Anthony78

Hi John, One of the reasons for posting the report was to get some views from the more experienecd guy's on here so I appreciate any information you can give me and yes it is always better to go by tried and tested methods/tactics. Can you give more details on how you set up your feeder please? Do you also want your method ball to stay in tact until a fish breaks it down or would it start to break down as soon at it hits bottom? Thanks Ant

Thanks for the heads up mate. Will grab a copy tomorrow. Have you decided if your going to have a go at that syndicate yet? I also looked into the Linch Hill complex and noticed that they do 24 hour tickets for Stoneacre's @ £24 which is interesting!! Ant

Cheers Anderoo, It was a cracking fish but I have to be honest and say that I would have happily swapped it for the 9lb tench or 13lb bream that were caught. Going to take the 3lb rods and 18mm boilies next time and I may just get one. Not that I'm bitter at all Ant

Hi Tom, They have very few rules at Linear and the ones they do have are sensible. You can find the full list here. There were 20+ anglers on the lake and every one of them were using a spod/spomb. Only a few caught and I believe that I was having the most action even though I was fishing for the carp. This tells me that you need to do something a little different to the hundreds of other anglers that visit the fishery every week. If the sun is shining don't ignore the zigs as a couple of fish got caught in the middle of the day when the sun was at full strength. Hope you enjoy your trip and don't forget to show us the pics if you catch. Ant

I've not used the bank stick method as yet as I've been lucky enough to have plenty of space to walk th rig out. While doing this I can pace out the distance and it was an easy 50 yard chuck to where I was fishing. I've been using some new rods from Korum which are designed for punching feeders out at distance as they have a fairly tippy action as apposed to the softer through action of the typical barbel/avon rod. As I believe that bream are put off by a large method feeder going in over their head (depending on depth obviously) so tend to fish with small method feeders of 35g and then add some lead tape to the underside to improve the bolt rig effect. I would say that the weighs no more that 3 - 4 ounces when fully loaded. Here's a pic of my finished rig: Ant

As most of the fisheries around me see very little pressure from the carp boys the bream and tench can still be caught on fairly simple tactics and haven't seen enough boilies for me to consider changing over to an all boilie attack. I suppose that I was a little niaive in thinking that this wasn't the case at linear althoug I still think that if the bream were in the area then they would have settled on the groundbait mix. Do you think that the bigger bream are attracted to the easily visible cell baits? It would be imteresting to see if you'd have continued catching those bigger bream using a boilie of similar colour but a cheaper bait? Ant

I've been catching a few bream to 7lb on my local estate lake and these have also been covered in tuberculs. Would this have been because of the warmer weather we had a few weeks ago getting them into spawning mode? Regarding the corn - do you not find that the boilie stop pulls through the real corn on the cast? I've always used the fake piece at the end to act as a cushion although I very rarely fish past 50 - 60 yards and have not had any problems.

