Del_R

So can anyone just drop a boat in the river and head off in it? I always assumed there would be some licensing/insurance/permission implications? How about canals? Are they any different? Cheers, Del

Glad the post raised a few smiles. It did turn out to be a good day in the end, despite the too-ing and fro-ing up the A38. Hi Ferg. Glad to share details with you, though I'm not sure I'm the best person to advise anyone on decent Lower Severn swims. My approach to locating a good place to fish normally (and seriously! ) goes something like this: Check weather forecast - if it's raining or likely to rain tell myself that honestly I'm not a fair weather angler but today I really do have a few other things I must do. Drive to venue ensuring that the parking is not "across field and park by river" as I'm paranoid about getting stuck in mud (which almost happened once - luckily I was on top of a rise and the mud was at the bottom and momentum and much Richard Hammond style acceleration carried me through). Walk along river bank looking for somewhere: nice to set up my chair (ideally with a well-placed rock for me to rest my feet on) plenty of room to spread out my tackle no trees/power lines to inhibit casting good access to land humongous fish good access to return humongous fish Finally, cast out somewhere in pellet-catapulting range. As you can tell, I have my priorities all right As it happens, the swim at Severn Stoke that met all these conditions also happened to be the one that several passer-bys assured me was the best swim in that particular field. Luck? Or am I not the only Taurean angler who likes comfort - and consequently there's more bait going into that swim than any of the others? Joking aside, the word on the riverbank is that the best swims are further away in the next few fields along (i.e. further from the car-park). I did walk this stretch a few sessions ago and never got to the end of the BAA stretch, so I guess one could fish this venue alone all season and still not have to use the same swim more than once (and therefore still not be sure if one's in the hottest swims). I never reached the end of the BAA stretch in the opposite direction either! My preferences this autumn so far have been the aforementioned Severn Stoke, the Teme at Broadwas, and the Avon at Nafford. I've blanked at all three and I've caught at all three (and I've been caught in thunderous storms at all three - so much for weather forecasters!). They are all beautiful venues in their own right and fulfil my main criteria (which I never mentioned above) which is to be out in the countryside away from everything. They're all BAA waters, too, which despite mine and others critiscisms remains exceedingly brilliant value for money and I've hardly scratched the surface of what they offer in four seasons of membership. Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm not sure if I've answered your question at all. These are great venues for barbel, chub, and bream (!) and if you're down in this part of the world you won't go wrong with them. But individual swims are harder for this amateur to advise on. Kind regards, Derek

