peter mccue

Hmmm has Phoney Bliar been good for this country? Lets see........ NHS...superbug breeding ground..hospitals running at a loss...hidebound by targets...long waiting lists (practical experience, you didn't really believe the spin did you...oh dear you did) Justice system...unfit for purpose..I'm sure someone else said that! Education......dumbed down....downgraded qualifications..teachers under pressure like never before...ill discipline... Pensions....£5billion stolen out the pot yearly since 1997.....private sector final salary schemes collapsing round peoples ears....new government pension schemes laughable....government promises broken & pensioners left with a pittance of a pension.....M.P. pensions gilt edged, index linked & replete with taxpayers money. Foreign policy...disastrous...no other word. Immigration policy....ham fisted....arrogant...bumbling from one disaster to another Devolution...worked a treat Tone, well & truly buried that Scottish independence problem! Spin...they have turned the dark art of spin into a major success story, it's now apparent the tories with their sleaze were just beginners. 10 years in power....they've got weak-kneed opposition parties to thank for that. So in reflection...bye Phoney, it's not been nice knowing you

Read an article the other day about this sad business that left me quite annoyed. Essentially, the columnist argued that its all well & good taking a holier than thou attitude to those children being left at such a young age while their parents went out for a meal, but come on we've all taken a chance with the kids being left on their own haven't we. Well my family b****y well didn't!!!!! Society at the moment, seems to push an individuals right to happiness to obsessive levels, I can' t help wondering whether the pursuit of that right subconciously reduces the importance of other responsibilities within the family. I feel for this couple I really do, they probably felt they'd taken an acceptable risk & perhaps in the eyes of lots more people it was, but the mental anguish they must now be going through must be horrendous.

I certainly think he is as well. Archie's book 'Fantastic Feeder Fishing' is a must read for anybody interested in flavouring maggots, he doesn't hide his light under a bushell does Archie, but by heck he knows his stuff. Not sure about Tench, but Scopex flavoured red maggot (dead) catches everything else!

Had a nice afternoon in the garden with the camera, managed to get a reasonable shot of one of our Collared doves. My ghostie on the munch again, he takes some keeping fed!! To quick for me, he had the floater & was gone. My pond guard, nothing four legged gets anywhere near the fish when he's on duty.

I'm not being obtuse or anything here Rob, but in the interests of the discussion I have to point out that the faults you raise with sacks are perfectly in line with those who don't use them correctly. Before I go any further though, I do agree with you that in general they shouldn't be used, they require more thought & consideration than other methods of retaining fish & as such they should be restricted to situations where their use can be monitored & controlled easily. Now to the nitty gritty, Using the largest sack possible there is no danger of any of the material collapsing onto the gills & preventing the fish from 'breathing', if it does you are using too small a sack or you have placed the sack in too shallow an area. Placing the sack in deep water allows the sack to expand & the material to achieve a neutral bouyancy thus making it to all intents & purposes impossible for the material stop the gills from working, having the correct size sack obviously leaves the fish loads of room. Any fish retained in a sack goes very quiet after a couple of minutes & simply lays there recovering, if there is any movement the modern sack material is soft, & because of it's neutral bouyancy, is easily displaced by the movement causing no damage to fins, mucus or nose. Ventillation is perfectly adequate in modern sacks under normal weather conditions, if you have hot conditions with low water & obvious low oxygen levels DO NOT RETAIN ANY FISH in fact you should be asking yourself should you be fishing at all under those conditions. To be honest in normal weather situations, one of the problems with sacks is that fish are so rested, they are fighting fit again when you remove them, so it's good advice to get your photos done after the fight then put your fish in the sack & not the other way round. Might I suggest that certain top names of our sport have a wealth of experience & knowledge far beyond that of the average angler, so as much as it might niggle, they're opinion does carry more weight. There is a lot of Johnny come lately's out there no doubt about that but there is a lot of masters of the game as well. I wholeheartedly agree fish have died due to the misuse of sacks no argument there, but fish have died through bad angling full stop, so the logical conclusion to that is we stop angling completely then as anglers we cannot harm fish at all. Just to finish, an hour or so in a sack is perfectly ok, all night is most definately not!

Used responsibly sacks can be beneficial to a fishes welfare. After a protracted fight, an old large fish can benefit from a short period in a LARGE WELL VENTILATED sack placed in an appropiate depth. In times past, no less an authority than Rod Hutchinson used to have a rule on his syndicate waters that meant you had to retain Carp in a sack for recovery purposes. Trouble is of course, it's very easy to abuse the use of sacks as Rob suggests, but they are not inherantly bad, it's just bad anglers.

Short crust pastry / crushed Halibut pellets, add crushed pellets to pastry & work to a stiff consistency...hmmm lovely. Alternatively, add curry powder to Dens secret mix (kept me catching for years did good old curried sausage meat )

Cup of tea with that biscuit? Who ate all the biscuits!!

A worthy winner Colin, I can't honestly think of a better Perch photo that I've seen than yours.

