Tag Archives: deadbait

Click on the image slider below to open a full gallery of the carp tackle department at local independent fishing tackle shop, Phil’s Bait & Tackle at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Phil’s has a large carp fishing & specimen fishing department with large stocks of: carp rods, carp reels, carp bait (boilies, freezer baits, pellets, particles, flavours, glugs, oils, etc.), carp luggage, terminal tackle, hooks, leads, mainline, hooklinks, bite alarms, rod pods, metalware, landing nets, bivvies, bedchairs, unhooking mats, cookware and many carp accessories. Brands stocked include: Fox, Korda, Nash, Shimano, Avid Carp, Daiwa, ESP, JRC, Korum, Chub, Spomb, Dynamite Baits, Mainline Baits, Sticky Baits, Nashbait, Bait-Tech & Solar. Their dedicated carp showroom was expanded in 2019 and features their largest ever range of quality carp tackle and carp fishing accessories, which is open to browse and try out the latest carp gear and there’s always someone on hand to provide advice. Phil’s Bait & Tackle also has a large and very well stocked coarse, specimen, match & pole fishing department. Other services offered by Phil’s include a full range of repair & spares services, including: rod & pole repair service, pole elastication, rod re-ringing, reel servicing, spare parts for some other tackle …

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Click on the image slider below to open a full gallery of the coarse fishing, match fishing, pole fishing, pleasure fishing & specimen / specialist fishing tackle department at local independent fishing tackle shop, Phil’s Bait & Tackle at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Phil’s has a large department catering for general coarse, specialist/specimen, match and pole fishing, with large stocks of: float rods, quivertip rods, avon & multi-tip barbel rods, poles & whips, free spool & baitrunner reels, bait (live maggots, casters & worms, groundbait, boilies, freezer baits, pellets, particles, flavours, glugs, oils, frozen pike deadbaits, hemp, luncheon meat, sweetcorn, etc.), luggage, terminal tackle, hooks, leads & swimfeeders, mainline, hooklinks, floats, lures, rod rests, fishing chairs, seat boxes, metalware, landing nets & keepnets, bivvies, bedchairs, unhooking mats, cookware and many accessories. Brands stocked include: Korum, Drennan, Preston Innovations, Middy, Maver, Shimano, Daiwa, Chub, Guru, MAP, Dinsmores, Matrix, Shakespeare, Fox Rage, Kamasan, Gardner, Dynamite Baits, Mainline Baits, Sticky Baits, Sensas, Sonubaits, Marukyu, Ringers, Van Den Eynde, Baitbox & Bait-Tech. Their well-stocked shop is open to browse and try out the latest fishing gear and there’s always someone on hand to provide advice on tackle, bait and local in-form venues. Phil’s Bait & Tackle also …

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Andrew urges all anglers to use their local tackle shop as often as possible. I grew up in a small village with a few fishing ponds which catered well for kids. The thing was, there were no fishing tackle shops within easy reach of the village, so as a teenager it was always a case of “Get what you can, when you can”, when the chance of a lift to a tackle shop arose! I’d been fishing for 20 years before I finally had a tackle shop in the village I lived, but after a couple of years it had already closed down. The tackle market is a different place to when I was kid, mainly because of the internet. Whilst there are thousands of bargains available out there from the major players, the advantages of having a small, local tackle and bait supplier cannot be overstated. You can’t order a last-minute pint of maggots from the internet, or replace that packet of hooks you realise you’re without, just as you’re leaving the house! Yes, it can be invaluable to go into a large shop and pick up 10 different rods to compare before you commit to that big spend, …

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2017 UPDATE!!! Unfortunately Korum discontinued their 42 inch Latex Mesh triangular nets some years ago (despite still selling their excellent Latex Mesh spoon nets and – new in 2018 – Snapper Folding Latex Pike Spoon), but as it is still the best pike fishing landing net I’ve ever used, I kept the review online in the hope that it spreads the word about the many benefits of Latex mesh for pike in particular. I regularly receive emails from frustrated anglers who are looking for a similar pike net with latex mesh. In fact, with the amount of contact I receive on the subject, I think Korum are missing out on some serious business.  The problem is, they never marketed it as a pike net, so not many pikers were aware it existed!  As much as I like using Korum tackle – I think they sell some well made, innovative gear – I have been secretly hoping that a competitor will fill the gap Korum left when they stopped making their triangular nets with Latex Mesh. Angling friends, I’m pleased to say that day has arrived!… Firstly, I was emailed by a chap called Ray who had become so frustrated by …

