The close season has been a frustrating one. The continuing Foot and Mouth crisis has kept most rivers out of bounds denying access for my traditional reconnaissance trips. I love to stomp the banks of the Kennet in the spring looking out for new swims and seeing the changes the winter floods have wrought on…

Location: Take the A1079 from York towards Beverley and Hull. Travel for approximately 11 miles passing Pocklington Industrial Estate and the Gliding School on your left. Then look for the brown and white signs for the caravan park and fishery which is a turning on the right. This turn-off is virtually opposite the Yorkway Motel….

All these set-ups, by the nature of the beast, mean fishing in the extreme margins or getting within inches of the fish. Centrepin fishing such as I discussed last week is one such way we can keep things so simple that the fish suspect nothing. In all lakes the fish come in extremely close to…

Each morning is greeted by a freshness in the air which stings the face and makes you feel good to be alive. The banks are green again after months of gloom and the margins are alive with life. The days are warm and the evenings long, giving plenty of time for a few hours by…

Anglers older than myself tell me that rudd were once common, yet nothing could be further from the truth now. Where they do survive, it is likely that you will find them in all the waters in a locality. It would seem that pure alkaline water is almost essential for rudd, and as the water…

I think she reasoned that it was preferable to me hanging around street corners getting into trouble with ‘unsavoury types’. Thus overlooking the fact that for a time there was quite a gang of us that would go fishing after school – though for most the novelty of this soon wore off! At no time…

After my Father died when I was just 6 my angling education was taken up by my great-grandfather. The family had moved to Theale – a village 5 miles west of Reading in the Kennet valley. Grandad had lived in the village all his life and had been the village Bobby for a number of…

Location: Bury Hill fisheries are situated just off the A25 Dorking to Guildford road and is sign posted on the right when travelling from Dorking. It is a brown tourist board sign. The fishery is less than 1 mile from Dorking town centre.Address: Bury Hill Fisheries Estate Office, Old Bury Hill, Dorking, Surrey, RH4 3JUPhone…

You’ve been at the lake for two nights now. The fishing has been hard, but a few have been coming out and you’ve seen some on the bank so you feel you’re still in with a chance, even though you’ve been fishing at this particular venue for three months now without a fish. You’ve spotted…

Lack of weed cover plus an increase in flow pushing the fish into quieter and often more accessible swims are two obvious reasons for this, as is the fact that most barbel naturally attain their maximum body weight in the winter. But especially on the Hampshire Avon, where I do most of my barbel fishing,…