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I’ve fly fished for very big fish in the sea and the technique there is to use the rod to cast; and then the reel to play the fish. So you play the fish with a low rod - that means that the butt section bends rather than (just) the tip. You regulate the pressure on the fish with the drag of the...

Completely correct. Try catching the big perch in some of the large reservoirs WITHOUT a serious sonar set up and you will struggle. The same logic applies to zander and pike on those waters. My (shared with a mate) sonar cost £1400 a few years ago and now it is totally outclassed by the...

You are absolutely giving them away at that price. Very good rods.

The best bet is probably as part of a decent house insurance policy. But cheap house insurance won’t do. Same with angling specific policies -they come and go; primarily because too many anglers are prats who claimed every year to ‘get their money back’ - so the insurer gives up after a few years.

At least the BBC ran an interview with Steve Backshall (spelling?) highlighting the pollution issue as part of the coverage of the race(s).

I had 2 of the original Simpson’s carbon Avons back in the day. Some of the best rods I have ever owned. They got nicked and were sadly irreplaceable ! I will offer you a pair of (rare) 2 1/2 lb test Harrison Chimera 12 ft rods for that rod. The Chimeras would make perfect Trent (or other big...

My first mat (probably mid 80’s) was a piece of foam nicked from a 25 year old bench seat in my Mum’s kitchen. I stuck it inside a green plastic 25kg pellet sack and it worked just fine. BTW the 2mm pellets from BP Nutrition were brilliant. Pity you can’t get them anymore.

That roughly squares with my experience - lots of bread fishing for roach and I’ve hooked 1 barbel (on the B Avon) in all that time. It was quite fun on a light trotting rod. I’d rather use a dead fish than a bit of bread……

12mm fishy bait for me; IF I can’t fish casters and maggots.

I try and fish with people who I think are better/more experienced than me - that way I’m constantly testing myself to be better and to learn ‘stuff’. If I fish with less experienced anglers I find it interesting that they often say ‘why did you do that?’ when I alter something. Yet I’ve made a...

I think it was Arnold Palmer. But he wasn’t trying to catch something alive, with a mind of it own that is driven by natural forces.

Excellent post.

You should read Leighton McDonnell’s books. He advocates ‘divining’ for fish on low stock stretches. I’ve caught a few big fish (and witnessed a few others) that were caught as a direct result of intuition/sixth sense. One notable one was my first really big pike (28.05) caught on a foul day at...

The Tenchfishers work on rig safety is really impressive. I have bought some Hellerman tubing and am messing about with it. If you want a few lengths to try; send me a PM. You can have them FOC. I don’t like swivels running directly on the mainline - so decades ago I used to put a swivel...

Local tackle shop in CWP is called the ‘Tackle den’. Give them a call as Neil suggests. Lots of water to choose from - day ticket to club to syndicate. There have been previous threads on here about tench and CWP - so try a search…..

In an idle moment I’ve just googled ‘electro fishing and fish deformities’ and first up was a US paper 161 pages long. There appears to have been plenty of research on the effects of electro fishing on the spine and musculature of fish. There are even x-Ray images trying to differentiate...

Virtually identical.

I was idly reading the last issue of ‘Fly fishing and fly tying’ magazine this week and there is a great article in there about big trout in Spain. Halfway through, the author (a well travelled fly angler) suddenly says that his local river Otter has been ruined by beaver introductions - it...

They quite happily take down 50 - 60 foot trees over the course of a few nights. Smaller ones come down in 2 nights. My lake outlet drops into a stream that runs out of my neighbours lake. My neighbour has to clear attempts at beaver dam building on said stream most days. The stream runs...

That theory all sounds great….. But first hand experience of beavers/otters/ EN/NE and fisheries says it is a total mess. I won’t rehearse all the facts I have put in the previous threads. Natural England round here (CWP) are a disgrace and that comes from somebody (me) who runs one of the...