how nomadic river fish can be. It is also difficult not to think of fishing even within the confines of home, surrounded…

Modern carp fishing is still in its infancy over there but though the British influence has been a major factor in the development of French carp fishing, the French themselves have been quick to embrace the concept of the bivvy, bedchair and boilie approach to carp fishing and nowadays a widespread No-Kill policy is strictly…

Many animals feel and show emotion, but human emotion is something else. This thought was uppermost recently when I was listening to some wonderful music, ridiculously emanating from a small plastic box. I cannot even recall what the piece was called, but it stirred me so much emotionally that there were tears in my eyes….

Whilst we were visiting the water to do our feature finding hopefully we chose nice sunny calm days so we had a chance to see some of the fish we hoped to catch as well. Certainly if we found areas of snags or the early signs of lily beds then we should have seen the…

The rivers are bare bones and algae is starting to build up, in fact conditions are looking a bit grim. It’s times like this when I fear for our rivers. Under conditions of normal flow levels a slight pollutant getting into the river would probably be diluted but in conditions of little flow we could…

The 12 acre estate lake has a well established breeding zander population that makes Bury Hill the water to catch a zander. I visited Bury Hill to meet up with the in-house predator expert Eric Bailey. Eric gave me details of both swims and tactics. After a terrific breakfast in the small cafe, I walked…

Big fish are available in an ever increasing number of waters. You can either choose a target species and travel to waters that contain fish of specimen size, or fish for species which grow big in your local waters. The aim of this, the concluding part of my article, is to point the novice specimen…

The first question that we have to ask ourselves is – livebaits or deadbaits? Given the choice I will always try to fish both deadbaits and livebaits. This would usually be one livebait rod and two rods with deadbaits. Some waters respond much better to one or the other though. The quickest way of finding…