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grayson

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Everything posted by grayson

  1. If you can be bothered to read what I said rather than what you would like me to have said then you might realise I was making the perfectly reasonable point that anglers can help by not spreading crayfish eggs unwittingly . Obviously you are a self appointed expert in all matters relating to alien species and so I really cannot be arsed to dignify the rest of your ramblings with a reply
  2. There was an excellent section of Winterwatch on this subject this week , showing a beck which had been completely infested with crayfish - to the extent that the entire biomass was self predating crays. Hideous. The Angling Trust was involved and came out very well - and as anglers are absolutely part of the problem we are also part of the solution . The daft comment above about our not being the sole agent in spreading crays just illustrates the age old problem of anglers criticising everything and doing bugger all about it- I hope I am not the only one who disinfects my waders? I fish a local beck which is crawling with crays- and I fish lots of other places which are free of them and the last thing I want to do is spread them to a water with only white claws.
  3. grayson

    Motivation

    What works for me- and 50 odd years on I still get excited when I set off for the river- is lots of 4-5 hour sessions and an avoidance of single species obsession season long . This last 12months I have targetted trout and salmon on fly, grayling dace and roach by trotting , legering for chub and barbel , plugging and deadbaiting for pike , waggler fishing for tench and bream , dropshotting for perch and pike and stalking carp with floaters. I intend to do more this year.....
  4. Seven chub to 5-5 from the Swale on NYD ; about 20 grayling to 1-9 since then . And now a gazillion gallons of bloody snow water ...harrumph
  5. BB Fisherman's Bedside Book ; Trout Bum - Gierach; Rod and Line - Ransome ; Thy Rod and Thy Creel - Odell Shepherd(left field choice and well worth seeking out ) ; Where the Bright Waters Meet- Plunkett Green ; Somewhere Down the Crazy River- Boote and Wade; Casting at The Sun - Yates; Trout Lochs of Scotland - Sandison - no great work of literature but the author's my kilt's on fire enthusiasm makes it a lovely browse; Fly Fishing - Lord Grey of Fallodon . Oddly enough , nothing by Robson Green , Jack Charlton nor Ian Botham . Obviously the books of John Aston are in a different league but I am sort of biased... Desert Island book- BB 's of course. Best written - Gierach . Nobody gets close.
  6. My eternal inspiration is the wonderful Joni . It all comes down to you....
  7. I would love to but unfortunately the market for fishing books seems to have contracted hugely - and most people seem only prepared to pay peanuts or to download material free . Unless you are that whooping and hollering idiot Robson Green that is . Sour grapes, moi ? I am doing the odd magazine article but now write much more about my other passion - motor sport.
  8. They are now working perfectly . I will continue to carry a back up set for now - which rather defeats the object I know,
  9. They are not under guarantee; I asked for comments here to see if there was a quick fix. If there isn't I will speak to Korum.
  10. I might do so; this is the first time I have owned them and I was 'being prepared'. In the absence of a response saying 'just press button B and they will work perfectly for ever' it'll be back to the Reuben Heatons (or any other recommendations - I need something compact and light )
  11. Pleased with these which I have had a year. But they are now behaving strangely , a week or so after replacing battery. Display is bright and clear BUT when I put the weigh bag and fish on hook after turning on I get 0.00 or a random weight in ounces . Only after I remove bag does a plausible weight appear- 4-10 or whatever. I carry a set of old fashioned ones too and the plausible weight is correct . What is happening and how do I get them just to display the weight when I am weighing ?
  12. Grayling fall off a lot especially when hooked downstream (ie when trotting . not flyfishing). I have to use worms for my grayling - maggots not allowed - and any decent specialist hook works. But I fish far heavier than many who , for various reasons(and sometimes the wrong ones ) , fish very light for grayling. I use .15 mm Reflo which is nearly 6lb bs and size 12 Drennan wide gape specialists. I don't lose many even though I am fishing for 2lb plus fish in powerful water
  13. Greg- I don't want to be unkind but as one of many people who have provided info to you can I suggest that instead of posting yet more queries you follow up on what people have told you and get fishing ? All the stretches have good fish and all have good and bad swims , depending on time of year and water levels.Go fishing and find out for yourself which pegs work for you eh ?
