Fishing UK Specialist Angler & Angling Writer, Andrew Kennedy | Pike Perch Barbel Carp Lure Coarse British angler writing about fishing and specialist angling

It has been a tough old winter for all of us and to end a run of blanks I had been toying with the idea of a day’s grayling fishing however in the end I decided against the easy option of going trotting for small grayling and thought instead I’d target some perch. The conditions really seemed to be favourable for perch so I took the day off and headed to the River Derwent, where most of my biggest perch have come from.  It was a cold start, with a heavy shroud of fog, but just before the sun burned through it, about 11.30, I had a typically hesitant run and struck home into a good, chunky perch.  As soon as I saw it I knew it was a ‘three’ and when the scales registered 3lb 4oz, I reckoned it to be my largest since summer 2010.  Having checked my records when I got home, it has turned out to be an even more significant capture than I thought because it’s actually my biggest since I caught my PB way back in August 2007!  It’s my seventh ‘three’ but my first on bait as all of the others were taken …

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New Years resolution:  Update my blog more regularly! Three-quarters of the river season has already flown by since I last wrote, which is extremely slack of me, but hopefully there are still a few people out there interested in reading, so I’ll update on how my Summer fishing went and then I plan to do a small post on what I’ve done since (unfortunately not many fish to write about since November!), by which point I should be back in the habit of writing on here more regularly. The good news is that the fishing I did over the Summer was generally excellent!  I concentrated on a single river, the Derbyshire Derwent, and on a single species, Barbel. The regular rain certainly helped this Summer, keeping the levels topped up and keeping the barbel feeding confidently.  So many times in the past 4 or 5 seasons, I’ve heard anglers moaning – on the bank and on the internet – about the low river levels making barbel fishing difficult.  Personally, I never moaned because I still managed to find a good few fish, but I must say that sport was definitely better this season with a bit of extra water and …

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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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