Hi Guy's, Thought I'd share my latest session with you and although it wasn't a great success in as far as I didn't catch the intended species, it was a big learning curve for me and it would also be good to hear some views from the more experienced members,and anyone else, on whether you would have approached it differently. The plan: After the warm spell we experienced a few weeks back I was eager to get out and do some gravel pit tench fishing. Due to a booked holiday in Greece I won't be putting my name down for a place at the Wingham fish-in this year where I would usually get my tench fix so I had to go elsewhere for my tinca high. Typically the British weather, being as it is, had other ideas and the warm spell didn't last. I'd already booked the time off work so I had to make the best of the situation. Thinking that the recent cold snap would put off the tench a change of target species was in order. Usually when I'm fishing at Wingham the bream are an afterthought because they are so difficult to target due to their low numbers and nomadic nature. On this trip they would be the intended species with the tench coming into play if conditions turned favourable. Now I have no experience of fishing for specimen bream so this would be a big learning curve for me. The venue was to be the Linear complex and after doing some homework and a little help from Roy Parsons (head bailiff) it was to be Smiths/Hardwick lake which contains bream to 15lb and tench to double figures. Having never fished this venue before and knowing nothing of the features I could only rely on watercraft and information from the other anglers. I arrived at around 11am on Tuesday morning and after a circuit of the lake and chatting to other anglers I was none the wiser as to where to go, no bream had been caught and I saw no fish activity. There was a north westerly wind blowing into one bank and with no other information to go on this would be my starting area. Bait/Tactics After searching the area with the marker rod I found that there was already a lot of weed present but there was an area just past a large weed bed which was completely clear. As this was around 50 yards it was probably a comfortable casting distance for the average carper and had probably been kept clear by fish feeding on the regular bait going in on the spot. I wasn't after the carp which would probably keep away from an area so blatant but I was hoping that the bream would see this as an easy meal. 2 rods would be placed over a large spread of bait on this area. The 3rd rod would be placed at the bottom of the marginal shelf in 11 ft of water hoping that a bonus tench would come along. It's difficult to know how much bait to take but the thought of having a red letter session only to run out is a situation I hope to never find myself in. I would be leaving most of it in the car anyway so would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. In total I had around 20 kilo but only planned on using a fraction of this unless it really switched on. For the bream I'd be feeding a groundbait mix of 50/50 fishmeal and black crumb. Into this I added dead maggots/pellets/corn and a few 10mm tutti fruiti boilies as a target bait. I put roughly 2 kilo over a 10ft square area using the spomb (brilliant tool!!) hoping that the wide spread would keep bream in the area but not have them feeding so tightly together that I'd be plagued by line bites or spook the shoal should I hook one. Over this I would place 2 method feeders ensuring that they landed on the nearside edge of the feed. This would hopefully allow me to pick off the fish on the edge of the shoal without spooking its mate's. One was baited with a tutti fruiti boilie while the second was baited with a stack of corn with a fake piece under the bait stop. For the tench I put all my faith in red maggots and had a gallon of them. Normally I would use the large drennan maggot feeders but as there was quite a bit of weed at the bottom of the near shelf I decided on a bolt rig fished in a PVA bag of grubs. This would hopefully sit on top of the weed until a tench came along. The session: I had to wait until 9pm before I had a bite which came to the tutti fruiti. unfortunately it was from the wrong species, a carp of 16lb gave a good account of itself on my 1 3/4lb rods but was not what I was after. I quickly slipped it back and got into the sleeping bag for the night. At 2am I was awoken by a couple of bleeps on the same rod which had me perched on the edge of my bedchair. Suddenly the swinger smacked against the rod and I was in again. Once again though it was a carp, this time a very small fish of around 4lb. I recast the rod and settled back into the bag, and remained undisturbed until the following morning. Talking to the other anglers on the lake there were still no bream showing but there was the odd tench coming out. I was called to witness a 9lb fish which completely blew me away. It was huge! It looked to be empty of spawn and would easily make double figures later in the season. Absolute beauty of a tench which unfortunately wasn't caught by me Wednesday went by quietly apart from yet another carp of just over 13lb which was an absolute cracker. Very close to being a leather but had a single line of scales over it's back. You can't be disappointed catching fish like this but still, I was after bream and these were still alluding me. These linear fish are beauties By this point the inside line had showed no action and not only this but the coot, which was nesting in the tree next to me, had spotted the bait and was constantly picking up the rig which surely would have put off any feeding tench. As the guy next to me had caught his tench out in open water I decided to change to my favoured maggot feeder rig and placed this on to the bream line also. Having no other information to go on, plus the fact that there weren't a lot of swim choices, I decided to stick with the swim I was in. Linear in a busy place even in the week! As there had obviously been some activity in the swim I decided to top up with another 2 kilo's of groundbait/particles. I also changed the hookbaits, one onto a 10mm fishmeal boilie and the second onto half a Cell dunbell tipped with a piece of white plastic corn. Putting the kettle on and settling down for some grub of my own I was set for the evening. After feeding myself I decided to get my head down for an early night only to be woken just after midnight to a 6 inch screamer. Getting out of the bag I put my head torch on to see what was happening, when I looked at the rod tip I could see that it was tapping slightly. As the indicator hadn't dropped back again I was certain that it wasn't a liner so decided to hit it. Right away I felt a big head shake and knew it was a decent fish. Unfortunately it had just too much power to be my target species but all the same I took it easy and after a long tussle I had a very nice carp in the net. Looking like it could be over 20lb I got the weighing gear out and got the camera ready. It was another beautiful looking fish and on the scales she took the needle round to 28lb 12oz, a new PB and I was well chuffed! A new PB and although not the target species I was still very happy The remainder of the night was uneventful and so too was the following morning until around 11am when I finally got a bite on the maggot feeder. Straight away I knew it was a tench and after a very scrappy fight he was in the net. My first gravel pit tench of 2012. At 5lb 12oz it was not going to break any records but at last something had gone to plan. First gravel pit tench of 2012 Apart from another couple of mid double carp to the method feeders the next 24 hours were very quiet and the wind had now swung around to a North Easterly direction and although the sun was shining it suddenly felt very cold. I'd done 72 hours in one spot and although I'd had some great sport I'd not caught, or seen, a single bream. During the very long process of packing up I had a couple of bleeps on the maggot feeder and as I approached the rod to investigate the alarm suddenly sprang into life and I was into another tench. This one was a female and on the scales she went exactly the same as the male at 5lb 12oz. Same size but this time the female of the species Because I was packing up I didn't bother to put this rod back out and continued the laborious task of packing up the rest of my gear. As I was loading the rest of my kit on the barrow a couple of guy's, who had been fishing the point swim, were heading back to the car. On this occasion I really wish I hadn't gone with the 'any good?' comment because I got the reply “nah just an 8lb snottie!”. Now ordinarily I wouldn't be interested in such a capture but as there are only a handful of bream in the lake with a shoal containing a variety of sized fish I was now faced with a decision. Do I call it quits and head home happy that I have caught some nice fish or do I go for another 24 hours in an area where I know the bream have been caught. As I had nothing to get back home for (one of the advantages of being single) I decided to go for it. To cut a long story short (well this bit anyway!) I baited in a similar way to how I'd attacked the first swim and once again put 2 method feeders over the top. Unfortunately I didn't have a single bleep and had to pack up for a second time in 24 hours. Walking back to the car I was told that one of the carpers fishing 'Summers bay' had caught 3 slabs in the night. He had 2 fish of around 8lb but did not weigh them. He did weigh the 3rd though and at 13 1/2lb, to say I was gutted was an understatement but hey this is fishing and each time we go we learn something new so I added the information of this capture to the memory bank and headed home for some very welcome creature comforts. If you've made it this far then thank you for reading as I know it was a very long report. I would certainly like to hear from you guy's. Especially if you think I should have approached the session differently as, like I mentioned earlier, I am by no means an expert when it comes to bream and am happy to listen to any comments/ideas you may have. Regards Ant

