Recent content by Mark Swaby

I remember fishing the Great Ouse back in the 90's and around 1 am in the morning the weir at Turvey would suddenly foam up 12ft high and pieces would break off and float across the fields. A well known Barbel angler now passed over said it was Algae dying off but I knew it had to be the...

Up until two weeks ago I was catching Barbel or Chub from the Colne my local river most sessions apart from the Otter disturbed ones. Now the Colne is never an easy river these days but its never unfishable, even with all this rain most stretches are still within their banks. In Winter I usually...

Some mediums on ebay and xl ones here https://strike-master-fishing.myshopify.com/products/fox-predator-fluted-sliders

I always put a couple of drops of Mainline response Pineapple into a small amount of water on casters when targeting big Roach. I remember arriving one morning and struggling for a couple of hours to get bites in a favourite swim. I then realised I had forgot to flavour my casters the night...

I saw another video from that match of a famous angler holding up a Barbel vertically with his hand gripping the fish across the gills to unhook it. The video quickly cut away so did not see if it was just dropped into the keepnet but suspected it was. I used to match fished myself before the...

Roach on my local rivers are like rocking horse poop due to the cormorant issue. So when a mate caught one of 1.5lb fishing meat on the Colne I was tempted to try for a few in my persuit for a colne 2lb er. The stretch is very overgrown with watercress, rushes and floating pennywort covering...

A local catering college was interested in using signal crayfish caught from our local river. A man that traps them and works in the river on clean up projects that was going to supply them. I was told the crayfish were tested and that was the end of them being used in any form of catering...

Graham it was a long time ago but think it was Ufton

I have posted this before on BFW and even though I spent Summer holidays on a family farm as a kid I was really shaken / lucky that night. I think being quickly aware of their mood change saved me. Back in the early 90's I was fishing Turvey on the Great Ouse above the road bridge on a Rushden...

Morning everyone, is there anyone going up to the Barbel Society show from West London and wants to share petrol costs. I went up with Gerry Giles a couple of times but he sadly passed this year, I am based in Ruislip.

Morning Neil, there are so many variables, it depends on what sort of river you are fishing. Its size, its power, its stocks, Summer or Winter, heavy Floods, Tidal, fishing pressure etc. If you can tell us what river you are fishing I think we can give you more accurate answers that will suit...

This is the Thames EDM map, because we have had little rain for a couple of months it does not show many discharges at the moment. Last year the majority of stw's were red most of the time. https://www.thameswater.co.uk/edm-map

I saw on their Facebook page that the new Thames Tideway tunnel had already diverted 6,376,450 Cubic Meters of sewage from the Thames. Yet they cannot give any figures for any of the Sewage 'treatment' works they run. They only publish hours which means nothing when trying to compare a small...

Should take him back up there to put the nest area right, then give him a little nudge over the edge.

I have had about half a dozen kinked Barbel over the years and all were low doubles. I always suspected it was an old barbel thing. Possibly caused by older fish getting caught and being a bit fragile/brittle, but who knows exactly. We had a couple both doubles on the stretch of Colne I used to...