Saturday, 19 March 2011

Stalking Carp - A beacon of hope

Stalking Carp - sounds difficult?
Well sometimes its easy.
Fishing with Paul this afternoon on a local public park lake we were both blanking using pole fished maggots, hemp and caster, until Paul got up for a walk round, and suddenly saw this "beacon of hope."


Some free lined bread did the trick and a 11.5lb wierd looking carp was soon gracing the landing net. A very odd fish to see in a public park - which has obviously lost all self restraint when faced with medium sliced Warbies.






Thursday, 17 March 2011

Attn All Bloggers

Hi everyone,
Will you please take a look at the following link, http://www.ourrivers.org.uk/
Please complete the letter to Richard Benyon, the minister in charge of Defra and tell him what you think. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete.
If you have a blog, would you also copy and paste this and post in on you blog.
Thanks
Mike

Sunday, 13 March 2011

Happy Days

The blogs been quiet of late - a wet wet holiday in Portugal the reason. No sea fishing - too rough for boats to go out, too rough to fish from the rocks, rivers bursting banks, and the lake i had in mind rose nearly 8 feet over the 8 days we were there. A silver lining was found, via a lovely little restaurant serving lovely cataplana washed down with some great Lagos red.


Back in the UK a couple of crazy days back in the office then a two trips out with members of the www.salfordfriendlyanglers.co.uk Saturday evening was spent with Matthew, Paul and Derek on the upper river. Matthew is getting to be a bit of a dab hand with the centre pin, and had a few small brownies on maggots while trotting for chub.
And Paul had a couple too, until he switched to slower water and a big lump of bread flake, and he proceeded to winkle out a brace of chub just short of 3lbs each.

And despite acting as Matthews Ghillie for the evening, I managed to snaggle a little Bullhead out from underneath a rock which I can now add to my seasons species list.




A very pleasant evenings fishing in good company was followed by another evening on the same bit of river with Nick, Pete and Derek.


Nick and I trotted maggots and both had small brownies, while Pete who was trying out a new centre pin christened his new bit of kit with a cracking Brownie of 3lbs 4oz.





A lovely fish which i am sure would weigh at least 4lbs when its regained its mid summer condition after a few months of gorging on minnows. Pete followed this beauty up with a nice Chub well over the 3lb mark - hopefully I will get a photo to show you.

As darkness was falling about 6.30 we packed up and had a walk downstream to find Derek very pleased with himself after catching yet another 3lb+ chub (3lb4oz in the digi scales)

A great weekend was rounded off with a couple of pints in the pub - happy days, great fishing, good company and some very enthusiastic anglers looking forwards to the clocks changing and longer evenings fishing on the river. Bring it on!