Had a trip to Severn Stoke today. It was a couple of feet higher and a few MPH faster than last week and the fishing was better too... if you like Bream. But, let me go back a few hours. The day started with me buying a new landing net (to go with the new landing net handle I bought off the web following on from recommendations here - cheers fellows!) and then late afternoon off I went to find a place where I might be in with a shout of both a barbel and a pike. Ripple, on the Lower Severn was suggested by the fine fellow in my local shop. He's normally good with a recommendation so off I went. I should add, that last night - following on from the "What Do You Take To The Bank" thread - I stripped my tackle down to a bare minimum - today I'd be travelling light... Alas, my bare minimum was still ridiculous. Two rods, brolly, landing net, landing net handle, unhooking mat, bait, groundbait, ground bait bowl, camera, couple of rod rests, bite alarm and pike swinger, deadbaits in a freezer bag with freezer blocks, traces, trebles, weights, feeders, hooks, flask of coffee, packet of Jaffa cakes... etc etc. I know now why I enjoy lure fishing so much! I felt like I was in training for the SAS I was carrying so much weight. Anyway, I got to Ripple, parked up. Swapped my trainers for wellies. Unloaded and shouldered the gear and carted it around the lake, through the stile, along the edge of the next field, past a couple of pegs that were occupied, along the river bank, and finally to a pedunkle/barbelly looking peg. My aching back breathed a sigh of relief. Ahhhh. Oh dear. At Ripple it's all lovely wooden platforms. Excellent they are. If you're not travelling light and have got appropriate banksticks and the like... I stood there for a few moments pondering. I could fish just the barbel rod, rest it on my knees, and to hell with the deadbaiting... but no. I'd come out with the intention of doing both. And good old Severn Stoke is just up the road. Back along the bank, across the field, through the stile, round the lake, load up the car, swap my wellies for trainers, and drive up to Severn Stoke (at this stage I wasn't too grumpy. I had Shostakovitch on the CD player, the car window open, it wasn't overly late, and it was only my back and shoulders that were protesting about my decision). Out the car, heave all my gear onto my annoyed shoulders, over the stile, along the field. What's this? The farmer has put up a new fence right across the foot path. Hmmmm. It looks suspiciously electric, too. Bzzzzzzzzzzzz. Owww. It is electric, too. Carefully I slide all the gear under it, roll beneath it myself (minding the animal droppings), and we're almost at the swim I've got in mind. Hang on... where's my new landing net? Bugger. Must have dropped it at the electric fence. Nope. Must have left it in the car. Run back... Nope. Darn. Or words to that effect. Now there's a bit of grumpiness coming on, to say the least. Back to the swim. Pick up gear. Re-negotiate fence. Load up car. Drive back to Ripple (in my wellies), with no music on because I'm proper grumpy now. Park up. What's that in the distance on the floor. Tis my new landing net. At least that was good news. Could quite easily have been gone for good. Hope I haven't damaged the suspension in my car racing back over all those potholes the way I did. Back to the car... drive to Severn Stoke once more. Starting to get a headache. I bet I don't catch anything after all this. Park up. Unload gear... etc etc No electric shock this time. Get to the swim. Drink coffee, eat a Jaffa cake, and relax. Eat another Jaffa cake and continue to relax. Almost from the word go I was into bream. Did manage one barbel (6 lb) which was good and a couple of really nice roach (around the pound mark) but then it was bream, bream, and more bream. I had the deadbait rod out but nothing was happening. Then, just as it was getting dusky, I hooked the biggest bream of the day - about 5lb - and as I was slowly playing it into the bank so the deadbait rod burst into life. I struck into something pretty solid on that rod whilst seeing the big bream come to the surface for the first time. There I was stuck with a hefty bream on the end of one rod and a predator on the end of the other. I managed to bring the bream in whilst holding the predator still. But as it's quite rocky at Severn Stoke it's often awkward to land fish. Sure enough, as I was landing the bream I relaxed the tension on the deadbait rod and that was the end of that. Off she went, taking my smelt with her. After releasing the slab I cast out another deadbait whilst I put away the feeder rod and packed up all the rest of my gear. I waited until just after dark but nothing else was happening, though I'm sure I could have caught some more bream. So it was back to the electric fence and the knowledge that I had to roll under it and that there was cow and sheep sh#t everywhere and now it was so dark I couldn't see it. I love fishing, me. Derek

Cheers Wolf. It looks good. I shall order one on payday which is rapidly (but not rapidly enough) approaching. Your lawn looks in better condition than mine, by the way. No weeds, ant's nests, or rotten apples that have been sliced up by a Flymo. Mine would look like that but I was away fishing when I should have been gardening ... ;-)) Del

That looks good! Length and strength and good quality is what I want and I'm happy to pay for it, as the vicar's wife once said. I've bought enough cheap kit that hasn't lasted and has therefore cost more in the long run than buying the best first time round. Only yesterday one of the the shoulder straps on my rucksack ripped away from the bag rendering it useless. The bag was only half-full, too, so should have been designed to carry much more weight. I've done a repair job on it but I guess I'll be looking for a new one of those soon, and this time I won't skimp! Cheers, Del

Can anyone recommend a good long landing net handle? I was fishing Severn Stoke today and on many of the swims you're a long way up from the water on rocks. My normal landing net handle is 5ft which was hardly reaching the water. Luckily I had a two piece cane handle with me that was 8ft long. This was just about long enough, but it was certainly showing its age and I'm not sure I'd want to rely on it with a double in the net (though maybe I'm doing a disservice to old gear?). Anyway I figure it's time to get a decent 3m one if possible. But I want something that is pretty robust, too. Cheers, Del

