Anthony78

Hi Errrm, Check out the Sufix range of coated braids. A few of them come in 10lb. I currently use the Sheath Skin in 10lb and Black Silt also in 10lb. I use these for all my Tench, Bream and small water carp fishing and they have performed perfectly. They're currently half price too Ant

They do others too. Here's another one. Something similar to this was well publicised and reccomended by a very well known carp angler many years ago and was advertised as the 'Octopus rig' and consisted of multiple hooks/hairs. "Apparently" it was a quick way of ascertaining the preferred bait on the day as each hook was baited with a different boilie/bait etc. looks like a good way of blinding every fish you hook to me. Scarey thing is that someone is probably buying and using these rigs Ant

I've not fished it personally but looking at the Linear fisheries website it appears that they've been catching them on solid PVA bags. Brasenose 1 is apparently a long distance fishery so ensure that you have the right kit before you go. Good luck. Ant

As always I'll start my report by giving thanks to all those people who make the Wingham Fish-in possible. Thank you to Glyn, Terry, Budgie and Andrew for the taxi service provided. . Thank you to Anderoo, Richard Capper, Steve C and TincaTinca for all the advice given on my swim (Paul, your detailed photo is in the clubhouse desk draw. Thanks very much for this) Thank you to Sam for the hard work put in to cleaning the club house. I hope you go on to enjoy your fishing and catch a few Wingham monsters yourself. Thank you to Peggy for the incredible BBQ. Your incredibly patient and hard working and we all appreciate everything you do for us Lastly, thanks to Steve as if it wasn't for his incredibly hard work and costly investment Wingham would not exist and we wouldn't have the opportunity to fish such a wonderful fishery. Steve, you are the man!! Now to my report of the weekend: I have been extremely lucky in that this is the 6th time I have fished Wingham in the last 7 years and considering that Steve had to turn 10 people away this year I know how fortunate I am to have been given a place. This was purely down to my fishing partner (Cliff63) who had to drop out of last years fish-in due to contracting a very serious virus which caused him to lose over a stone and a half in 48 hours. Because of this he was promised a spot this year and as he’s not allowed to go fishing without me I was invited along . Thanks mate I owe you one. As Wingham is over 220 miles from home we decided to travel down on the Friday afternoon so that we didn’t have to set out at silly’o’clock on Saturday morning. When we arrived we set off around the carp lake to find Budgie and Andrew to have a chat. I have to apologise to them both as we didn’t leave for over 3 hours and Budgie didn’t even get chance to bait his swim. Great to catch up again though guy’s and congrats to Andrew on his new PB Carp. While we were there Steve arrived with greetings and our allocated swims. Cliff was in Middle Wood, a swim I fished last year with great results but one that proved difficult for Cliff due to heavy weed and a number of pike, and I was on Tim’s Point. A swim that controls a lot of water and a whole host of features to fish to. Hasten to say I got as much information out of Anderoo, Richard and TinaTinca(Paul) as I could before the start. When I got to the swim I had a feel around with the marker rod and found 2 spots which I was happy with. I did have a nightmare with my marker set up though as the float and lead would seperate in flight and would cause the braid to tangle. This meant that on 4 out of 5 casts I couldn't let the float up to check the depth. Anybody else had this problem? Thanks to Richard Capper for supplying another marker setup which helped to confirm my 3rd spot. I would be fishing 4 spots in total as I fed the deep margin with corn, pellet and red maggots in the hope that the Bream would move in. I only fished this line at night. My other 3 lines were fished in the spots marked below. As you can see there were lots of features but my choices were made slightly easier in that I knew the wind would be picking up from Sunday morning so there was no point feeding a spot that I probably wouldn't be able to reach for the rest of the weekend. As the week before the fish-in had seen a bout of high pressure it looked as though things could be slow. For this reason I decided that I would keep feeding to a minimum and would only be using PVA bags. I tried different baits and combinations on all 3 rods hoping to find a prefference. I had lots of line bites through Saturday night and early sunday which showed me that there were fish in the area but it took until about 11am Sunday morning to get a take on the middle rod. This was fished on a 10mm bloodworm boilie with a fake bloodworm as a boilie stop. This was a female fish of 6lb 5oz which I was later informed was the smallest female tench caught so far. Hey I hadn't blanked so it could have been 2lb and I'd still have been happy. While I was rebaiting this rod my right hand rod gave a jerkey take and I was in again. This was a diferent fight completely and was confirmed when a pike of about 7lb was landed and returned. After Sunday's BBQ I decided that I would take a gamble on one of the rods as it was mentioned by some very knowledgable anglers that the fish had switched on to naturals. Casters would have been perfect in this situation but as I had none of these with me I decided to mix up some groundbait which was heavily laced with maggots. 5 pints of them! I was hoping that this would get the fish mooching around on the spot and as it was only on one of the rods, and I had alot of features I could move to if it didn't work. I didn't have a single bleep through Sunday afternoon/night and thought that I had blown it. As it had been quite a cold night and the air pressure was predicted to drop throuought the day I decided that I would leave this rod for the rest of the day as tench can switch on at any time. This was proven at midday when this rod screamed off and after a spirited fight I had a big fish in the net. I thought this fish was going to make 9lb as it was full of spawn but at 8lb 5oz I was still extremely happy and Wingham had done it for me again. As we had travelled so far and had nothing to get back home for as we'd both got a few days off we wanted to make the most of the weekend and decided to fish till the very end. At about half 3 while I was taking down the bivvy and slowly packing away the non essesntial items I had a run on the middle rod and this fish was in a different league. It snagged me up twice but luck was on my side and I got the fish moving again. I was convinced that this was a carp as it felt extremely heavy and had moved from where I hooked it around to the oposite side of the swim and I just could not get it under control. As it neared my right hand rod I dropped the tip hoping that it wouldn't hook up my other line. When the alarm let out a couple of bleeps I thought that my attempts had failed. Then that rod went into melt down! I couldn't believe what was happening! I had what I thought was a carp on one rod and my other rod was being stripped of line at a rate of knots. When myself and Cliff go fishing and it looks like we're going to be fishing apart we always have a pair of Walkie talkies so that we can still have a natter about all things angling. So a shout for help was made and Cliff made the 100m dash from Middle Wood to help me out. When he got there the fish had taken at least 30 - 40yrds of line and was still running when he eventually got to the rod. I was convinced that the fish would be over the back of the bar and would surely part the line. To my amazement my fish turned out to be a male tench. And an average sized one at that. These fish really do fight like tigers! I decided that as Cliff had struggled the weekend I would allow him the pleasure of playing this second fish to the net. This fish turned out to be a tench as well and I think this will be the only time I'll ever have over 12lb of tench in my landing net This turned out to be the final action of the weekend. The final tally was 5 tench and 1 pike. Another fantastic session and one that will go in the memory banks along with the other 5 Wingham sessions I've been lucky enough to have been invited to. I'll finish off with a picture which is one of my favourites from the weekend and proves that there's more than one reason to get up at first light. Thanks for reading Ant

