Limited Time....

.......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 also move around but were as smart if not more so, every piece of free-bee bread that went out they ate, the piece that had a hook in was avoided like the plague. But the next quick-fire session proved to be more fruitful, an hour of stalking a shoal of Carp just before dusk proved to be a better time to plan my perfect cast, slightly dipping my free-line to add a bit of weight and then aiming my offering just past the shoal and then slowly drawing the bait into the feeding zone, one cast one chance, a pair of big lips appeared out of nowhere to suck in the bait, in the failing light I still made out the outline of the bread vanish, gently bending into the rod I was connected to a decent Carp, but with the failing light it was difficult to know how big it was but I could feel a weight on the end, so after some careful wangling within 6 or 7 minutes I had a nice fish in the net.

 As I pulled back the net on the mat, I revealed a nice Mirror Carp heading for 20lb, but without wasting anytime James Snr and I weighed her at 19lb 9oz, not too far off and we noticed a couple of defects with her which I believe were from birth but has certainly not been hindered by it, the mouth was stumped and looked quiet unsightly and a fairly weird scale pattern which looked patchy, but 2 trips and 1 Carp for me and one for my father at 12lb it was a success, time to find some time and head off out again, summer Rudd still on the agenda, time wise it's looking like very hard work.

More of the same hopefully, maybe a little bigger next time.

Fun With the Silvers.

 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 consisted of Dace for which I had 27 of and 3 Gudgeon to 2oz, a total of 47 silvers for me is very good fishing been a long time since I last done that.

Dace territory but no takers here.

My bag of silvers, plenty of fish, some went back earlier on due to being slippery.

 Later on in the evening I finished up rolling meat on some gravel runs and whilst briefly locating the deeper runs amongst the gravel I had a ripping take on maybe the fifth roll through which tore off up river and then straight into a snag, as the fish bore deeper into the snag I could feel my 6lb line grating on the trees it ploughed through but after a couple of minutes the fish backed out and back into open water, all this time I thought it was a sizeable Barbel, so you could imagine my surprise when a decent Chub broke the surface and slipped into the net, job done.

First Chub of the season. a 5lb 4oz chalk stream Chevin.

Not bad for 5 minutes rolling.

Good Barbel in this pool but no takers that evening.

Up & Running.

 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

Rudd-y Fish.

 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 was perfect if I could get them to feed.

Not big but the species I wanted.

Lovely aren't they.

 Then the shoal of Rudd came in but weren't feeding as well as I had hoped and the shoal became quiet dis-interested, in the end they buggered off and the Tench moved back in, 4 Tench in an hour came to the net 4.14 being the biggest, also a couple of small Roach, Roach/Bream hybrid appeared amongst the masses of time that went by totally devoid of action. I will try again but the weather seems to be playing around at the moment, I will await some even more steady weather and try for the Rudd again, with hopefully a big Crucian chucked in for good measure.

4.4

4.14

Immaculate for a Marsh Farm Tench.

Fishing in Turkey.

 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 bays one evening which were visible from the shore as we ate dinner, but the best has been saved till last, throughout the holiday we were extremely lucky to have bumped into a small family of Loggerhead Turtles ( Caretta Caretta ), two adults and two youngsters, we saw them about 7 days out of the 14, so we were very lucky but even more so to have swam with 2 of them and even managed to gentle touch one whilst it circled me in 300ft plus of water, with Lucie also managing to gather the courage to overcome her fear of deep water, the 2nd time I swam with a Turtle I had my goggles on and went underwater with it and got a real good look at it before it dived into the dark blue water and totally vanished out of sight.

Fethiye harbour at dusk.

Out in the open sea, game fish on the agenda.

Picturesque.

Sardine. Bait.

Baby Snapper.

Colourful Squid.

My first sight of a Caretta Caretta ( Loggerhead Turtle ).

Naughty storm which produced a tornado just on the coast line.

Little Sea Bream.

Baby Whiting.

Muller, not the biggest one.

The better half and me.

A stunningly marked Blue Crab.

Turtle's love these!!!

Stunning.

Horse riding was great fun, another first.

Stunning photos's, speechless.

Adult Turtle complete with a Ramora fish.

Turtle in one of the bays off the open sea.

Taking a breath, a matter of 10ft away.

A lovely few shots of it close up to the Kayak.

Wow.

This one was spotted in 300 ft of water, which was very calm around us.

Very calm in fact, Lucie having a brief swim in the sea.

Miniature fish.

Pretty miniature fish.