James' Angling Adventures.

 My last day off of work for the week and with the weather being very pleasant too I could not resist the temptation of going fishing for a part of the day, with most of my recent sessions being used to target specimen lake Bream I thought a brief change of emphasis would do me well, so I packed very light and went trotting for a couple of hours and let's say one thing.........just when you think a river could not throw up another surprise, another curve-ball is hurled into my face.  On today's agenda was pretty much anything that swims of any size, but I had a particular feeling for the Gudgeon, a species of which that I am fairly fond of and not for fighting qualities as you could imagine, my local rivers were once paved with them, a time when you could almost do what Chris Yates and Bob James illustrated on Redmire, a 100 Gudgeon could easily have been done and some would be heading for British Record proportions and I'm convinced that there were or still are potenti

 This specimen Bream lark is starting to get fairly addictive, the real possibility of another personal best fish is there for the taking if I can learn the fishery, I must admit that the previous two visits have provided me with some fantastic fish, fish that 2 weeks ago never thought I would locate let or lone catch.  But before I get on to today's session I'll do the catch up from yesterday evening when I embarked on a brief wander after work rolling meat and it was a success as I fished a couple of spots where I know Barbel frequent this time of the season, after probably 15mins I had a typical wrench on the rod as my luncheon meat was taken for a swim, it's been a long time since I felt that power and it felt good.  Second fling for a Barbel and this 8lb 14oz specimen was the result of that great 5 minute scrap, happy days, good to have caught a decent Barbel after god knows how many months, well......back to today I suppose, this being my third session here a

 Well this post is a leading on from the last post "Enchant Me", where I targeted a water out in Surrey for monster Bream with the view to banking a new personal best, I've only spent one session for these Bream and had three, 2 of which were double figure fish ( 10.11 & 10.7 ), although I believe these fish aren't easy to catch I did have the best possible start and after a busy weekend I saw a window of opportunity to go for an evening's trip out for a Bream or two and knowing the stamp of fish here an enquiry could quite possibly be a PB. Very unpleasant but thankfully didn't get any closer.  When I arrived at the fishery I had to postpone my setting up and casting out as a vicious storm raged on in the adjacent fields, with constant lightning and thunder rumbling on I wasn't to risk getting struck so I waited for it to pass, I arrived around 7pm and I had to be out the gate by 9:30 so my time was severely shaved down but as I waited I humpe

A beautiful summer's dawn through a polarized lens.  Just the tonic for a 3:40am alarm, feeling like a zombie with a couple of hours sleep, only the fact that I felt confident I would catch my target species was the reason that I didn't impersonate a homeless person sleeping under a tree whilst I caught up with a few winks, but needless to say I carried on with my plan and that plan was to catch a Bream.........not just any Bream either.  For a long time I have been itching to catch some very large slabs and I know a couple of places where they are present but by no means easy as most specimen sized fish seldom are, after an hour last night spent preparing my ground-bait and mix which consisted of 4 loaves of white bread and 2 kilo's of sweetcorn, it sounds a lot but if there is one thing that must be known about Bream is if you get a hungry shoal of them in front of you feeding the more bait you have the better to keep them around and get through the shoal as best

 Big Dace have long since been of a massive interest to me, one of my first ever was of 11oz which is big for the species, fast forward 16 years and I have improved on that a few times and have currently caught 3 over the magical 1lb mark, only recently I have started to find shoals of Dace but targeting them specifically has its difficulties as they share the same territories as the Chub and today was a perfect example, but before I go any further though today was not in search of a Dace, but Roach and Rudd were my intended quarry, although they were totally elusive and I only saw two Roach all day.  The one and only Dace I had today though was well worth catching, I caught it roughly an hour into the session amongst the scores of Chub. A majority of the Chub were 4lb plus, so they were of a good stamp but when your targeting redfins the Chub can ruin your swims and I believe on this occasion this did happen, however catching such a big Dace the no-show of reddy's were ban

.......Varying success, it has been a crazy last week or so and even though it has been hectic I have managed to get in a couple of extremely short sessions which have been used in search of some large Carp, a 20 on the agenda at first and as I locate the bigger Carp I will certainly be tuned in to snare one or two on my normal stalking tactics, unfortunately over the last two months I have lost 2 very nice Carp, both of which were over twenty pounds, but on 6lb line I do run the risk at losing fish with the heavy weed present at the moment, 6lb line under normal circumstances can overcome large Carp and with the 35.8 Mirror I had last season was banked using that breaking strain, but certain lakes may be too snaggy or weedy to get away with such an approach.  The first morning's trip I was on the bank at around 5am and although I had a number of good fish showing interest in my free offerings, my hook-bait remained untouched by some extremely clever Carp and the Tench began to

 Fishing in and around London does not always support good fishing in regards to silver fish, ie: Roach, Rudd, Dace and smaller species like Gudgeon and Bleak, over the last 10 years a lot of these fish have disappeared through a number of different ways but on Thursday I managed to locate a swim where there could be a shoal of fish and during my fly fishing throughout April and May I had done that hard work , so after some fishing for Trout upstream which I was successful with I then headed down to this secluded weir pool that I knew held fish but what did it hold, I was to find out over the course 5 hours which it took to build a decent bag just how many there were, a good afternoon's angling for sure and the first time in a very long time that I bagged up on silvers. A typical chalk stream Brown Trout. Trot to your hearts content.  During the time I spent in the swim I bagged up in I had half a dozen Rudd to 12oz, 10 Roach no bigger than 6oz, the bag though mainly c

 Start of the river season for me this season has been somewhat delayed, in fact it started on the 2nd of July for me this year and it was only for an hour after work, I was kind of prepared with just a tin of meat on the centre-pin, but after a good 9 hours at work I was half asleep but the Barbel that I hooked certainly woke me up, weirdly enough it wasn't the sort of scrap I would expect but I feel the reason for it's relatively poor showing was due to the recent spawning and it certainly looked like it once Stu had banked it for me. First of the season at 5.7

 I arrived back from Turkey on Sunday morning and got into Gatwick about 5am, there was no point sleeping so I headed home to grab my gear together and turn around back to the train station, my destination: Marsh Farm, my target was one of our most aesthetic species in British waters, that fish the is the Rudd.  I got there before Brian and I set up my stall on Harris lake but the first couple of hours were extremely hard work and the swim just didn't provide the sport I hoped, so I moved around the lake where it narrowed a bit and I found a ledge where there was a steep-ish drop and finally found fish that were feeding, the float started to dance around as the fish moved in on to the ever growing mountain of maggots that I was using to build the swim.  Tench had moved in but some of the bites once I had got my eye in were certainly crucian's but I could not get close to them, even with my well balanced set-up, it wasn't delicate enough for them but for the Rudd it wa

 Since mid-June I have been abroad and after a few years absence for Turkey my partner Lucie and I decided to head back to a country we have been quiet a few times and whilst we were over there I managed to get some fishing done and Lucie even joined me for a day's boat fishing out in the Mediterranean but we were unfortunately fish-less for our efforts but caught plenty of bait fish and saw a shoal of Barracuda.  Throughout our holiday I headed off out to sea in a single man Kayak armed with a loaf of bread and a telescopic rod, often heading out into deep water whilst fishing off of rock faces which line the coast, a range of different fish were caught but nothing substantial with the biggest fish being a Mullet about a 1lb 8oz, most of the fish were fairly small though which averaged 6-8ozs, but good fun all the same, during the trip we also experienced some fantastic parts of nature which included Squid, a type of Eagle in the mountains, a pod of Dolphins out in one of the