Wake Me Up When September Ends

Since my last post I've fished a few times but it's been pretty slow going.  Just last night I went Zander fishing and ended up with an 8lb pike and lost a good fish, which may well have been a zed, but I'll never know...

This follows an all-day barbel session last week with friends Craig and Kev.  I fished all day on a prolific stretch of the Trent and despite trying all sorts of baits, fining down, stepping up to a 6 foot hooklength and even trying single maggot hookbaits, I didn't even get a sniff of a barbel.  I caught a couple of dace when fishing maggot (on a 2.25lb TC barbel rod, size 16 hook and 14lb mainline!), which is a species I haven't caught since I don't know when. 

I even spotted a pike swim towards a plastic bag which was fluttering downstream.  It then proceeded to follow it downstream, deciding whether or not to strike at it!  Interesting to see such behaviour, but it was a stark reminder just what harm our rubbish can potentially do to our wildlife and with the pike season just around the corner (come on frosts!), please take care with your deadbait packets.  Every season I find deadbait packs discarded in swims.  It annoys me so much!  There's no need for it, an empty plastic bag is far easier to take home than it was to bring to the water complete with its contents!  It gets anglers a bad name and makes me question the average pike anglers mindset.  TAKE YOUR LITTER HOME! 

There's a mantra I rather like which relates to this.  I've seen it used on signs in lots of Asian National Parks, it goes a little sumpin' like this... 

"Take nothing but photographs.  Leave nothing but footprints."

Anyway, fortune favoured Kev and Craig slightly more than it did me.  They ended the day, each having lost and landed a barbel.  Craig's was a new PB and was a lovely fish...



Kev's had a really bold two-tone colouration, as you can see here:



So, I did a fair bit more work behind the camera than in front of it, but as far as catching barbel between us goes, 2 out of 3 aint bad.

Aside from this session, I'd been concentrating my efforts on a barbel swim with a BIG snag.  I'd landed a couple of good barbel from there ealrier this season and been snagged & snapped by some heavy fish.  It seemed absolutely loaded with big barbel a month ago but despite river conditions not really changing much (and it's a fairly deep swim, so the temperature change shouldn't affect it), in 3 sessions I haven't been able to buy a bite from a barbel!  I was thrown a few consolation prizes last week though, in the shape of a 4lb 14oz chub, a 5lb 4oz bream and a 5lb 1oz chub, which is my second "five" of the season.  It looked a young fish, not one of the old, battled warlords who've peaked a long time ago.  This chub has plenty of growing to do.  Now if only I could find a "six" or a "seven", we'll be laughing!



The "Five" (with an empty belly!)

I've been really fancying an all-day perch fishing jaunt lately, so unless the rivers become heavily coloured over the weekend, I'll be heading out next week.  I placed an order with Willis' Worms for 100 lobs and 1kg of dendras this week and they arrived yesterday.  That little lot should keep me going for most of the winter.  My next post may well be a guide on how to keep your lobs alive, but we'll see... 

Wildlife Trusts losing my trust

Lastly, I've been a member of the Wildlife Trust for at least six years now and have generally been happy with the work they've done in protecting our native species and habitats.  However, I recently read about a worrying decision taken by the Notts Wildlife Trust to ban fishing at many of its waters, including Attenborough Gravel Pits. 

Wildlife Trusts Ban Fishing

This is a decision I can partially understand because although it's been proven through practice time and again that anglers make outstanding free "rangers" for waterside environments.  If an angler spots something wrong which is going to effect fishing, they will alert the relevant people!  But on the other hand, some anglers leave litter.  Don't give powerful bodies like these a reason to ban fishing!  On the whole, UK coarse anglers are a benefit to the environment but the two unavoidable negatives associated with angling are always going to be discarded tackle and litter.  Unavoidable for as long as anglers leave it, but easily avoidable if every angler takes responsibility for their own waste!  Litter and tackle are a distinct danger to wildlife and if a species under threat visits a water where fishermen regularly leave mess behind, then it's understandable that fishing will be restricted or banned altogether to protect them.