  14. Look at the websites for Leeds ASA , Bradford City and Bradford No 1 AA and Northallerton AC. They will tell you where you can fish and how much it will cost. Tactics and baits- come on , they're either obvious or available on lots of websites and in many magazines. It's more fun working it out for yourself but if you try lamprey and sardine for pike and worms and meat / pellets for barbel I'm sure you will catch some. But forget the barbel until it warms up more- chub are far more fun and at their best at this time of year.
  15. Leeds ASA , MIddlesbrough AC , Richmond AC and Northallerton AC (and others) all have water on the Swale, as do both Bradford Clubs. The Swale contains both pike and barbel from Richmond to its confluence with the Ure . A bit of googling will give Greg the info he needs j
  16. The problem we have is a hysteria by the uninformed public that dredging is the answer and a rural myth that way back when all rivers were dredged. No they weren't- in the area I live (Yorkshire ) only the navigable rivers , a tiny proportion of the whole system was ever dredged and that was of dubious effect. I remember one huge flood in the 60s when a coal barge ended up in a field 400 yards away from the river Aire . I have seen at first hand the appalling vandalism carried out by Internal Drainage Boards on local streams - which are still regularly 'maintained ' and it would make any fisherman weep. Disgusting grubbing out of bed, ripping out of trees(meaning bank collapsed and more work doing to shore it up) and if it achieved anything all it did was speed the passage of flood water to the nearest pinch point - the local town. And the same bastards who run the IDBs (farmers) then whinge about needing to abstract more in times of low flow . I had a letter published in Trout and Salmon to this effect and Charles Rangeley Wilson has recently had one in the Time to similar effect. Some farmers are great when it comes to managing agriculture with the environment - sadly they are in a minority. I heard one NFU bigwig demanding that the Ure, Swale, Ouse and Derwent be dredged from source to the sea and I felt like thumping him ....Guardians of our environment - my arse they are.
  17. Having caught salmon on fly , worm and spinner I wouldn't say any one method is innately superior to another. Too many variables - on its day fly is effective and for me is by far the most satisfying to use. Nowt to do with snobbery- I am an all rounder and fish for everything from tench to salmon via barbel and pike - but using a double hander fly rod is immensely satisfying. Spinning can get tedious but worm fishing is an extremely skilful method when done properly. Don't think for a second it is like legering for coarse fish- the worm is worked constantly and takes are amazingly subtle sometimes- just a tiny check in the worm's passage over a lie . I also would not fall for the old nonsense about salmon fishing being full of terrible snobs. MY experience is that we are all fishermen and every branch of the sport has experts and idiots. The one thing I would say - and it is an uncomfortable truth - is that game fishermen rarely drop significant amounts of litter-or any in most cases. I have just returned from clearing up a stretch of river with 3 bin bags full of crap dropped mainly by coarse anglers and although litter louts are a minority there are far far too many who happen to be coarse fisherman. Not starting class warfare - and I have fished for coarse fish for 50 years and more but some of my fellow coarse fishermen are nothing short of a disgrace when it comes to litter.!
  18. I know about the lead mining already which took place primarily in the higher ground well above the river itself. You can still see the evidence up there at Arkengarthdale at Old Gang and Surrender lead mines, in respect of which I did some work a few years ago .But my point stands- spate rivers like this do not look radically different to how they appeared pre Industrial revolution. But how I would like to have seen the lower Great Ouse area pre fen drainage ...that would have been a little different to those geometric fields we have now.
  19. Depends on your landscape;whilst many lowland rivers have been managed to extinction- see Charles Rangely Wilson's excellent book Silt Road re the Wye (the HIgh Wycombe one ) many upland rivers have been substantially unchanged for centuries .THey are affected insidiously by pollution and abstraction of course but a river like the Swale or Ure looks more or less how it did in Turner's day.