I would second the John Wilson Avon Quiver as I used one for many years for gerneral all round fishing from chub fishing in winter to surface fishing for big carp in the summer. Get yourself a small baitrunner reel like a shimano 5000 RE or something of similar size with a couple of spare spools so you can carry a selection of lines in varying breaking strains and you will have yourself a perfect allround set up. Regards Ant

All, On the subject of angling books. I Just wanted to point you all in the direction of a new shop which has opened up near me. It's called the Fisherman's Emorium and I spotted it while out scouting some lakes last weekend. Just popped in to see what it was all about and was gobsmacked by the number of fishing books/paintings and cased fish on sale. This guy has been collecting for years and has now decided to go into business buying and selling anything fishing related. If there's a rare book your after or a signed copy of your favourite book I strongly suggest you give him a call on 01386 861 336 ( I think his name is John but could be wrong sorry) . I came out of there with a signed copy of Chris Turnbull's A time for Tench which I am thoroughly enjoying at the moment. Regards Ant

Hi Andy, Sorry about the sore neck. That image is the right way up in Photobucket so not sure what happened. I currently use nimh batteries. Thanks for the link. I could have googled it myslef but that would mean that I wouldn't get to talk to you friendly chaps Ant

Hi Guy's, I've managed to get my hands on a cheap battery charger as my old one went bang. I'm a little worried that it's not up to the task and was wondering if someone could translate the label into laymens terms please. I currently use batteries of 2000 mAh AA batteries for most of my equipment. This charger states 300 - 340mA. Does this mean that the charger will only ever charge my batteries to 340mA therefore I would not be getting the best from them? Thanks in advance for your help. Regards Ant Apologies about the size of the picture. Tried to resize and rotate but it looks like all technology is defying me today

Hi Andrew, Thanks for this. I have seen this one before and to be honest I'm not a big fan of the short fluro hooklengths he uses prefering to use braid myself. Will definately be taking along some maggots though and will have at least one rod fished on the maggot feeder. Thanks again Ant

