Tag Archives: fishing

FishingMagic.com has been through a few redesigns which have affected how the articles, reviews & catch reports I wrote for them – mostly between 2011 & 2013 – have been displayed.  What has never changed is the quality and variety of writing on the site; it’s a great resource for angling-related news, instruction and entertaining stories. The site has gone through another revamp over recent months and I thought the images on the content I wrote for them had vanished forever, but after checking again recently the content is reappearing!  So if you have an interest in reading the reviews, articles & catch reports I wrote for the online angling magazine, FishingMagic, you still can at the following links:  www.fishingmagic.com/?s=andrew+kennedy or www.just-fish.co.uk/fishingmagic

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2019 UPDATE – Unfortunately there have been some major changes since I published this page, so I intend to replace it soon with a new resource to help children and beginners get into fishing. Kevin Miles no longer offers angling tuition. Barlow Lakes is now under new ownership and has been rebranded as “Barlow Country Club“. They are hoping to offer their own angling tuition & tackle hire and will open an on-site tackle shop in the near future. Exciting times ahead! There are now many events organised in school holidays where children can try fishing for free or learn to fish for free – with tuition and use of tackle included. Sadly we’ve moved into an era where independent fishing tackle shops are closing down (or being bought out by massive tackle shop chains) and there is a general decline in the fishing tackle trade, mirrored by a rapid decline in junior rod licences issued. Therefore, it’s never been more important to encourage new blood into angling. I’m passionate about this and I don’t believe the “big-name” anglers or the tackle industry do enough to encourage our nation’s youth (obviously there are a few exceptions). That’s why I’m devoting …

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This a short article I wrote for www.fishingmagic.com, expressing the magic and allure of river fishing, along with my hopes & thoughts about the upcoming river season. The magic & allure of river fishing I grew up in an area where there were plenty of ponds within cycling distance, but the nearest rivers that were fishable were just a bit too far away. No-one in my family fished, so I had nobody to introduce me to river fishing, which meant that my early angling years were spent primarily beside stillwater, rather than flowing. This gave rivers a certain mystery, as I would catch glimpses of them on school trips (Monsal Dale and Dovedale), family days out (Matlock Bath, Newark, Tissington, Bakewell) or a fleeting vision from a car (the powerful Sawley weir, from the M1). Often I would see people fishing, or spot fish in the crystal clear waters and I felt drawn to these tranquil, serpentine venues that were – for the most part – out of my reach. On the few occasions I was taken to fish a river something always seemed to happen (the ‘something’ was usually in the shape of an eel…). Whether it was catching …

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Watch Screaming Reels on All 4! (’90s TV angling show starring Nick Fisher) One of the most entertaining, unconventional, series about fishing has to be Nick Fisher’s primetime Channel 4 show, Screaming Reels. With a format of short clips, OTT sound effects, weird visuals and fronted by a cheeky, irreverent, but ultimatley knowledgeable presenter in Nick Fisher, Screaming Reels wasn’t for everyone. I was a teenager when this show was on TV and I thought it was bloody brilliant! For context, A Passion for Angling aired on the BBC around a similar time to the first series of Screaming Reels. Like many anglers, I hold A Passion… in a league of its own as my GOAT fishing programme (although Caught In The Act has been a recent favourite). They are polar opposite series, in both style and approach, to what is essentially the same subject matter; but I can happily watch and enjoy both. In this era of online streaming services and binge-watching series box sets, Channel 4 have kindly made available all episodes of Screaming Reels series 1 & 2 to view for free; on their All 4 platform (previously “4oD”) here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/screaming-reels/episode-guide which has given me chance to …

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I only had time to get out fishing once between Christmas and new year.  I’d had a pike fishing itch to scratch for a while and despite conditions which were far from ideal (after the bout of mild weather and heavy rain), I decided to pike fish on the River Dove. The Dove is a spate river and therefore it’s notorious for the speed at which the level rises and colour increases. So it was to my dismay, but no surprise, that I arrived to find the river coloured and rising! I should have been barbel fishing in conditions like this but my heart was set on piking, so I had left my barbel rods at home! I stuck it out regardless and fished to the conditions as best I could, but I only got a single dropped run all day. A run I didn’t even notice at the time because my float, cast to the far bank, would only stay in the slack water if I let out a big bow of line. Not an issue in itself, however, it was an extremely blustery day and the combination of wind and the flow meant my float was constantly dancing around all …