  20. An excellent piece; also a shorter piece in the Sunday Times by Charles Clover was very sensible, and in contrast to the hysteria which most of the redtops have indulged in about flooding . One oft repeated myth is that all main rivers were regularly dredged in some lost golden past. Nonsense - in the area where I live ( Yorkshire) the only rivers ever dredged were navigable rivers; a very small part of the total length of watercourses here . But Internal drainage boards have been responsible for some utterly appalling work on small watercourses, including a favourite trout stream of mine which was destroyed in 96. Banks planed, bed scooped out, trees pulled out and wildlife habitat lost for a decade or more - it's just coming back now. All the work did was to accelerate the flow to nearest pinch point - local market town. I shudder when I read of farmers being given power to do this sort of work again without any consent. Some farmers are environmentally sensitive - but in my experience they are in the minority. Insecticide sprayed up to stream edges ? Oh yes. Empty weedkiller containers dumped willy nilly; black plastic everywhere.
  21. Deluges produced rivers 3metres above normal level in my neck of the woods. But needs must so I fished one of the local low key commercials(well established. lightly fished and not overstocked)which would have been sacrilege for me a few years ago.But to my surprise the fish are pristine , fit and a pleasure to catch - so that's another prejudice gone out of the window damn it . Fishing waggler in 10' of water I had a pleasing succession of roach to 12oz, perch to a pound , and solitary ide , rudd and bream (all smallish ). Beats sitting at home moaning but I still cannot wait to watch the quivertip hoop round to another big river chub ...
  22. Help please- I normally fish for chuib and pike in winter but when the river is 3 metres up and rising as it is today I don't bother. So I fish for roach in a couple of low key commercials near my home. Low key because neither is fished much , especially in winter as most anglers who go there fish for - surprise surprise - carp. The problem I have is that one esepecially has hordes of small roach but with some much better fish too- I have had some pound plus fish and apparently they run to 2lb and more. I like to fish float for aesthetic reasons and feeding is the problem. The fish soon move off the bottom and take mid water or higher but only do so if I keep a regular flow of loose feed. If I stop feeding I hardly catch at all. I want to attract bigger fish and have them feed on or near bottom., not zooming around competing with the scores of tiny fish . I intend to try feeding a couple of catapult's worh at beginning of session and then irregularly - 30-40 minutes at least- putting in another 20 maggots or so. The idea being to keep fish interested and grubbing round for food on bottom but not sending them manic with overfeeding. Also to try caster instead of maggots (dendrobena produces the odd better fish, pellets nothing in winter) . I am much more of a river guy than a stillwater one- am I on right track or do I not have a clue?
  23. Can't say I ever thought of Fox stuff as especially pricey compared to the likes of Drennan and Hardy . Own lots of stuff and pleased with it - effective, well made and designed . But nearly had a seizure when replacing the broken 2oz quivertip on my Avon-it was something like £20 for one replacement !
  24. I abhor folding nets as sooner or later they let you down; for my flyfishing I use an excellent Snowbeee scoop net which costs about £15 and is big enough to engulf fish up to 7 or 8lbs (so far ) . It has a short handle(less than a foot) so it's great for wading and rubbish for anything else . It is on a bungee loop I slip over my shoulders and will stretch a foot or so.
  25. I am a new convert to dropshotting and have had 4 or 5 sessions. The first thing I learned was to ignore all the nonsense about it being a selective method which catches perch and that mono hooklengths are OK. Not so - I have had a number of pike (nothing big - to 8lbs or so but have lost at least one double). So I am using wire traces and find the 49 strand (or is it 39 ?) stuff ok , if not as good as the knottable Kevlar I have tried. Great stuff but horrendously expensive - any suggestions for knottable pike proof leaders? Second point is re rigs - I use the Palomar knot which is fine - but wonder whether I may be missing a trick.I use the Duo rig extensively in fly fishing ( nymph tied on short length of nylon to a dry fly which acts as indicator )and it occurs to me that if I make up a conventional trace with hook at end (and tied on normally ) I could easily knot a short length of mono to hook (by shank like the Duo or using the eye ) and then to the weight. Anhybody tried this? Talking of leads- I have used the recommended drop shot leads and cannot for the life of me think what they add that a normal weight doesn't ? Apart from profits to dropshot lead sellers. I may be missing something - am I ? Thoughts welcome .
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