Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 3643 i Angling Times

NOT BEING afraid to try something a little different to everyone else is one of those pieces of advice that’s dished out all the time in angling. And sure, it sounds simple enough. But, in reality, how often are you willing to go against the grain and take the risk of gambling on a slightly different rig or a unique hookbait? After all, if other anglers are catching well on a certain presentation it stands to reason that you would as well. I do think this is an easy trap to fall into, though. Take carp fishing, for example... the Ronnie rig has dominated catch reports in recent years, and prior to that it was the chod rig. All these ‘rigs of the moment’ are excellent and mechanically sound, but…

THIS WEEK MOST of the large roach caught in Britain have, historically speaking, come from southern waters, or more recently, from East Anglia. But Yorkshire angler Andy Oxley has been catching some superb redfins from stillwaters in his home county lately, topped by this huge 3lb 12oz fish. “When it was in the net I remember looking down on it in the water and being amazed by its green sheen,” he told us. “It was so thick across the back, and I couldn’t get my hand around its flank.” “When I weighed it and I saw the needle on the scales settle near the 4lb mark, I was truly gobsmacked.” Andy took the fish using helicopter feeder tactics, but with a twist. To find out how he does…

TIME FOR JOINED-UP THINKING! MITTEN crabs, quagga mussels, signal crayfish and all sorts of other things that don’t belong in our country can cause mayhem and affect our watercourses and fisheries. Fortunately for our environment, there is a government drive to restrict and hopefully eradicate these creatures. They’ve set up a department called the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Their officers are part of the even more impressively titled Non-Native Species Inspectorate. Part of their job is to let us anglers know about invasives and the damage they can cause. I saw them recently in action at the World Championships in France. They came over to educate the England Team about invasives and our responsibility not to bring any back. “The trip would’ve taken the thick end of a week”…

GET READY WITH RINGER IF I WAS forced to choose just one bait to use on commercials in the coming weeks, it would have to be good old-fashioned luncheon meat! Over the years it has caught me more fish than any other bait, and it’s not only carp that will eat it – skimmers, F1s, tench and barbel all love the stuff. That’s why it’s a highly versatile bait. And the best news of all? With carp, it always tends to pick out a better stamp of fish – a big advantage in a match situation or if you fancy catching a few monsters on a pleasure session. However, there’s only a small window of time when meat dominates, and that’s from now until the first hard frosts hit. I…

NYTRO & SONIK SPECIAL NYTRO have really put down a marker in the commercial fishery tackle market since exploding onto the scene over the past year or so, and judging by what we saw at their recent trade show at Barston Lakes, they’re set to boost their ranges further with some impressive bits of kit. As well as a new range of well-priced, multi-venue feeder rods and reels, exclusively designed by the one and only Tommy Pickering, the firm also lifted the lid on some pretty nifty accessory items which are sure to find favour with many modern anglers. But it wasn’t just the matchmen that were well catered for, as big-carp brand Sonik introduced a stunning new Sizzla cookware range that looks set to take on-the-bank cuisine to five-star…

FISHERIES ON FIRE • Local know-how for bumper nets • Your tried & tested top waters • Expert venue tactics AIRE AND CALDER NAVIGATION, POLLINGTON, EAST YORKSHIRE Loads of perch to over 3lb are in this stretch. Rove with light lure tackle along the nearside ‘tins’. Contact: Stainforth Angling Centre, 01302 846623 EREWASH CANAL, LONG EATON, DERBYSHIRE On the Long Eaton Victoria AS (LEVAS) stretch you’ll catch quality perch on a small bomb or feeder with lobworm hookbait. Contact: Bridge Tackle, 0115 972 8338 LOUGHBOROUGH CANAL, LEICESTERSHIRE On this Loughborough Soar AS stretch, fish chopped worm and casters. Day tickets from local tackle shops. Contact: Soar Tackle, 01509 670436 COVENTRY CANAL, WARKS Alongside perch, you’ve a great chance of picking up a bonus zander or pike. Day tickets…

OUR MAN ON THE BANK I HAVE been enjoying my sea fishing trips over the past month, and they’ve certainly made a lovely change from my normal inland haunts. This week I was on the coast staying with my friend Chris Matthews and his delightful wife Tammy at their boathouse in Millbrook, on the Cornish/ Devon border coastline. The house overlooks Hamoaze Bay, where bass hunt the shoals of juvenile mullet and huge grey adult mullet search on high tides for crabs and any other aquatic creatures they can find in the banks of seaweed. Just a few miles up the coast the landscape is really rugged, so ideal for ballan wrasse, and add to this the fact that the boathouse has one of the best birdwatching balconies a countryman…

