Tag Archives: legering

After our fairly successful session at Higham Farm last year, Shane and I decided on a return trip this Spring, again for 24 hours and again targeting the resident tench. Shane had hatched a plan of attack and I liked it.  I really liked it.  This time we would fish on the Specimen Lake, which can only be fished on a 24 hour ticket.  Because of this, it tends to only attract carp anglers so the numerous other species resident in the lake only ever see the bank when they pick up a disgruntled carper’s bait!  Specimen tench and bream were definitely on the cards, plus who knows what large roach and perch could lurk in there. Besides fishing this lake, our approach was a little unorthodox too.  Rather than simply using scaled-back carp tactics, we would go armed with a couple of gallons of maggots each and fish positively by feeding aggresively – by introducing a large bed of maggots via a spomb, then topping the swims up when necessary. I chose to hair rig a mixture of buoyant Drennan imitation maggots and live maggots to create a balanced Medusa bait designed to hover just above the lake bed, …

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It’s often good practice when predator fishing to keep your mainline up and off the deck, to avoid bottom debris (especially around autumn time when there are lots of fallen leaves & twigs) and ensure a truly low-resistance presentation. Many anglers achieve this through the use of pop-up/buoyant leger stems to attach their leads when deadbaiting. Buoyant run rings and pop-up leger stems might also be useful in carp fishing and other specialist angling. For example, a floating run ring could be the perfect way of attaching a surface controller float when floater fishing for carp; whilst a buoyant leger stem could be used an alternative to a sunk float – to allow a running lead rig to be used over weed (instead of a fixed lead on a chod rig, for example). Buoyant leger attachments have been on the market for years, most notably in the form of Middy’s Buoyant Leger and Fox Leger Stems. Annoyingly, the Middy ones have become difficult to find and the Fox ones tend to just fall apart! They’re way too fragile for me to use with any confidence, so I started modifying them. Then I thought, instead of paying so much for a …

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Firstly, I have to say it was great to just get a few days out on the bank at last!  For me, 4 full days fishing out of 14 is quite rare (if only it wasn’t!), and I managed to actually relax into the fishing; not so-much-so that I wasn’t thinking about what I could do to improve my chances (which, incidentally, I mainly concluded was very little!), but enough to actually enjoy just being there. So, on to what I actually did…  I had two days fishing for perch on the rivers before they closed which – I suppose due to a combination of the size prospects at this time of year, the fact that most of my winter fishing revolves around toothier predators and also because perch are one of my favourite species – has become a bit of a tradition for me over the last few years. So far an unsuccesful tradition, but this year had to be different. For starters, last season I baited up a swim to return to later only to find upon my return that another angler had taken that peg (which there is nothing wrong with, it was only through satisfying my …

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Filmed on location in Chilliwack, British Columbia, when Tim and I fished for the mighty white sturgeon on Canada’s famous Fraser River:

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