Hi John, Thanks for your help. I've only ever fished Wingham for the tench/bream and as this lake is so unique I wanted to get an idea of how you fished/baited your waters. To be honest I don't think the tench/bream get pressured to much at Linear as most people will be targeting the carp. Hopefully this will go in my favour as I should be able to pick up those tench that can normally feed on a carp anglers bait without the fear getting caught on, for the tench anyway, crude end tackle. I'll be taking my distance 2.2lb tc rods incase I need to get out there and will have my good old barbel rods should I need to come in close. I'll also have my float rod for the day time when I hope to have a bit of fun with the silvers. It'll also give me the oportunity to try out my new Spomb which I've yet to use. Getting excited now and have a second option thanks to Anderoo which has me very interested. Hope you have a great session yourself next week. Regards Ant

Hi John, Yep, I'll be doing 4 days and 4 nights so planning to target the bream at night and tench during the day. Distance will depend purely on what features I can find. I am definately no expert when it comes to bream fishing but I do know enough to look for shallow silt between gravel bars etc so will look for an area like this before I get the distance gear out. I did well on maggot bolt feeder tactics for the tench last year but have also done very well on small method feeder tactics this spring and have already started to bag a few tench to 6lb on my local estate lake. This will give me confidence in both tactics depending what is best on the day. I can't imagine the shoals at linear are as big as in some of the waters you fish but how much bait would you feed initially? Regards Ant

Hi Rich, I was thinking of heading to Smiths/Hardwick but I'm open to suggestions? I might head down there the evening before so I can look out for bream rolling and speak to those packing up after the weekend. Should hopefully give me an idea of which side of the lake the shoals are in. Do you think the bream will have headed into the shallows yet? Ant

Andrew, you'd be very welcome. Especially if you happenned to pass a chinese takeway on your way down Just kidding mate. It would be great to catch up and I can pick your brains if I'm not doing so well. Ant

That's a cracking fish and a brilliant photo. Well done Dan. Ant

That's supposed to be Tench by the way I've never fished Linear fisheries before and have heard some horror stories about the place but I simply cannot ignore the double figure tench and bream which regularly get caught this time of year. I'm going to steer clear over the bank holiday weekend and head down there on Tuesday when I hope that everyone will be heading back to work. Having not fished it before I'm undecided on baiting stratagies for the 4 days I'll be fishing there. I'll be fishing for the tench during the day down the marginal shelf and on the gravel slopes and at night will put all 3 rods out for the bream. My current options are: Black crumb laced with mollasses/dead maggots Pellets and fishmeal groundbait Corn, hemp and maggot (will probably take these for the tench anyway but would it work for the bream?) Any further advice would be most welcome as always Regards Ant

Although I wasn't fishing myself I still class this as my most embarrising angling moment. When I was a young teen I used to live close the the river Teme and if I wasn't fishing myself then I would be walking the bank fish spotting or chatting to the visiting barbel fishermen. One day I was walking down the river with a couple of mates when we came up on a guy who was fishing. I quickly noticed that his quiver tip was going nuts and taking up an alarming curve but the guy was looking down at his feet so, thinking that he was about to lose his rod in the drink I shouted, quite loudly, "Oi mate you've got a bite" At this point the guy quickly turned around to see who was shouting at him. This is when I noticed that he'd got the feeder in his hand and was filling up with maggots for his next cast. Obviously I felt like a complete pillock and got some serious stick from my mates. Ant

Thanks guy's. To be honest as the water is highly coloured due to the number of carp in there I fully expected any perch I caught to be washed out but was more than pleasantly surprised with this fish as the colours/markings were perfect. Phone, Thanks for the info. I'll pass on the expensive DNA test on this occasion I think I'll start asking around to see if anyone recalls a recent stocking of carp and whether they can shed some light on the strain. Does anyone know if stocking records can be easily sourced? Thanks Ant

If my memory serves me correctly I don't believe that it had barbules either. I know it isn't a crucian but I am swaying towards a brown goldfish/king carp cross. Ant

Cheers guys. I'm still buzzing as you can imagine. Can anyone help with the identity of the carp in the first photo. It appears to be cammon carp but has characteristics of a crucian or the old fantail carp I used to catch as a boy. I've only ever caught this strain on this particular lake and would be interested if it's likely to be a descendent of the original wildies or if they would have been introduced? Thanks Ant

