Tag Archives: river fishing

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!), …

Read More »

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 …

Read More »

The streets and riverbanks of Riba Roja resounded with the laments of disgruntled guides and disheartened anglers.  It was our fourth day of six fishing the Ebro and hardly any catfish were being caught by anyone.  We had a sense that the catfish were starting to wake up a bit, but I shall start with how our week began… The first morning we were understandably high on a heady cocktail of anticipation, intrigue and enthusiasm.  We wanted a good start so the pressure would be off, but none of us had seen the Ebro before, let alone fished it, yet its legend gave us high expectations.  We boarded Carl’s California skiff, headed out to an island at the far side of the river and anchored up to cast our rigs for the first time.  These were straightforward sliding floats through to heavy braided traces holding single size 3/0 heavy-gauge trebles.  The stop-knots were set at around 80% depth and we lip-hooked bleak and trotted them downstream.  We moved every 45 minutes or so and the third spot we settled in was full of features and looked perfect. As we watched our floats steadily trotting, Shane’s float jerked downward, then back …

Read More »

It must be the best part of two decades since I first gazed at photos of John Wilson et al posing with huge catfish they’d caught from the Ebro.  I’ve wanted to fish there ever since, but had been put off because in many popular areas such as Mequinenza and Caspe, the “fishing” has evolved into nothing more than sitting back while your rods are positioned for you by someone in a rowing boat, your hair-rigged pellet hookbait tipped over the side with several kilos of loose pellets.  When a bite materialises there is little more to do than winch in an overfed, pellet-addicted lump of a catfish.  This is a far cry from the traditional tactics employed on the Ebro such as “clonking” and boat fishing with a float or lure.  This is what fishing on the Ebro is all about to me – putting in the effort yourself whilst drawing upon the experience of a good guide – and I‘ve always felt the river could offer me more. Despite this watering-down of methods, there are still alternatives available if you can find the right guides in the right areas.  A chance conversation with Will Barnard a couple of …

Read More »

This is another quick post from an internet café.  I’m on holiday, you see, until tomorrow, so burglars you’ve got one last chance! The house is actually the reason for both my blog-slackness and my wider angling-slackness for almost the entirity of the river closed season and beyond.  I finally took the plunge and bought my first place with my girlfriend, Jen. Needless to say, there was a lot more to the whole process than I’d anticipated… Still, I’ve finally started to get a few sessions in, which I’m pleased to say have yielded very few blanks. So far I’ve had barbel to around 9lb off the rivers and a good few carp off the surface on some local lakes too. I also took my 13 year-old cousin Fraser for his first-ever river session a week or so ago where, under my guidance, he managed to land a clonking new PB chub of 4lb 5oz on simple groundbait feeder techniques. Not a bad first river fish at all; I reckon I was 19 before I’d caught a chub of that size. The only thing was the pesky chub was very lively on the bank and every time I pressed the …

Read More »

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 …

Read More »

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 …

Read More »

After more than a month of abstinence from fishing, I finally got myself back out on the bank between Christmas and New Year. I had a few new bits of tackle – mainly Christmas presents – to try out too. The first trip was an ill-advised, two hour drive to Boston with Craig and his mate Arran, only for us to find all of the drains were still completely frozen over with a good 3 to 4 inches of ice! After a brief bout of self-deprecation for not calling a local tackle shop to check, a swift re-think was required. We needed to find some flowing water to be guaranteed some ice-free fishing. The nearby Witham was an option but, as none of us had ever really pulled up any trees on there, we opted to head back as far as Newark and try a stretch of the Trent which none of us had fished before. It was close to a boatyard and seemed a logical place for us to find some lethargic pike seeking food close to shelter. Craig quickly caught a small jack, probably less than a couple of pounds, and that was it as far as action …

Read More »

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 …

Read More »

Following a blank after-work zander fishing session last week I was keen to get back out on the bank predator fishing because the rivers were fining down nicely since the rains had stopped.  I headed to an old river haunt which I hadn’t fished for four or five years. A friend and I had some great results there between 2003 and 2005, with quite a few doubles gracing our nets. These were seemingly uncaught fish in pristine condition, which gave me the best fights I’ve ever had from pike. They were long, lean, huge-finned pike which really knew how to use the current to their advantage. The reason we stopped fishing there is that when comparing photographs, we started to notice a few recaptures, so for the benefit of these prime breeding females, we decided to leave them alone. A tip for checking if you’ve had any recaptures of pike is to compare the anal fin markings. Like the rest of a pike’s markings, these are unique to each fish and because the anal fin is relatively large and visible on most photographs, they make a perfect comparison tool. Planning for an early start, I over-slept and didn’t get on …

Read More »