Honest advice to help you to catch more fish on every trip, without breaking the bank. THE LENGTHENING nights make late October the perfect time to target bream. These nocturnal feeders can be relied on to begin patrolling lakes and rivers as the light levels fade. You can camp out all night for them, but often short morning or evening trips are just as successful. On rivers the deeper channel is the key area to fish, while on lakes look for features such as gravel bars, which bream use like motorways. The species can be caught on a wide variety of baits, and right now I take a leaf out of the carp angler’s book and fish with scaled-down specimen tactics. This gives me the best chance of singling-out the…

THE VOICE OF MATCH FISHINGTHE BIG WIN CANAL match fishing’s showpiece event, the Canal & River Trust Canal Pairs Champs Final, concluded on a cold Grand Union around Northampton as 76 qualifying pairs battled it out for the £1,800 prize over the Yardley Gobion and Stoke Bruerne sections. Emerging victorious with 138 points were Ben Clarke and Dickie Weaver, the duo from Nantwich and Ludlow recording 68 and 70 points out of 76 respectively to be crowned champions ahead of crack canal pairing Alan Donnelly and Alex Clements on 135 points. Third were Gavin Millis and James Burt with 130. Dickie recorded 9-4-0 of skimmers and roach off peg 20 in B section at Yardley Gobion, while Ben on Stoke Bruerne A section peg 32 returned with 6-5-0…

PEOPLE travel from far and wide to target the catfish in Spain’s mighty River Ebro, and English angler Andy Cullen showed the sheer size of the spoils on offer last week when he landed a new record from the waterway in the shape of this 257lb whopper. He was fishing at Mequinenza with Edd Brett of Catfish Tours and enjoyed a spectacular trip, landing 29 cats – with no fewer than 22 over the 100lb mark! Amazingly, Andy had just landed and weighed a new PB of 234lb when he hooked the near 9ft-long fish on the final night of his trip. “I didn’t think it could get any better, but the rod went again, and a 30-minute fight followed before I landed it,” Andy said. “At the time I…

WOODSIDE FISHERY, CLEOBURY MORTIMER, SHROPSHIRE Both Island and Woodside are home to big a head of silverfish, and casters are a brilliant bait for picking out the quality roach that run to over 1lb. Prawns or worms down the margins will put you in with a shot at a huge perch, with specimens over 3lb being landed every autumn. Tel: 01299 271305 BANK END FISHERIES, DONCASTER, SOUTH YORKS The open water of the 58-peg East End Lake has depths ranging from 6ft-14ft, with quality silverfish on the agenda. Double caster, small worm sections or expander pellet hookbaits will tempt the bigger skimmers, while maggots will keep the small roach and perch coming while you wait for a bonus fish. Tel: 01302 770224 SOOKHOLME PONDS, MANSFIELD, NOTTS Head to the Bottom…

Kingfisher Club TOP CATCH DOUBLE TROUBLE TROUT! THOMAS Bacon took this surprise 6lb 12oz brown trout from the River Wensum. The 14-year-old only began fishing four months ago, and was targeting chub on his local Norfolk waterway using two hair-rigged cheese and garlic boilies wrapped in a matching flavoured paste. “I cast into a deep hole and waited for about an hour before I had a couple of small taps on the rod-tip,” he told Angling Times. “After an exciting fight I finally netted it and realised it was a huge trout! A local angler told me that it was a fish of a lifetime from the river. “Amazingly, I returned to the river four days later and caught the same fish again on a piece of legered Spam!”…

I’m new to lure fishing – can somebody tell me three patterns I should buy to get underway? Pavel Miroslav, Nottingham A Lures come in all shapes and sizes, many of which are specifically designed for targeting perch, pike or zander, although a few types will work for all three. The first I’d want in my tackle box is a crankbait, something perhaps from the Rapala DT Series. Crankbaits can be cast or trolled from a boat, and have an elongated plastic lip that helps the lure dive when reeled in, getting your lure down to the depths where predators will be lurking. Next on my list would be soft shads, which are rubber imitations of bait fish. There are literally thousands of these on the market but, as a…

