Andy Macfarlane

SAVE THE RUDD!! Seriously though, I've been through the majority of species found in Scotland and as much as I enjoy the odd crack at carp, I still find the most pleasure tackling brown trout, perch, roach, rudd, tench and even get a proper buzz when I bank a bullhead. Clearly size has nothing to do with it or I'd have stuck firmly in the pikers camp. I don't need to prove to myself that I can catch big fish and I'm not a numbers man either. I go fishing for variety, therapy, nature, peace and quiet and a good blether with my mates. I just cannot understand anyone with such a single-minded view of what fishing is all about. To me, Danny Fairbrass has turned his pursuit into a science and that is entirely missing the point if you ask me. Fishing should be a leisure activity, first and foremost. When it becomes all-consuming and as technically intricate and he makes it out to be, I fear it only leads to a single conclusion and that is disappointment. There's no doubt that he's a good carp-angler but I can't help feeling that he's going down a path that few wish to accompany him on. Korda make some nice kit but when I watch a Korda video, I cannot help but feel I'm being spoken to like I'm the one who's missing out because I don't have all this essential kit or inside knowledge and for those reasons I can't help but dislike what I'm seeing. I get this feeling that what I'm being asked of will always be just beyond my reach or my bank account and for what, carp and that's it? You can have it pal. I'm going down the river. If you watch almost all of the likeable TV anglers like John Wilson, Matt Hayes etc. you got a sense that you too could replicate what they were doing. Touch-legering with a loaf, waggler fishing for roach, wobbling a sprat and so on. If you watch Passion For Angling, it was as much about the photography as it was about the fishing. Off the top of my head, I can't remember much about the dialogue but I can easily picture the backdrop. Autumn, leaves, mist, the first crack of sunlight and so on. Everything that fishing should be. It made you want to go fishing. I'm sorry but watching Fairbrass throwing an overworked boilie-rig into a bland stillwater with pegs round it does little in the way of inspiration. He could be anywhere and the view is about as inspirational as a car-park.

My last 2 sessions have been fly for the spotties. Had one 2 days ago and 5 or 6 on the previous session. I admit, I was using wet-flies and I'm pretty sure the pattern had far less to do with my captures than my absurdly quick stripping technique. My first 3 choices of fly (don't ask because I don't know) just looked the part but I'm pretty certain they won't have looked like much other than a blur. Maybe just something insect-like zipping through the turbulent swims I picked. Still, neither session cost me a penny and I enjoyed them both, apart from falling in on the second session. I can't recall the last time I fell in. I'm just not as agile an Springbok-like as I used to be.

I very much doubt there's anything to worry about. I've made up groundbaits and method mixes in the house loads of times and I've never given it a second thought. I also doubt there's anything in water, in any kind of volume, that would concern a fish when you consider what flows through our cleanest rivers. Water from stanks, storm drains, sewage overflows, streets, farms, industry, rainfall etc. None of which would be considered clean or pure. I'm fairly certain tapwater is pretty much spotless by comparison and of no consequence to even the fussiest fish.

Personally, I would always start newbies out on a spinning rod, mainly because they're manageable and fairly durable but also because there isn't much you can't do from float fishing, to trotting, to lure fishing, to legering and so on. You can also target a wide variety of species and enjoy them all for their fighting abilities because the tip is always quite immediate and as the power of the fish increases, so does the bend on the rod. That's me though. I think you did alright and I wouldn't be too concerned about the length of the rods. I learned on 12 foot rods when I was 8 years old and those rods were fibreglass too.

Rare....it would appear that tench come in a wide variety of colours which can change, albeit quite slowly, depending on various factors, like health, diet, environment, mood and so on. I know of a stillwater where the vast majority of tench are a bright greenish/gold colour, yet less than 100 yards away, in the Forth an Clyde canal, most of the tench are like you describe. I also know of another water where the odd tench come out in bright scarlet patches. Very pretty and from what I gather, nothing to do with any illnesses that can also bring tench out in red colours. From what I gather, most fish have at the very least, rudimentary Chromatophores, which are pigment-containing and light-reflecting organelles in cells found in a wide range of animals including amphibians, fish, reptiles, crustaceans, cephalopods, and bacteria, which would account for their ability to change colour. Even the humble perch can change shades in a matter of hours. Try putting some perch in a white bucket and some in a black bucket and take a look a few hours later. It's quite fascinating and it was something I knew of and used to my advantage when livebaiting was still accepted. Another forum user (and my mate) Andy_1984 has a black tench in his fishtank and that was once a very striking bright olive colour. Whether it will ever change colour again, I don't know.

Whales....loads of them up here too. Need a big boot (that's 'trunk' where you come from Phone) to move them though...

I read an article relating to last year's massive elver run on the Severn and the numbers were being measured by the million and the weights in tonnes in single days. I think 4 million were obtained in a single night. The same article also suggested that the run on the Severn alone, was the biggest in the last 30 years and it also suggested that most of the data collected on elver numbers was obtained from waters where eels were fished for on a commercial basis, which doesn't account for waters where eel numbers aren't fished for. Bear in mind that elvers are possibly 3 years old already, by the time they arrive in the UK. Do we know what the mortality rate for the ones that didn't get this far is? I suspect it's a few anyway and these eggs aren't produced spontaneously. There must be more than a few adults turning up to breed and that breeding took place just when we talking about the almost certain demise of the eel. Just when the experts were telling us it was the end for the eel, they were mysteriously breeding in huge numbers somewhere. Their massive numbers of offspring survivors just hadn't turned up yet. I realise that this relates to a single river but it would also appear that it could take a lifetime's worth of data to paint anything remotely like an accurate picture of the state of eel populations.

