Thursday 24 December 2009

Merry Christmas Everyone! (Rage Against The Machine Christmas No.1? Incredible!!!)

Best wishes to everyone for the festive period.  Here's to bulging landing nets for the New Year!

With the snow-melt predicted over the next couple of days it's seriously going to cool the waters down, making most species difficult to catch.  I'm hoping to fit in a grayling session and a chub session, but if it gets ever so slightly milder and the rivers don't colour up too much I might contemplate a pike session.  It's over a month now since I wet a line and I'm getting very itchy to do so!  I'll be paying close attention to the weather forecasts and EA rivercall messages to help me decide what I should target when.  ...Although I'll probably still get it wrong!

Before I can fit in any fishing, I'll be potentially risking life & limb for no good reason other than for a laugh, by entering the MATLOCK RAFT RACE on the River Derwent!  Had I thought about it earlier, I could have got sponspored for charity but as it stands I'm doing it for no-one's benefit, not even my own!  With the snow melting into the river it'll be a wee bit chilly on the extremeties, to put it politely.

Finally a quick word about the Christmas Nunber 1.  Rage Against The Machine have genuinely been one of my top 3 bands of all time, for a good few years now.  I'm staggered, elated, impressed that they got the Christmas number 1.  I think it was blown out of proportion as usual by the media and Rage seem to be lapping up the attention, but at last this hugely influential, groundbreaking band get some mainstream media attention.  They've backed various campaigns themselves in the past against political prisoners, oppressive governments and other political issues so there's a certain amount of irony that it was an internet campaign that got them a number 1!  To those who say "the song isn't very Christmassy" (of which there are many, it seems), how on earth is a cheesy re-hash of a song Hannah Montana sang in a film released in the Spring, about her supposed struggle against the odds at all Christmassy?  And as for those who feel sorry for the X-factor winner; surely the ones you should feel sorry for are previous Cowell show winners who undeservedly had a number 1 then vanished into abstraction?  At least this guy is at the start of his career, he has the chance to get many future number ones; who knows, he might even start his own campaign to beat next year's X-factor winner to top spot!  Rage's music has been around for almost 2 decades and it still sounds fresh and dangerous; surely this is more deserved of a number one than someone who's "struggled" and "climbed" for 12 weeks to be given a schmaltzy song to cover which has been cherry-picked to get him a guaranteed Christmas number 1?!!! 
"Killing..." is not my favourite Rage song, but as a number 1?  Hell, I'll take it!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thursday 10 December 2009

Angling Star Magazine - December 2009 Cover Shot

Guess who's on the cover of this month's "Angling Star"...!


Available in all good (mainly Northern!) newsagents now!

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Robson Green digging himself an Extreme deep hole down under!

Anyone familiar with my website will likely know that I'm not the biggest fan of Robson Green's fishing show, "Extreme Fishing with Robson Green".  I do explain myself further on my website, but my main gripe with the show is the inhumanity and contempt he shows towards fish and other creatures (moorhens, to be precise!).  Anyway, I received an email a few weeks ago from an Australian writer, who maintains a blog called Sting In The Tail.  She had seen a couple of episodes with her husband and made a few comments about Robson's treatment of fish on her Twitter account.  A baffling but hilarious exchange ensued, with Robson posting several knee-jerk responses to her comments.  I was aghast when I read it, and as a result Mr Green has dropped further in my estimation.  Before I thought he was a pillock when given a fishing rod, but it seems he's just a full-time pillock!  The full dialogue is detailed Here - Robson Green vs Sheila in Twitter verbal battle.  I'd recommend you give it a read; it's both amusing and enlightening!

As for fishing at the moment, I have no sessions planned.  The last time I fished I was out on the Trent 3 weeks ago on a 7pm 'til 11.30pm after-work session.  I didn't blank, but the results weren't exactly sparkling. 

I'm hoping to get a full day session in before Christmas, but I'm struggling for days off at the moment, and this weekend I'm off to the "10 Years of ATP" music festival at Butlins in Minehead!  I went to the "Nightmare Before Christmas" festival there last December and it was unbelievably good. 

For anyone who hasn't heard of ATP before, their festivals are aimed at "proper" music fans and tend to have eclectic bills heavily laden with seminal artits who have never really hit the mainstream or had songs on the radio, but their influence on other artists or the music scene in general has been noteworthy.  There's also plenty of new talent on show and a few of my favourites I discovered during ATP last year are Tweak Bird, Monotonix and Vocal Sampling.  Another perk of ATP festivals to a 30-odd festival veteran such as myself is the accommodation.  After a long day's drinking and rocking out a bed, a radiator and a hot shower are very welcome!  Well, I am getting old you know...

Next blog I promise will be a bit more fishing-related!

Hello blogsville!

Hi, this is not a proper blog post - I intend to post one of those very soon - it's just a test to see how my profile's looking.



Once properly up and running this is going to be a blog about fishing in the UK and abroad, updated whenever I've got something to say in between writing my Fishing Articles.  If you like to fish for specimen Barbel, Pike, Perch, Zander, Chub, Roach, Rudd, Grayling and occasionally Carp, then head over to my website to check out some of my instructional articles & videos, then check back here soon for new blog posts.  Thanks for checking my stuff out!