So is there a secret to how to do this? I never had any trouble tying a power-gum sliding stop knot onto mono, but today I just couldn't get it to work on braid. Luckily I was only fooling about with a rig so it didn't affect any fishing but it was still frustrating. Firstly the braid seemed to twist up inside the power gum when I tightened the knot (rather than the power gum sliding nicely into a classic stop knot shape), then the knot slid too easily and consequently wouldn't go through the smallest rod ring (it would fit, but at the slightest bit of resistance it said, "Stuff this, I'll just stay where I am and let the line slide right through me"), then the knot just unravelled and I found myself having to pull it tight after every cast, never quite knowing if it was in the same position as it had been before the cast. Five or six times I cast out, plummeting the depth to find the exact position for the knot, and each time, the knot eventually said "Here I go, I'll wind him up again and untie myself." In the end I concluded that power-gum and braid don't mix, but is this an experience peculiar to me? Cheers, Del

The Warwickshire Avon is currently my venue of choice. Saw the biggest Zander I've ever seen there last week. Alas, it was dead. A fellow angler (who was doing rather well on the barbel, as it happened) said the lock-keeper had fished it out of a nearby lock that morning. Whether it had died through a lack of oxygen in the water or whether the lock-keeper had knocked it on the head I don't know. Or, of course, there may have been another reason. The size of the fish it may simply have pegged it of old age! Regards, Derek

Haven't posted for a while, so a quick hello to everyone. I'm no photographer so this one came out reasonably well by accident and I thought I'd share it with you. It's taken on the Worcestershire stretch of the Warwickshire Avon, if that makes sense. I got up at 5.30am and got to the bank at about 6.45. This fellow was already there.

I caught a nice tench at the weekend. I think I could become obsessed, too. Lovely fish and a great fight. Regards, Derek

I went fishing today - that's a big story. First time since the Christmas break. Got wet. Got freezing cold. Caught a few silver fish and had a humongous carp slip my size 20 hook just inches from the net. Got hailed on. Got wet again. Brilliant day! Roll on the light evenings. Derek

I've struggled with the lures recently with only a single Zander to show for the last four or five trips out. These have all been reasonably short (two hour) mobile sessions and have varied from early on frosty mornings to sunny afternoon. I just can't seem to find the darn fish. Also, today, it was really difficult trying to find an area, the bottom of which, wasn't covered in a thick sticky blanket weed. It was almost impossible to lure fish on the bottom. Very frustrating. But still enjoyable, nonetheless. I think next time out I might have to pop a deadbait out as well. Derek

I had a couple of hours out this morning - and to be consistant with some of the previous posters to this thread, I blanked too :-( Back on topic, when I only have a few hours to kill I normally head for the canal where most of my (few) successes have come from right alongside the towpath bank. It's a busy towpath bank, too, with ramblers, cyclists, and dog walkers (and much to my annoyance the dogwalkers(*) seem to think that scooping the poop doesn't apply on the towpath - especially if they can get the hounds to do their business a few feet off the path in those nice little areas where fishermen sometimes stand) so I guess the fish don't mind the activity. It was a beautiful location where I fished today - Saul Junction, where the Gloucester & Sharpness meets the old Stroudwater canal and there were a fair few other guys out fishing - all of whom had yet to catch anything by the time I left. Regards, Derek (*) Some of them, at least.