I don't know that there is such a thing but dry-fly was also my first thought.

Good Rudd. That's the point of fishing after all. If you enjoyed yourself, you've won a watch. Fishing doesn't always have to be a punishment exercise, judged by the opinions of your fellow anglers. I like fishing for mackerel. It doesn't demand any particular knowledge on my behalf and I doubt I learn much when I do it but it's nothing more than fun. Does it make me less of an angler?....I don't know nor do I care. You don't have to explain away your reasons for fishing AND enjoying a commercial.

What if it's choppy, flat, windy, calm, clear, muddy, filled with bait-gobbling silvers, devoid of silvers, confident biters, shy biters, selective feeders, greedy fat pigs, bait restrictions, minumum/maximum hook sizes or hooklengths, zealous fighters, lazy defeatists.....there are as many reasons for different rigs as there are rigs themselves. You just have to decide how many you wish to use, make or even carry. I'm not a matchman, so I'm alright with a handful made up or I just make them up on the bank on the day. I'm in no hurry. A matchman type wants his rig there, ready to be clipped on/off as fast as possible with the minmum of fuss. It's basically down to what you want to achieve. Do you want 5 hours of competitive mayhem or a nice, relaxing day without any pressure? Is a couple of nice carp enough or do you want a massive weight of silvers? When you know what it is you want, you can decide how serious you take your rig collection.

That goes along with everything I've been saying about Scotland for the last decade. Because a handful of rivers in England, which by the way are commercially fished on an industrial basis, had a supposed 99% decrease in elver numbers, we were reliably informed that the eel was practically extinct and that was that. I've never known of this catastrophe. Eels of all sizes and shapes are rife up here and if you ever wanted some to repopulate a water, well come up here and fill your boots.....car boots that is.

It was our faultless as usual British papers/media that ramped up our fear of flus in the first place. Until recently, apart from the odd cautionary reminder every year, for the benefit of the elderly and the very young, we didn't hear much about 'The Flu'. After a few outbreaks and deaths from 'The Flu' in China or some other backward, medically disadvantaged and probably untrustworthy region in the East, we were more or less told you couldn't open a packet of Bernard Matthews Turkey bangers, without risk of death within a day or two of exposure, so you jolly well better get down to your Doctor and demand a vaccination. After all, you paid for the stuff in the first place and it's completely reasonable to form massive queues round the block, in all weathers, for a drug you hadn't even heard of 2 days previously. Unsurprisingly, like sheep, millions of us did exactly that because there's no news like British news. If the BBC says it's true, it must be and to back it up, we were shown huge, red, graphic global maps along with entirely plausible scenarios, explaining how it only takes a handful of planes, some unwitting carriers of the plague and the entire planet's population would be halved in two before Jeff Goldblum and a team of select experts in the field could save America and the rest of the civilised World from our own stupidity.

I threw stones at it and sacrificed a lamb but I'm not sure what the Gods were trying to tell me.

No, I suspect it's Calibre or something intended for purposes other than fishing altogether. It just comes off a cardboard drum.

If I come after you with a Powerdrive bankstick, with the intent of mashing your brains in, it could be considered dangerous I suppose.

I've bought some from pound shops in packs of five and the only problem I had were the weight indications were inaccurate but big deal. If you need another BB beside your locking shot, it doesn't affect the shot below, that are doing the actual fishing....well...not by much. Obviously, lifted bites or bites that are pulled to the side might be dropped because the float is heavier but for a bit of plodding about on the canal or the local ressie, they're fine. If I was fishing a fishery or fishing in difficult times, like for carp in Winter, I'll use the accurate floats but for a bit of fannying around, I thought they were OK.

Are Sundlasses the same thing as women with a tan?....

Size 1 Gold/red spots Mepps Aglia Decoree.....and that's all you need to know.......sort of.

Contact Anglers Rendezvous in Glasgow. They do a 24lb 49 strand available by the metre that is ideal for perch or discreet pike fishing. It's brown, very thin, supple, knotable and crimpable (dunno how it twists...never tried) but I use it anywhere that has pike in there along with the perch and it makes no difference to my catch rate that I can see. Great stuff and worth investing in. It's slightly more expensive than most wires but it is for a very specific application but it's very hard to kink or damage so it's lifespan is excellent.

Either section (3 or 4) might get damaged as there would be less of the sections fitting together. You would essentially be creating a weaker join, so rather than cutting the pole section, so that it's not forcing the bung down further, you cut the bung down a little so that the section isn't coming into contact with it and pushing it in further at all. Just trim the wide end of the bung a little at a time and then push the section in. Once the section stops pushing the bung further, stop trimming it. Watch you don't cut the tube or you make retrieving the bung difficult and watch the bung itself doesn't crack. A good craft knife, a firm hold and small trims at a time.

I've always found 2pm-ish to be the most productive time (deadbait-wise anyway) throughout the year.

Yes mate, making spinners and brown trout were my bread and butter. I don't do it much these days but it's a good way to kill a few hours.

So, what bait IS best for Houting then?...

Depends....6lb and above, it's good gear but it's rubbish at 4lb. Used to be fine but it's a poor version of what it used to be.

That's an annoyingly good disgorger I have to admit. A smaller one would be nice cos it's a little thick for dinky perch and mini roachlings but otherwise, there's little poking around. In and out.