Emma two

Find a bit of grassed area, park, lawn etc and go out at night with a dim headlight or torch after rain or a heavy dew, you will find lobworms out on the surface. They usually have their tails still in the burrow, and will withdraw into them quickly when aware of your presence. Catchin 'em is a bit of a skill, but you can have fun. You need to know how to tell the worm's head from it's tail, with your forefinger and thinm grab the worm as close as you can to where the tail goes into the burrow. Your reaction time versus the worms often menas the worm simply wins or you get oy half way of more up its body. The lobworm has gripper like bits on the tail (you can feel 'em) and it will hold on to the inside of its burrow with these, gently work the worm from side to side until it loosens its grip. sometimes if you relax your grip, so does the worm and you can slide it out. If you have a grip near the head and the worm id pullinghard, let it go, you migh end up snapping it. Don't put a snapped worm into a box with the others if it dies it can spoil the lot. Its good to do this s few days before use, so you can scour them. To do this put them into a container (with air holes) with Sponsored Sphagnum Moss, this toughens them up and helps them stay on the hook. Sometimes you will find two worms copulating, they are easy to catch, but please leave them. What they ar doing is sacred and they should be left alone. If it hasnt been raining, hose the grass with water an hour before dark. I get all the worms I need from my own garden using this method.

Your joking right? that or you are all 'big girl's blouses'. Outside the UK ther might perhaps be dangerous creatures, I was visited by a herd of wild boar once while night fishin' in the mountains in germany, but that was more fascinating than scary. Have fished in bear country in the rockies, and its simple, dont fish at night! i have just got in from a dusk which ran into 1 1/2 hours of darkness session alone in the lake district, cant imagine being scared...its sacred not scary.

I switched to braid a few years ago, Like you I almost gave up on it, having similar teething problems as you describe. I stuck with it, and after taking advice in an online forum got fitted out with 'powerpro'. My transition coincided with a move to low profile baitcaster reels, Using good quality reels and powerpro, has added a new and pleasing dimension to my lure fishing. I almost always use wire traces and have never had any 'kinky' problems. It semed strange at first using 60 to 80 LB BS line, but it seems to be neccessary when using the heaviest of lures. I also have a lightweight set up of a single piece 6' lure rod with which I use 20lb powerpro.

I fish with only a couple of people its true, and more often than not am alone. however that does not indicate a lack of experience, I have been at the game a long time, (longer than you(given that your profile age is accurate), and in those years have seen lots of anglers doing lots of things, both in the UK and abroad. Fishing with only 2 companions is quite enough, how many people do you fit into your beat or boat at a time? Your 'simple facts', concerning killing (game fish), is there there any evidence to support your case? and in a wider context than the stocked trout fisheries, which do not constitute whole of game fishing , and are you talking about the UK? Here is a selection from up and down the Uk, (including some waters which I have or do fish) with reference to the ethos of catch and release, maybe they will serve to clarify the position game anglers are increasingly taking. over 90% of the sea trout caught on the Ehen, Duddon and Wyre were released and over 70% of the salmon on the Ribble. these fish were returned voluntarily by anglers. http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/regio...n=1&lang=_e "catch and release scheme. "Those who return their fish alive and well river will have the comfort of knowing that their fish will have a great chance of spawning. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/mid_/3185447.stm All our beats are catch and release we don't want to kill them before they have had a chance to shine! "piscivorous http://www.tyneriverstrust.org/TAPtemp/tapindex.htm Reviving the salmon Avoid weighing the fish – estimate the weight. A photograph provides a record of your catch but keep the fish in the water. Support the fish steadily, in a current, facing upstream. Be patient- a tired fish needs your help, but minimise handling. Give the fish time to recover and swim away on its own http://www.fishing.visitwales.com/fe/defau...n2=29&n3=30 "it is clear that ferox do survive catch and release well if properly handled". http://wheretofish.spinfish.co.uk/WheretofishforFerox.html On the eastate, ALL SALMON AND SEA TROUT FISHING IS CATCH AND RELEASE. ... http://www.ardtornish.co.uk/Pages/ON_WATER_ACTIVITIES.asp On what waters are you seeing the piscivorous anglers of your 'facts'?