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I spotted this gizmo on a banner advert on the PAC website and one look was all I needed to know I had to try one out.  Wobbling for pike is great fun and on the right day very productive, but it can also be frustrating due to the number of lost and destroyed baits from simply casting and retrieving.  I’ve experimented with different methods of attaching baits to make them stay on longer but the best I’ve ever come up with involved threading a wire loop in through the mouth, out through the gill flap, straight through the flank and then back through the gills on out through the mouth.  It worked but it was as long-winded, fiddly and time consuming as it sounds to rig up!  So when I saw the concept of the Peak Pike Wobbler Rig, it seemed so intuitive that I couldn’t help but think the old cliché, “Why didn’t I think of that?”! The wobbler rig comes complete with everything needed for a snag-proof, effective method of wobbling deadbaits.  The only thing you need to add is a treble hook on a stinger wire, to your own requirements. The rig comprises a couple of …

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I got this season’s predator campaign off to a great start last week, when I tackled the Trent near Nottingham.  After fishing elsewhere all day to try and catch perch, river carp and barbel, I arrived at the river about an hour before sunset, having caught none of the species I‘d been trying for.  I hadn’t managed to catch any fresh deadbaits either, so all the zander bait I had with me was a frozen pack of 5 small roach.  It was going to be tough to make them last, but targeting zander I was only expecting a couple of runs anyway. My simple deadbait rig for zander, incorporating a buoyant leger boom I setup two rods with low-resistance run rings, which I’d adapted and added some small pieces of foam to pop the rig up and keep the line out of the Autumn debris on the riverbed.  There are similar items on the market, called leger stems, but I’ve never been happy with their quality so I make my own.  They’re simple and cheap and I’ll go through exactly how I put them together in a future feature.  The run ring rests on a run rig rubber, which incorporates …

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For the first two or three years of this millennium I generally experienced some great fishing towards the back-end of the season.  For some reason, as my river experience has grown each year, my “final session” captures have dwindled.  For the last 4 or 5 “final sessions” I have targetted perch and failed to catch anything of merit.  I was all set for my final session of the 2010/11 season and after my success piking the previous week, I decided to have a final blow-out session piking, back on the Dove.  With my confidence buoyed by my recent capture, I thought I’d try some different stretches to search out new swims for fishing in the future.  On my way from the freezer after grabbing some pike baits, I spotted my lobworm sack and – despite my previous “last session” experiences with perch – couldn’t resist taking them along in case there was a rare, big Dove stripey out there with my name on it. The original “final” session… I arrived at the first new stretch before dawn and had a walk to find a few features before grabbing my gear.  The wind was absolutely horrendous and I can’t think of a …

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It’s been a while since I posted but the good news is that I did manage to notch up a session in February and I’ve already been fishing once in March but the river close season (which I back 100%) is looming ominously.  I am now faced with the dilemma of which river/stretch/swim/species to target for my final session of the 2010/11 season.  Not an easy one when I’ve got memberships of 5 clubs, all with their own merits, but I prefer to have plenty of options available (usually, but not when it’s down to choosing one last session!).  Anyway, that’s to come later this week, but for now I’ll tell you about my last two sessions, during which I have been reminded just why and how much I love catching pike from a natural river.The week or so preceeding the first session had started off with a lot of rain falling and relatively mild weather, but as my session grew nearer, the rain subsided, river levels dropped and clarity started to return to the water.  These developments had me changing my mind at the last minute; I’d originally decided to fish for barbel, but with the water dropping I had an urge …

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As I write this entry, Derbyshire – along with much of the UK – is in the midst of snowy weather so severe that even the most ardent Toyota Prius driver must be wishing they’d bought a “gas guzzling” 4×4 instead! I would be surprised if many anglers are venturing out at the moment because this kind of prolonged cold period can turn most fish completely off the feed. Get ready once it warms up though (after the cold snow melt water has flushed out of the system) and you could be in for some action with very hungry fish! Without expecting anything like this weather approaching us, I managed to time it right and fished just a few days before the snow fell. I’d been lucky enough to receive a couple of products from outdoor gear manufacturer Sealskinz, to try out for fishing. I have owned their products before, which use a unique waterproof membrane to offer the wearer excellent resilience to the elements. My Sealskinz gloves have been used for everything from raft racing to caving and I’ve always been highly impressed by their function. The new products I was trying out for fishing were a winter Beanie …

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The majority of my predator fishing (although the term “predators” could be expanded to chub, catfish and eels, in this instance I’m talking perch, pike and zander) is spent on the banks of rivers, drains and canals. I have never done too much predator fishing on stillwaters, so rather than pretending I know something I don’t, I’ll leave that article to a more qualified person. That said, many fish-holding features are universal, so many that can be found in rivers, drains and canals can also be found in the margins of ponds and lakes. The relatively natural waters I concentrate on offer anglers a constantly evolving challenge, where fish can potentially move unimpeded for miles, making use of any features they come across, as safe refuges and ambush points. With the changing seasons and natural events such as floods, these features – and the significance of them – can change frequently.  This offers anglers both a challenge and a helping hand when locating predators on such venues. Predators can have very prominent feeding spells and often the only difference between a great day and a blank can be as simple and clichéd as being in the right place at the …

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