ALL CHANGE! WINTER is on its way. That means a change in how good the fishing will be, and entails a lot of changes to my kit. Even small things such as the bristle thickness of pole floats can make a huge difference. I’ve already put all my top kits with elastic above 1.6mm in diameter into the shed, replaced with lighter ones and, while float sizes may stay the same, bristle diameter is now nothing above 1.5mm. Hollow tips have gone too, replaced by solid bristles. Line diameters drop down a notch, from 0.17mm to 0.15mm for mainlines, while hooks change more in wire thickness than size. Lighter wire means better presentation, so we’re talking the Matrix MXC-5 for maggot and pellet fishing. On the subject of pellets, there’s…

THIS WEEK AFTER being left unable to use the left-hand side of his body following a stroke seven years ago, Gaz Bett thought his fishing days were over, but he’s now back on the bank again thanks to an ingenious harness that helped him to use a rod and reel once more. Lincoln-based Gaz was an avid carper before the stroke curtailed his passion, but when he was contacted by James Wardle from Tollenco – an innovative engineering company – his life changed. James showed Gaz a harness that he supplies to the British Disabled Angling Association, featuring a tube that the butt of the rod slots into. “This acted like my left arm, allowing me to cast and play fish on my own,” Gaz said. “It was…

BIG STRIPEY FALLS TO PRAWN OVER the last few weeks Simon Ashton has enjoyed some superb action with big perch, landing a string of big fish over 4lb, topped by this 4lb 8oz cracker from a northern sillwater. After seeing fry scattering in the margins and suspecting that perch were the culprits, he started out by fishing lures. However, he was pestered by pike, with his target species remaining elusive. He duly switched tactics, trying a small piece of floatfished prawn, and at 5:30pm – the same time as he’d enjoyed success previously – his float sailed away and he connected with the biggest perch he’s ever caught in the UK. Understandably, Simon has high hopes for what the venue might produce over the coming few months, as the fish…

ATLETTERS@BAUERMEDIA.CO.UK UNEXPECTED RIVER CATCH EARLIER this month, I was fishing the River Trent at Holywell, just by the Ferry Boat Inn, when I hooked something quite strange. On the way in it felt like a large lily pad leaf due to the way it was moving through the water! As it skipped across the surface, I couldn’t make sense of what it was, until I pulled it onto the bank. This was when I realised it was a plaice. After making the bizarre catch I decided to do some research into it, and I haven’t found any evidence of similar catches from a river. I thought I would share the details with you to see if it would be of interest to you or other anglers. Ryan Batley, email I…

I just can’t seem to get my feeding right for carp at this time of year. Should I still be positive or go very negative?Frank Linton, Stockport WHEN the water begins to clear in colder weather, feeding for carp becomes a very different game and I begin to adopt a ‘setting a trap’ approach. This basically means feeding just enough bait to catch one carp, and then, when you catch it, you feed again and repeat the process once more. It’s actually a very effective way of fishing once the colour falls from the water and the carp begin to back away from large beds of bait, although there are a few different ways of doing it, in terms of the feeding itself. “You need to fish bang on top…

THE VOICE OF MATCH FISHING Doncaster DAA Anthony Nolan Blood Cancer Charity Festival (Tues – Thurs) Southfield Reservoir (60 pegs) THIS East Yorkshire water is no easy mistress to tame, but Eddie Bridon took out this well attended charity event with a perfect three-point score! Total weight was needed to split the next two anglers, with Dean Cardwell getting the nod ahead of third-placed Jason Law. Eddie’s winning week began at peg 62, where he landed three bream, five skimmers and a rogue small mirror carp on a mix of cage and window feeder tactics at range with maggot and worm, giving him 19-10-0 for section win number one. Wednesday saw him off to peg 27, a tough area, but he got the better of it with two bream, seven…

Dom Garnett – one man determined to keep the pleasure in angling THE SEASONS make no sense at all. It’s well into October, and here we are with beach weather in Devon. July is a distant, wet memory, but nobody told the sun. It’s balmy. It’s barmy. Perhaps nobody told the fish that the summer was gone. But, to get just a little more scientific, the sea stays relatively warm well into autumn here. Sane people still swim in the sea as late as November. First stop was a family day on Exmouth beach. There were friends involved, and a barbecue, but I still managed to sneak two rods into the boot – one for me and one for Jack, a family friend who usually fishes with a spear…