Difficult to know where to start... so much to respond to. I'll just take it as it comes, why do you think i would be surprized to know you fly fish??? as you point out I dont know you, and therefore woudn't dream of trying to 'tell you what you are all about'. The responses i have made are directed purley at your statements, with no attempt to speculate more widely about you. I didnt 'label' you. You may have set out to congratulate the angler for catching a trout, but you took the opportunity to point out how easy you think they are to catch, and to state YOUR opinions of fly fishers, insofar as to how they handle course fish. This is like having a conversation with someone from a couple of decades ago, you seriously believe that game anglers 'routinley kill thier catch', that we dont value our stocks and do our utmost to preserve them especially our salmon and migratory and lake ferox trout? they go back and especially after a hard fight or gravid without even leaving the water! One of our first childhood lessons was how to unhook an immature fish without touching it. The fish I see killed the most are coarse fish, by coarse anglers to catch coarse fish, and I hasten to add that I take no issue with that whatsoever. I tend to adopt a like and let live approach to how others engage with the sport when it comes to killing, a wonderful friend regularly catches and takes for the pot good perch enjoying them more than the trout he catches employing the same methods. As an infrequent user of this forum, I am not bogged down by any history or preconcieved prejudices, but your sweeping statements to summarise fly/game anglers came over as insulting and uninformed. You asked me for curtesy, yet write off my words as rubbish,..and I am the one with an 'attitude'????

Ok, I concede and give up on this one, because I don't know the 'vast majority of fly fishers'. I only regularly fish with 2, and over the course of a season see a few dozen. Most outings I'm on my own, and throughout the summer it's mostly conducted in the pitch dark (sea trouting) with no lights and as such impossible to see how other anglers 'treat' any coarse fish they pick up. it tends to be that type of activity. I would be interested to know how Alan D, Scotty, Pepper, Danny and I demostrate that we don't have a high regard for the course fish we pick up when fly fishing? Maybe the 'new blood' of coarse anglers will desist from persisting with the old chesnut that fly anglers consider those who enjoy other methods as inferior?

Budgie, Do you post stuff like this to try and wind people up? how do you know what 'the fly anglers do', you may have seen what 'some'fly anglers do, to coarse fish, but it's a mistake to imagine any group (of anglers, or anthing else) as an homogenous. I say that as someone who devotes an equal amount of time to both game and coarse fishing. I was raised, right on the bank of a game river, containing salmon, sea and brown trout. Sure we all learned to fly fish as kids, but we also learned how to use baits for 'em and how to spin. Few people became 'purist' devotees of the fly, simply because they wouldn't have had so much sport as the rest of us. The river dictated the method. When low fly, in spate worm and when dropping and clearing spin, local bye-laws affirmed this, spinning being forbidden in low water times. Mabye the trout you have encountered have taken little skill to catch, of course I have no idea where you have fished, I had hardfly considered how difficult it is to catch tout compared with coarse fish, but i have never caught anything like 100 plus in a session, whereas I have caught that number of roach, roach/bream hybrids, bleak and perch in a single session on lots of occasions. During my match fishing phase I quickly realised it was case of how fast one could catch them, not how difficult it was. Back up in my home area, I spend summer evenings lightweight lure and spinner fishing, this is both coarse and game fishing in one go, as one is as likley to hook a trout as a perch, it would be easy to offhandedly condemn 'all' coarse anglers, as I return from these trips with my bag filled with discarded ground and dead bait bags, Wire trace packets, plastic mono spools. People don't treat the land or the fish better or worse because they are coarse anglers or game anglers, they treat it as they do because of the type of people they are. There are awful coarse anglers and awful game anglers, adompting a 'holier than thau' stance from either position is unhelpful.