Thanks Newt. Excellent advice and it helped a lot. Cheers! Del

This old thing (the PC, not me!) is on it's last legs but I'm trying to make it last another year or two so the following problem is quite frustrating. I had a message pop-up saying drive C is full. A quick deletion of temp internet files, and an emptying of the recycle bin and I got the space up into the 20mb category, which allowed me to complete the piece of work I was doing. I then sat down and spent an hour deleting unused programs and utilities and eventually got the unused capacity of drive c to a massive (!) 160 mb. On a roll, I continued to look for redundant files and found my Zone Alarm log file was a whopping 7 mb. I emptied this figuring I'd now be at 167 mb of spare capacity... but weirdly I was down to 107mb. A tad annoyed I then deleted several more programs - including Netscape Communicator (which I never use). These all went into the recycle bin - where the total was in the region of 55 mb. Emptying the bin my spare capacity now zoomed back up to 167 mb (although, without the problem of which I write, I'd have expected it to be in the range of 240). I restarted the PC... spare capacity immediately dropped to 107 mb. I opened and closed Word without saving anything... 103 mb. Started a defrag - but stopped it pending an overnight run... capacity now 93mb. What's going on? By my reckoning I should have saved over 200 mb space this morning yet something's eating it up as fast as I can create it. Any ideas on where I should look to find out what's going on? It's a Windows 98 machine with a 4 gigabyte HD. Perplexed Del

May I ask some advice please? Having had a little trouble keeping rapidly thawing deadbait on my trebles last winter, this year I've adopted the technique of looping a couple of turns of cotton around the rear treble. I think I read about this in Piking Beyond 2000 (although there, the suggestion was to use elasticated thread). However, elsewhere I've heard how important it is to only lightly hook the trebles in thick-skinned bait in order that the hooks come out of the bait (and into the pike) easily on the strike. The arguement being, I believe, that if the hook remains in the deadbait as well as in the pike it can easily get levered out of the latter. Whilst appreciating one technique is for soft skinned bait and the other is for tough skinned bait I'm still having trouble reconciling the two pieces of advice. Surely the cotton would ensure that the hook doesn't come out of the deadbait on the strike and thus the leveraging out of the hook (from the pike) becomes more likely? Cheers in advance, Derek

Was in Cheltenham today doing a spot of the old crimbo shopping and took time out to go and see the Dowdeswell pike in the museum. Can't find anything on the web about this, but apparantly it was found dead in Dowdeswell reservoir, Cheltenham back in the late nineteenth century. It weighed over 60 lb, though they say that up to a third of that could be down to swallowed water. Even bearing that in mind it would have been a forty pounder. A fine looking fish (though it needs new teeth). I'd be terrified if I saw something like that in my net... but hopefully it's a terror that I might experience one day. Regards, Derek

On the minor accessories side of things I have an unopened packet of 9 'baiting' hooks and an unopened packet of 3 barrel swivels from Winfield in front of me. The price ticket is still on there - 5p each!! Derek

A friend of mine caught his pb barbel on the Hereford town centre stretch. Derek

Then there's the suspense that occurs when your marksmanship goes awry and you've got your expensive lure snagged up in a tree on the far side of the canal, a length of 15 lb breaking strain strung right across the water and a boat coming. Derek

It took me several spinning trips before getting any sign of success - i.e. follows and takes - and a couple more before I actually caught anything. At the time I couldn't perceive how this technique would ever work and was convinced I'd never land anything, but once I'd caught a few I was a believer! Now it's my most common type of fishing simply because it's perfect for short mobile sessions. Keep at it! Regards, Derek

Leeds, I lost a couple of lures today, too: a small spinner and a shad. The first one got caught on a snag and my Drennen trace gave way again (the clip, just like last time). That's about four losses over the last three trips out, so it's definitely time to make some of my own traces using beefed up parts and hope that the hooks straighten before anything else gives way. Didn't catch anything either, though I had a few nibbles on a deadbait that I had out. I didn't head down to the canal until lunchtime giving the rowing club time to finished their training and the water time to warm up a little. Seemed like a good plan for an hour but then there was a constant stream of pleasure boat traffic that kept causing me to reel in my carefully positioned deadbait. Most annoying. But then, I daresay they say that about anglers. Regards, Del

I do. It must date from the early sixties and is still going strong. Next time I buy a reel I might try one of the latest versions. Regards, Derek

Oops - didn't see the other thread! Sorry guys. Derek

Interesting set of assumptions in this multiple choice survey - no options at all for the lure fisherman; pike and zander don't get a mention in the favourite fish category; a very selective set of companies seeking your cross in the box(presumambly just those that advertise with AT); no mention of other angling publications; basically no options to really say what you think. Ah well, I'm sure they'll get the answers they want despite it being my "chance to make a real difference"! Derek