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I managed to pick a couple of days break in the early-May rain, to fit in a 24-hour session with Shane Calton.  We visited Derbyshire’s Higham Farm Lakes and tackled up primarily for tench, but with the head of carp, bream and other species in there, we knew it would be difficult to target them solely. Higham is pretty local to me, so I used to fish this place quite regularly for the carp when I was 15 to 18, but I worked out that I have only been there once in the last 12 years! I was field testing a fair bit of Cyprinus night fishing gear, including a bivvy, a memory foam bedchair, a 3-5 season sleeping bag and a tackle barrow, which all performed superbly (Reviews on FishingMagic.com here). Before I arrived Shane had already landed a few bream in the 4-5lb bracket and as I was setting up he landed a tench of exactly 5lb, which was a very promising start. It was to be the last tench we had between us, but we each notched up carp overnight and I also had a bream and a strange fantail brown goldfish-cross thing, which I should have really taken …

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This little newsflash post is soon to be followed by a fishing update, but I just have a few things of interest I thought I should share… Firstly, Carl Allman of Rio Ebro Angling, who we chose to fish the Ebro with – for zander, roach, carp and catfish – last September, acheived second place in IGFA‘s World Record Acheivement Awards, as acknowledgement of him guiding anglers to a total of 18 line class World Records during 2011 alone!  I’d like to say I was one of those anglers… but I’d be lying! Rio Ebro Angling also have a newly redesigned website (NO LONGER ACTIVE!) and I urge you to check it out if you’re thinking of venturing to foreign shores in search of fish this Summer.  There is a limit to how many bookings a single guide can take and I assure you Carl is among the best, so make your enquiries sooner rather than later. I wrote an article a little while ago, about storing and keeping worms, including lobworms and denbrobaenas (“dendras”), which is now up on my website.  If you want good, plump, fresh worms whenever you need them, without spending a fortune keeping them, take a look. I …

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To follow on from the end of my last post, I was in agony with my back.  It turned out I’d pulled some muscles down either side of my spine, around the lumbar region and for a pulled muscle, boy has it given me some grief!  It was playing havoc with all parts of my life, at work, at home, sleeping… I couldn’t even put a pair of socks on!  Worst of all it was preventing me going fishing, so something had to be done After trying various forms of pain relief, such as Voltarol, nothing was doing the trick and after all, killing the pain isn’t really getting to the source of the problem.  A friend suggested I visit a sports massage therapist for treatment and recommended Nigel Mallender’s Muscle Mend service. After the first 45 minute session last week, I felt a gradual improvement in the level of pain I felt and the range of movement in my back. Nigel showed me a routine of stretching and strengthening exercises to do each morning, which also seemed to help.  Today I had my second session and now feel no pain from my injury.  Having said that, I can feel it’s still there and I’m very wary …

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I haven’t posted a “true” blog post for a while now, I seem to have been abusing this blog and using it mainly as an interactive advertising board for other things I’ve been up to. My own fishing has been very disappointing lately (more on that later), and I turn 30 in a couple of weeks, so I’m in quite a reflective mood and thought this was an opportune time to fill in on how 2011 was for me in fishing… 2011 started off very slowly for me. A multitude of reasons have left me spending far less hours on the bank than I would have liked to, but thankfully most sessions I’ve made the most of the time I had and caught some reasonable fish. I only had chance to fit in one session before March, but then managed a couple more river sessions before the season ended.  The only fish I landed during this period were a few pike, topped off by an 18lb 13oz beauty, which I blogged about here. Once the rivers closed, my fishing mainly went on a self-induced hiatus. Buying my first home became the priority and despite ours being a relatively straight-forward purchase (so we were assured by the estate agents!), …

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So, you knew I was going, but how did I get on, over on the Ebro?  Well, I’m going to keep a little bit back for articles (which I’ll post the links to as soon as they’re online), but we had a brilliant week with Carl of Rio Ebro Angling and we did catch plenty of fish!  Although the catfish took a lot of convincing to feed and the “Charlie Boorman” tactics were almost resorted to!  But, as with all the best stories, it all came good in the end… Between us we caught 11 catfish, several zander and – in just one afternoon – over 50 quality roach to specimen proportions.  We fished for 6 days using baits & lures from boat & bank, so all in all there’s a lot for me to write about! The related articles will be in two parts, the first covering the zander, roach and carp fishing (Alternative River Ebro part 1 – zander, roach & carp) and the second covering all things catfish-related (Alternative River Ebro part 2 – catfish cannonade).  The articles should be appearing in the December 2011 & January 2012 issues of Angling Star, with “director’s cut” extended versions appearing on FishingMagic …

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