I class myself as an alrounder but do enjoy targetting the specimens in my local waters given the chance so after closing the river season on a high having caught 7 barbel to over 8lb it was time to start thinking about the big tinca's in my local lake. My favourd tench water has depths ranging from 2 to 9 feet and with the night time temps dropping to around freezing I decided to head to the deeper area knowing that I'd stand a chance of getting into a bream should the tench not have woken up from their winter slumber. I set up a light waggler for down the margin in 6ft of water and planned to feed this with red maggot and 3mm carp pellets. A 'sleeper rod' would be set up on a small method feeder packed with a light fishmeal groundbait and no freebies so as to attract but not fill any passing bream/tench. After a few small roach on the waggler everything went quiet so thinking that something big had moved over the bait I moved the float up by a couple of inches and placed half a dendra on the hook. Less than a minute after the float settled it slid away. A very disapointing fight resulted in the below 5lb carp/crucian/brown gold fish looking thing which I only ever seem to catch on this lake. Any ideas?? This was the only decent fish I had on this line and although the sleeper rod produced two very nice bream of 7lb+ I realised that the water temperature on this lake hadn't risen enough to get the tench properly routing around for grub. Now, with the rivers closed and the tench unwilling to feed I had to have a think about what to target for the second half of the weekend. My local carp lake was starting to get busy again with 'alarms at full wack crap fishermen' I mean carp fishermen. Sorry always get that one wrong . Scratching my head I suddenly thought about the big perch that my dad had caught while maggot fishing at his local commercial and on my last visit I qizzed the bailif about the lakes stock. Apparently only a handful of perch were added to control the numbers of small fish and over the years they had grown on, unpressurised and gauging on stunted roach. The decision was made, on my return I added some mixed spice to the 2 pints of red maggots I had left from my earlier tench session and dug out a couple of kilo's of black crumb. A quick detour to the supermarket for some uncooked king prawns and a quick phonecall to the old man and the session was planned. Awakening to a ground frost and knowing that showers had been forecast for later I was hoping that this would stop some of the 'crap anglers' oops from coming out and disturbing the peace and quiet. Arriving at the lake I found a gentle breeze blowing into a small bay and with around 3 ft of water I thought that this would be a good a place to start. Once again I decided to set up a waggler rod and a sleeper rod. Both would be fished on prawn until the bailiff arrived where upon I would ask very kindly if I could dispatch a couple of small roach for bait. Mixing and riddling the groundbait, so it would create a nice cloud in the water, I proceeded to feed a lightly squeezed ball every 5 - 10 minutes to keep the small fry in the area. As you can see from the below shot this appeared to work The spicy maggots would be fed every 15 – 20 mins using a bait dropper to keep some bait on the bottom where I hoped to draw the perch down to my waiting prawn hookbait. The sleeper rod would be fished on a low resistance ledger rig and would be fished a few feet from the feeding zone where I hoped to pick up a big stripey that might be watching the baitfish from a distance. An hour into the session I quickly realised 2 things. 1 – Carp like prawns. 2 – So do bloody bream . Using larger pieces of prawn I managed to keep the snotties at bay but was still catching the odd carp to 5lbs. When I saw the bailiff doing his rounds I knew this was my opportunity to improve my chances. Using my powers of persuasion I was given permission to catch a couple of small roach for bait. I changed both rigs to take a larger size 4 kamasan B980 and baited up with a couple of 2 inch roach. After repositioning the sleeper rod I swung the waggler rig out to the area followed by another small ball of groundbait to pull the small fish back into the area. The float settled and slid away. A firm strike met with a hefty curve in the float rod and instantly I was cursing my luck as I'd discovered another carp bait. Imagine my surprise when this carp had stripes!!! This thing was huge and through the whole fight I was shouting to my dad that I'd got something very special. As I slipped the net under it I let out a big shout and started dancing around like the kid that caught his first fish over 28 years ago. With my hands shaking I zero'd the scales and slipped in my prize. The needle settled on 4lb 1oz. A new pb and the fish of a lifetime! As you can see I was extremely happy. Not only for catching this incredible creature but for being able to share this with my dad who was as happy as I was. I fished on but unfortunately I didn't manage any more stripeys. I did get a run on my sleeper rod just before dusk and thought that this might be another big perch but it turned out to be this predatory carp of 11 1/2lb which was a surprise finish to a fantastic session Thanks for reading

I bought one of these reels last year and to be honest it's the biggest piece of c**p I've ever paid for. The line lay was terrible, the overall finish of the reel was shoddy and the line clip was so sharp it cut through the line on my first trip. I bought it for spodding but it was soon relegated to sit on my beachcaster for those once a year holidays by the sea. Don't say you weren't warned! Ant