James' Angling Adventures.

 I can't believe just how bad the weather has been this year so far, really can not fathom it out, we are in May and nearly June, today though for once the weather gods were shining down on me and I felt happy to just be out with a fly rod on such a pleasant day, so all that was needed was willing fish to take a liking to my plethora of flies.  It wasn't long either for things to start happening and by 8am I had my first Trout on the bank, a little female it looked like around the 6oz mark, good little bit of sport really is fun on my 7ft brook rod, never want the scraps to end but the way things were looking I'd have plenty more battles to overcome before it was home time for me, as I left the first one to recover in the net I flicked my blue flash damsel back down to roughly the same spot and a brownie a shade bigger smashed the fly at the same time leaping over a foot out of the water, would loved to have caught that on video, wow.  Not 5 minutes after releasing

 The last two weeks have been pretty busy at work but I had managed to squeeze out a few hours on the bank in search of Carp and Crucian Carp during the day and Eels during the night, with the Carp and Crucians I tried a couple of different fisheries, one of which was new to me and it didn't disappoint with a couple of Common Carp caught but nothing large but no Crucians unfortunately, with the biggest between 7-8lbs and a small solitary Perch, closer to home I had two trips out early in the mornings with one being a total blank with not even a touch and the other trip producing just the one Carp around the 10lb mark again nothing substantial but it gave a good account of itself which is always welcome even if it was the smallest in the shoal that decides to push two 20lb + Carp out of the way to snaffle my bait, sods law that is.  The Eel fishing has been fairly dead so far with two trips out so far in search of the much maligned species, although I haven't put a lot of ti

 As the coarse fishing season on the river is fast approaching, my time that I've been putting in to the fly fishing sport will quickly disappear and be spent on other species, but whilst that time hasn't yet arrived my quest for these proper wild brownies is still on.  With some dodgy weather coming around today I fancied getting out early to try and miss it, the tactics that I have deployed over the last month or so have proved to be devastating with 16 Brown Trout to 4.9 caught in just five trips, so I chose to stick with what I know works.  Considering the water I have been concentrating my efforts on is very small but brilliantly intimate I feel the return for my hard work has been extremely rewarding and I have encountered some fantastic battles off some pristine and quality fish, also with the mandatory homework done and a couple of trips just scouting was to simply understand the waterway and how to best approach it, over the last 10 years I have done this every s

 ......Fluff chucking Part Five, over the last few weeks I've been really hooked on the wild Brown Trout, so naturally I went out in search of more but the only thing missing from my recent trips is a specimen Trout, these are really hard to come by recently for the simple fact is that they are spreading out as they get older and becoming more territorial hence I'm only seeing the occasional 'big one' here and there rather than shoals of three to eight in small pockets that would average 2-3lbs the large ones now rarely keep other company.  The expedition was the same as usual but with a lot less time as I had to be somewhere in the evening and I only reached my first spot at just gone midday so I didn't leave myself with much time to lose, I started the day with a selection of wet's and dry's fishing a pool where Trout do congregate albeit usually small ones but the occasional beast does slip in and out so I always work it just hoping to tease one into

 Over the past few years I have been wondering as to where I could fish for the Crucian Carp as they are not as wide spread as the other King Carp family, I have struggled to find somewhere to have a good chance of coming across one and for quiet a long while now been keeping an eye on Marsh Farm and it's resident Crucian's and also the Yateley complex but today it was Marsh Farm I was to tackle, with quite a lot of research done on the fishery I felt quietly confident in doing ok.  At just over an hour from my front door to the fishery office/shop it is extremely accessible for me and relatively cheap considering the specimen fish available, on the train up I did a heads or tails as to what lake I'd fish ( Harris or Richardson ), tails it was and followed the wind to peg 23 on Richardson lake, over the years I've done very well for Crucian's nothing of epic proportions by heading to swims where the wind has blow the surface debris which with it will go the

 Up bright and early to head out and do some Carp fishing, 5.30am my alarm hadn't even gone off I could hear dad - James Snr already getting ready downstairs so I thought it would be about time to get out of bed and join him.  Stalking for Carp is the best and only real way to fish for this crafty species, any other way does not seem to give you the same satisfaction as this technique, well that's my opinion, each to there own though I suppose, but finding a fish and waiting to see what it's reaction is and at the same time remaining totally out of view then, picking the correct time to cast and getting the cast perfect first time, because anything less almost always ends up spooking the Carp especially in clear water, but today both my dad and I managed to successfully stalk a Carp out each. Dad's Carp was the first to be caught when he found a large Common, that was followed in by another 3 or 4 Carp and this one that he caught was one of the other fish and a

 On Tuesday, I popped out for a couple of hours with my fly rod again to use a couple of spare hours and spend some more time in the sun, the wind again was a pain in backside but it's becoming a constant theme with my fly fishing escapades, I started the day using a range of flies, some of which I have just purchased and had arrived in the post just before I was planning to leave, so the timing was great.  I began my latest quest by starting at the bottom for a change in scenario, but I didn't see an awful lot in the first mile or so that I had walked when I bumped into a Kingfisher working one of the beats, flying up and down at a 100 miles an hour in typical fashion.  I did manage to get a picture of it but as it was flying away from me, they are so hard to picture and for Mark of 'fishing for memories' to photo the one he did is amazing and I'm not a bird person at all but Kingfisher's are a nice species to see. Peek-a-boo, I see you, notice

 Over the last month or so since the season had finished, myself and a couple of my angling friends and youngest brother have been walking the banks of one of my local rivers and finding the swims that need some heavy work done to them in order for them to become fishable, not to mention make some of the less aesthetically looking swims much better to improve the flow as well.  A few weeks ago I also did a days work on the river in another stretch where I removed a king size mattress, 2 bicycles, about 6 traffic cones, trimmed back a lot of dead branches and trees, about 15 bags of recyclable materials.  After 5 hours of hard work on Monday, my brothers Richard and Chris and myself put in some hard work to remove a load of debris, which consisted of a large moped, a ton of mixed rubbish, plus loads of submerged electrical cable about 30 meters of it that was mostly buried under layers of gravel and silt, which we managed to extract after about half an hour of pulling and cutting,