I shall be writing to the Wildlife Trusts to tell them of my dismay, and I haven't yet decided whether to revoke my membership.  The thing which is causing me conflict is that the Trusts do other good work with other species in other places, and I don't want to take away important funding from these projects.  If you would like to contact the Wildlife Trusts, then I've placed the link below:

Contact Wildlife Trusts

River Chub Brace

I recently captured my best-ever chub brace, landing this 5lb 2oz specimen (left), followed by a 4lb 8oz fish while I was setting up my camera!   I risked life & limb to land the latter fish, because I was fishing a peg with a very steep - almost vertical - bank leading down to the water.  I wanted to rest the chub in my landing net, in the margins, but as this wasn't possible where I was fishing, I took the net and fish a couple of swims downstream where the margins were shallow and calm. 

As I was setting up the self-timer function on my camera, the alarm on my other rod screamed!  I was left to battle the fish in a deep, fast-water peg with no landing net!  Standing between me and the net were 3 trees, overhanging the water.  There was no way over or around them, so I had to (in the dark), scale the steep bank, test the margin depth with my toe whilst holding onto a tree with one hand and the rod in the other.  Luckily there was a narrow, rocky ledge about a foot under the water, so I slowly shuffled along this, negotiated the trees and a reedbed and finally reached an area I knew was shallow, where I jumped in feet-first and managed to reach my net!  It's a good job it wasn't a barbel or I may have been waterskiing! 

I later went on to catch a barbel and another 4lb 8oz chub, all caught on a variety of pellets.

This brace of chub were 5lb 2oz (left) and 4lb 8oz (right)

A Couple of Closed-Season Gems

Well, I didn't get fishing too much over the closed season, but two of the more notable sessions were fishing for Crucian carp at Carr Vale Pond near Bolsover and Tench fishing with my friend and erstwhile www.anglerstoday.co.uk editor, Kevin Miles.

I tried fishing light for the crucians, as is normally required to hook one, but for some reason couldn't connect with the bites.  When I eventually swapped to fishing the lift method (which is one of my favourites for close-range fishing) and swimfeeder, I did start hooking fish.  The first came to the lift method on a single grain of corn and it went 1lb 4oz.  Later on, my "sleeper" feeder rod, which I'd loaded with a big hook, a whole lobworm and a grain of corn in the hope of a big tench, was nearly dragged in by an absolute screaming run, which I assumed must be a tench or carp.  After a good scrap for 30 seconds or so, the fish seemed to give up, almost like a bream would.  I brought the fish to the net wondering what on earth I'd hooked.  it turned out to be another, bigger crucian at a PB weight of 1lb 14oz.  It's no Marsh Farm fish, but heck it's not a bad 'un for North Derbyshire!

My two crucians which preferred crude over refined!

On June 2nd I was joined by Kev Miles on a private Midlands reservoir which I'd been lucky enough to secure access to for a day.  It holds some monster tench and with my PB for this species being pretty meagre, I went all-out to try for a big one.  A 5lb+ fish would have been brilliant, but the potential was there for fish up to 9lb!

What a view!  How can an angler fail to be impressed by this!

What a water it was; reed and tree-fringed, weedy, clear and holding big tench - what more could we have asked for?!  It was a baking hot day with clear skies so we spent most of the day sheltering from the sun beneath a brolly.  With the weather so bright and the water so clear, I'm guessing that the tench were similarly seeking refuge deep within the weed cover.  We only had one run during the day, which came to Kev who was using a method feeder over a big bed of groundbait with imitation sweetcorn as hookbait.  The fish managed to embed itself in the weed a couple of times, but without too many nerves wrenched, the fish was landed and weighed 6lb 12oz.  I'd never seen a tench bigger than 5lb before, so I was thrilled to see such a beautiful specimen, which seemed to be spawned out, so may well have been even heavier just a few days before.

The business-end of Kev's Tench

Being late June and being a fan of river fishing, naturally I've been out on the rivers already and I'm pleased to say I've been catching!  I'll be posting news of my best-ever brace of barbel soon...

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!