poaching applies to the game laws, fishing for perch without a EA licence is not 'poaching', no matter how much and how long you may have used the term, in the same way as there is no such offence as 'rabbit poaching', another commonly mis-used term'. if you belive that there is no difference in law between fishing without a licence and taking a double armour net through a salmon pool, then you would get a shock when appearing before the bench. I am not putting any professional; reputation on the line, as I no longer working for the EA. As Steve points out the job became increasingly insecure, in our area partly due to the fact that we nailed the (real) 'poachers', significantly by hitting the outlets which were buying the poached salmon and sea trout, and cheap supermarket salmon made the business less attractive to poachers. I don't see how anything I have said displays an 'incorrect knowledge of basic angling rules/ bye laws'?....We did often encouter angler who were misinformed and relied upon riperian myth, rather than the law.

I accept that fishing without an EA licence is illegal , but it's not 'poaching'which is a different offence. (I used to work as an EA water bailiff, and would 'nick' people for having no licence, and would also 'nick' 'em for dragging a net through pools on our salmon rivers, both illegal, but both different offences.

Why do you think that that is?

Someone mentioned 'poaching' in this case. Unless the law has been recently changed 'poaching' can only be applied when illegally taking a species (of fish, bird or animal) when is classifed as 'game', for example... Deer, Pheasant, salmon etc, and cannot be properly applied to catching a Perch without a rod licence.

Prosicution, possibly...enforced medical examinations are a bit 'big brotherish' for me. Anyway what is the point of records? I would suggest that they are just that, historical records, and shouldnt be rejected or ignored simply on the grounds of administrative technicality. Should'nt a 'record' be to show (and inspire) the maximum size that a species has the potential to grow to, and that is a biological fact which is above and beyond whether or not the captor had a particular piece of paper in their pocket. Maybe we are lmistakenly locating angling like an atheletic sport, where the feats of participants may be overruled by variables such as the use of illegal substances?

I went up to Awe a couple of years ago, in August. took a lodge on the eastern shore for a week, never saw a midge. I did take my fly rods, but had far more spoert (from the shore) with lightweight spinning gear, wild browns and perch, and Pike to eel sections.

'Two fish'??.....and its the law!//I'm a crimianl and didn't even realise it.

I see a few aspects of that article, which might be misleading, whicg bit specifically do you mean. What 'law', says there is a 2 fish limit?

I agree, to target the better Perch something a little larger than a minnow is preferable. As kids we used to collect Stone loaches, ctching them in net from under stones in well oxygenated shalows of the river. They averaged larger than minnow and make great baits. We would often catch lampreys in the same area. of courese though the fis don't know the rules about bait. Both Perch to top 2 lbs this year cane to lobworms, and my best Pike hooked (but lost) tool a floatfished minnow during a Perching session. These days I like to fish light to medium lures on a baitcaster set-up, they offer a chance for Perch, Pike and Trout.

I've had them on dead minnows fished under a float, but only when twitched slowly back in, not static. We are not allowed to livebait, or even use frshwater dead baits (English lake district waters). because of that we tend to lure fish mostly, for both perch and pike. i fitted myself out with a pike fly outfit this year too, but havnt really givenit much use. the summer was so poor that each time i did manage to get the boat out i stuck to my tried and tested methods. thanks for the welcome Newt.

This thread attracted my attention because lampreys were responsible for for my best perch day when i was young. I was boat fishing one of the big lakes, simple technique, dropping a lobworm straight down to the bottom. That was successful in that I soon boated an 8 inch perch. Unhooking it caused it to regurgetate 3 inch long live lampreys, it was stuffed with them. it was easy to see what to do, get the lampreys on as hookbait. it worked well I caught perch for hours, each one bringing me more bait, and the size going up well beyone the initial 8 incher. the local streams provided plenty of small lampreys for bait after that, but i havnt used 'em for years, maybe i should. of course after reading the posts, I realise you have been talking about lumps of dead 'big' lampreys. (have used 'em for pike) however there is more than one way of using lampreys for bait.