Sorry Budgie, but the curtain does indeed exist, it's no proof whatsoever of whether the fish has been captured before or not, on that score you're absolutely right. However I have caught quite a few Carp with the curtain intact & obviously loads without! On the pond front my Ghostie weighing 13lb has a perfect curtain.

Lid I did fix it in the end, my driver had somehow become disabled in the bios (don't ask me how!!!) It was a simple job of going into the bios & enabling the driver...voila sound Billy, I didn't understand your post, I've no chance of giving you an intelligent reply

All good pics Slodger, but no5 is a cracker it could go straight into a bird book!

A system that has worked quite well for me on the Swale, is an open ended feeder packed with fishmeal, hemp & as much dead red maggot as I can get into the feeder. Used with a 2-3ft 6lb braid hooklength (if you're confident no nuisance Barbel are going to turn up, you can go much lighter) & a size 12 loaded with the aforementioned dead maggots packed on a tight hair, seems to do the trick ok. Obviously it's not selective, so you need to be confident you're in a Bream 'ole Don't be frightened to use a biggish feeder & keep recasting to keep the bait going in, the binlids do like their grub!Quivertipping works great, but if the opportunity arises on the river I do like to point the rod direct at the bait & use a hanger indicator, I just seem to get a lot more info that way. I have caught well on the Halibut pellet whilst Carping, so have no doubts they would work very well also. Big river Bream are superb targets on the right tackle, trouble is people judge them after catching them on Carp or Barbel gear which clearly doesn't show them in a good light. Don't forget the pics Kleinboet if you get among them.

Trouble is, how the hell do you know what to disable safely

I have a garden full of songbirds, Woodies, Doves, & the occasional raptor dines off the bird table as well! What I also have is a Cat & to be honest I didn't really want one but got landed with it, he's turned out to be so useful I can't imagine our house without one. What a lot of people don't realise is they're quite easily trained plus if you get their bits chopped off or tubes tied (whatever it is they do with tabbies) they don't wander very much & often stay within their own small garden area. When ours was a kitten he got a whupping with a rolled up newspaper whenever he went anywhere near my beloved pond & its fish, he learned quickly & has never bothered with the pond since, by the way he's now 9 yrs old. The same applied to the bird table with the same result. He does get the odd bird, it would be daft to say otherwise, but he only gets the real young 'uns & the knackered old ones. Mice & everything else was fair game for him & he does the job well, he also loves spiders which keeps him in really good stead with the women in my family!. He allows no other cat (or dog) into the garden, he is mental on that score, it really is a case of no dog to big I have a sneaking feeling he may come unstuck one day!. So if you leave a cat to his own devices he's a seriously uncontrolled killing machine, but you can train them every bit as easy as a dog & save the bird population to boot.

Stax, what a shot that's one in a million mate. If you're going to better that, you sure as hell had better post it on here!

I was up in the Lake district the other week, & whilst the weather wasn't great it did allow me to try some dramatic shots. Mind it wasn't all cloud & rain!

Nice job FF, I'm damned if I can see 'em

Sorry Slodger, I've just proved to myself & everyone else I'm pretty c**p at cloning!!!!!

I would bet the apologists are very much in the minority. The problem is that like all people who haven't got enough reality in the lives, they need some sort of quest to give themselves a purpose & the sense of importance they think they deserve. To achieve this, they tend to be very vocal & newsworthy which validates their false sense of importance, whereas the great majority just get on with their real lives & grumble about the insufferable antics of the apologists down the pub or at work where everybody else agrees with them. Such is our media driven world, where a loud voice, outrageous behaviour, sound bites & shallow thinking are the skills to get you to the top! BTW I'm pretty sure I read on the BBC website that slavery is still practiced in some Arab countries, not the pretend slavery that chesters was on about in this country, but the real I am type! Now if they took on that cause, that might be worth a little respect. Incidentally I'm not happy about the Vikings, how about an apology

Tried a little messing about Slodger.

Why on earth would we mind Slodger, great shots all & in particular that blue Tit is a corker, but if you don't mind me saying so it is perhaps a little flat. Still a great photo nonetheless.

Hi chaps, I'm in serious need of some advice. I seem to have lost my audio device, when I go into Sounds and Audio Devices I'm being told there is "No Audio Device". However when I go into device manager I'm being told your Audio Device is "Working Properly" what on earth is going on! I've tried re-installing my driver which makes no difference at all....can you help before I pull the remainder of my hair out

Just for you Cory, I don't know what I would do without Whitelaw. Everyone should have a Willy........Margaret Thatcher She certainly had b*lls you can't argue with that. :D

"We are not the master now. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people. We will never forget that. "I think most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy and I am." "John is John and I'm lucky to have him as my deputy." "We will say to ourselves with pride: this is our Dome, Britain's Dome. And believe me, it will be the envy of the world." Good old Tone, these quotes must be true cos he's a pretty straight sort of guy :rolleyes: