Del_R

quote: high temperatures and experienced anglers are more lethal... ???!!! Freudian slip, maybe? :-)) Derek

Who or what is Jack The Treacle Eater???

I've always associated St Patrick's day with an outing to Cheltenham races and/or a gig in the evening. I think something similar for St George would be a fine idea. Del [ 08. March 2004, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Del_R ]

Must say I agree with Yoxxer when he says that the day won't be far off when the help we want is not forth-coming. I think the NHS and the welfare state will creak under the influx of, for example, European migrants very soon (maybe a decade) unless some tough calls are made. As for the pension... indeed, we'll pay for it all our lives and find it's not there when it's time to sit back and enjoy our golden years. Gloomy Del

Jim, I think a World Superbike Race is about 100 miles long - but then you do get two of them at each meeting! Del

I bought the Interceptor rear drag version and am very pleased with it. Then again, all I have to compare it to is a thirty-five year old Mitchell 300, which I'm also very happy with. Del

Sir Clive needs to bring more Gloucester players into the mix! Fancy dropping Gomersall, not using Simpson-Daniel until it was just about all over, and not even having Henry Paul in the squad. I don't know... seems all so obvious to me from my slightly biased viewpoint in The Shed! Del

Alas, even the superbikes lacked the excitement of previous years - hopefully it'll buck up in months to come if Laconi can stay on! I think MotoGP, on the other hand, is shaping up to be extremely exciting. Bring it on! Del (who wished he could figure out of way of carrying his landing net on the ZRX!)

Indeed. I shall be ordering a pack or two this very weekend! Del

Just wondering, is it normal or even assumed now that a gap year will be taken? I recall in the old days it was rare thing for a student to take such a thing (indeed, to be able to afford to take such a thing) but now it seems to be accepted as almost a right of the students? Not complaining - all power to the gappers - just wondering if times have changed that much, or whether it's still the exception? Cheers, Del

Kleinboet, I blanked at the bay behind the cinema. An EA guy told me it was chocka with Zander. Apparantly they put electricity through it about 18 months ago and pulled out hundreds and hundreds of Z's and yet it's so deep they were sure they'd missed loads - and reportedly they're back in their masses again. Well, until I turned up anyway :-). It was a Friday lunchtime though - probably not the best time to go a-Zandering. I believe this area is the one they're going to close as they do road developments and ultimately urban regeneration. The bay I referred to in the posting above is the one just along from the Pilot. The bay is much smaller, but the actual canal is vast there, as years ago it was the Shell tanker station, IIRC, and even if you stand on the corner of the bay it's too far to cast to the far side. When I get my head round deadbaiting I must have a go at getting one over there. There's forty yards of railings where folks throw bread to the ducks... I'd guess there must be lots of bait fish over there, too. Mind you, with the amount of taffic on the canal at this point it might prove to be frustrating in the extreme to fish right across it. Sunday morning's it's like Henley Regatta. Regards, Del

Do I use my valuable angling time on another pike session or shall I have a bash at something else? (Thus far the answer has been... "I'll just have one more pike session...") Shall I travel light with just the spinning rod, net, mat, and a few lures, and have a mobile session or shall I take a couple of rods and reels and the associated box of tackle and a flask and food and a chair and rodrests and bait and a brolly... (This winter it's been 90% mobile sessions... to my regret on a couple of occasions). Shall I save up and buy the quality gear that I really want or shall I buy some cheaper stuff just to enable me to get out there and do the type of fishing I want (this one hasn't been answered yet). Shall I leave this swim and just try that one along there..? (I always made the wrong decision, I'm sure) Do I need this magazine? This book? This video? This lure? (It turned out the answer was "yes" - just before I bought them. And "possibly not", afterwards). Shall I just have a look at a few more webpages... Del

Peter, I don't see it as a problem - the narrowness of the canal at that point just stuck out to me. I'm quite jealous, actually. I'd like a nice narrow and reasonably shallow canal to go fishing in. The Gloucester-Sharpness canal, which I frequent, is vast in both depth and width. At one of my favourite places (a turning bay) it's impossible (for me, I'm sure others could manage it with ease) to cast even a decent sized spoon to the far bank, and the amount of boat traffic gets terribly frustrating. Come the light evenings in a month or two and hopefully I'll have the chance to get a little further afield after work. Del

I'm a little concerned about the width of Pango's canal, too. Especially just in front of the bridge. Must be hell of a funnelling effect when they open up those lock gates just beyond. Del

DG, Thanks for all the info'. Looks like I've got plenty of options. As regards the head-cases... after reading yours and Peter's last few posts I'm wondering just who Masterline named them after!! :-)) Del

I've looked in vain for an online Floteq dealer. Work permitting I'll have a cycle ride to a couple of local dealers tomorrow lunchtime. In the meantime, if anyone has found them online... what's the URL, please? Kind regards, Del

Thanks for the reply, DG. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm after - it's just knowing what size head to purchase for a particular body. I'll have a butchers around the site... I imagine with the dollar being as it is it'll be pretty cost effective for a UK buyer. And then, of course, there's the added bonus of being able to kit oneself out for turkey shooting for those days when the pike aren't biting... I assume the EA licence covers anglers for this too..? ;-)) Del

Yep, the local canal was still frozen over yesterday lunchtime when I went for a wander, though I doubt it would have held my weight were I to have attempted a bit of the Christopher Deans. Del

Morning All, Having lost two of my favourite lures over the last week I figured I could justify the purchase of some replacements, and I'd like to try some soft lures. I've already got a small Chubby Shad (blame the cold weather, mother!) but now I'm thinking of some of the more DIY long tailed, wibbly-wobbly (to use the correct technical term, I believe) efforts. A quick look around the appropriate on-line shops results in total confusion so I'm looking for some help. Basically, I don't know what size jig-head to purchase to go with what body and what size (stinger?) hook to tag on the end? Anybody point me in the right direction of a decent set-up that will serve as a good starting point for my own future deviations? Many thanks in advance, Del

Tried dead-baiting for the first time today... Not being the proud possessor of any alarms or drop-back indicators (or even any banksticks to hang such things off) I decided to use a float. I set this up in what I think is the classic and most simple manner - free-running ledger, unweighted float, and a stop-knot to set the depth. I was fishing in depths of over 20 feet in places, and down to about 16 feet in others. This rig seems extremely sensitive to depth: get the stop knot a foot too short and the float's underwater, a foot the other way and the float won't cock. Trying to set the depth with the trace attached (but no bait) the trebles consistantly got tangled with the float; setting it with no trace and then reattaching the trace worked but at these depths did take several casts to get it just right. Then, of course, a slight move a few yards down the swim and the whole thing has to be done again. Am I missing a trick somewhere here? I also have a question about baits - I bought a pack of five roaches. These were frozen when I got to the bankside but soon thawed. They didn't survive more than two or three casts before coming off (a lesson learned after trying to set the depth with the bait attached). Is this because they'd thawed or because they're "soft" baits? Or, of course, because I attached them wrong :-) I was down to my last deadbait when I eventually got set up perfectly. After half a dozen lure fishing sessions on the trot I must admit it was nice to sit back in a chair with a coffee, wrap a couple of coats round me and watch the float bobbing about. Very relaxing. I did that for about two minutes before a boat came along... I reeled in, the boat chugged by, I cast out... and my final deadbait went one way and my rig the other. So then it was back to lure fishing anyway. Regards Del

Being kind of new to this in a returning after twenty-five years kind of way it certainly came as a surprise to discover the close season is no longer observed on most still waters and canals. But that aside, I've been wondering about the old pike season. From my observations and readings thus far it appears that some very respected pike anglers fish all year round whilst others adhere to the old season. What's the significance of the October to March dates, as opposed to the June to March dates for other fish? Do pike take longer to recover from spawning than other fish? Or are they so greedy in the summer that deep hooking is more prevalent? Or is the anser © - something else? Cheers, Del

Let's discuss it over a pint and a game of darts at The Slaughtered Lamb...

Primitive feelings absolutely! Good call. Sometimes I think it's easy to get primitive feelings and negative thinking confused. You know, the times when you're on the bank thinking "I'm not going to catch here" - and you don't. Some folks say this is a bad attitude and that positive thinking and self belief is a must, and maybe there's something in this, but I also think those primitive hunting instincts are important things to pay attention to. And, of course, it's quite likely that such instincts are made up not of nebulous elements that we can neither see, hear nor touch, but of the very things that have also been mentioned - yet at a much more unconscious level. There again, maybe I should just lay off the caffeine this early. Del [ 10. February 2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Del_R ]

This has, I'm told, been around a while, so apologies if you've already seen it. Made me smile, though ;-) Dear Technical Support 18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off. To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as Lads Night Out 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9. Successive versions of Girlfriend proved no better. A shareware program, Party Girl 2.1, which I tried, had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks. Eventually, I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other, they caused severe damage to my hardware. I then upgraded to Fiancé 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSex Plus and Cleanhouse 2002. Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0's memory and could not be deleted. They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them. Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail Filter, and can, without warning, Launch TurboStrop and Whinge. These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is. Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Wife 1.0 also spawns unwelcome child processes that drain my resources. These conflict with some of the new games I wanted to try out, warning me that they are an illegal operation. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Audi TT hard drive, it often crashes. Wife 1.0 also comes with a rather annoying pop-up called Mother-In-Law, which can't be turned off. Recently I've been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money files before uninstalling itself. Any ideas?

Fair play to you both. I'd be very nervous of heading out to fish the lower Severn in it's flooded state (which is forecast for Thursday). There are a couple of places on the river I'm keen to fish but they're going to have to wait. Take care out there! Del