And deservedly so! It was an incredible feat of angling. My congratulation go out to Malcolm. Ant

Congratulations indeed! Can we assume that this is a Wingham fish and your sworn to secrecy on the details? Ant

That's a fantastic fish. Well done Andew

This one almost looks like a circle hook! Would you only use this with a running rig to give the fish time to turn and run with the bait? It seems to have a very narrow gape which would put me off using these with a bolt rig setup? Ant

Hi Guy's, Quite a few votes for the Korum hooks so I think I'll have to get a few and give them a try. Those people who use them do you use Braided hooklengths or Flourocarbon? Also do you use shrink tube with them? Thanks for all the replies everybody Ant

Hi Steve, Well done on your double . Would I be right in saying that this is the first double figure tench from Wingham this year? I'm getting so excited about the Fish-in now and have been looking at the arial photo's today wondering where I will be fishing for those giant tench and bream this year . Keep the reports coming please. Ant

Hi Sean, Can I reccomend that if your going to start removing parts then use a good quality camera and take shots each time you remove a part. I once used a shimano baitrunner for sea fishing and managed to get sand in the reel. It sounded horrible so I had to strip it down and blast it out with some WD40 before re-greasing. If I hadn't taken a shot at each stage of dissassembly then it would still be in bits today. Regards Ant

Hi Stokie, Unfortunately I do not know your area but when looking in my area at the Fisheries website in the past I've found waters which I didn't know existed. Might be worth a shot. Ant

Bumpa 

Just bumping this to the top. Hopefully if steve's spending less time clearing his PM's then he'll be able to send out the invite emails sooner 

Hi Rich, Sorry, forgot to mention that I use these for tench fishing so would be looking for them in sizes 10, 12 & 14. The continentals only come in size 8 and bigger . Thanks Ant

Hi Dales, Our names are down so just waiting for a confirmation email now. This is probably the most important email of the whole year for me.  Hope to see you there. Ant

Hi Ken, I'm only in Worcester and have crossed the Stour quiet a few times while looking down and thinking that it must contain a few fish. Who ownes the fishing rights? I used to visit the scrap yard in Stourport (think it's called Potters) on a regular basis when I went through my stage of buying crappy old cars for a couple of hundred quid and always thought that there must be a few decent chub in there? Is there any decent roach in there? Cracking session by the way!! Ant

Hi Guy's, I'm looking for a strong hook but it needs to have a similar shape as the Brennan boilie hook. I like these because I use flurocarbon hook lengths and the out turned eye means that the angle of the hook doesn't sit so aggressively against the line which can happen with inturned eyes. I've also heard that flourocarbon can be weekened if the line is pulled around the eye of an inturned hook so am reluctant to use shrink tubing to create the required angle. The stronger hook is required because I noticed that when fishing at distance the weekend my favoured boilie hooks opened up a little when playing a couple of decent tench hard in order to get them away from some snags. This is the pattern of hook I'm looking for but in a stronger wire. Any ideas? Thanks in advance. Ant

Thanks Andrew, It is indeed. Hey Andy, I hope to see some pics of your tinkers.....Ok, That just sounds wrong!!! Hi Andrew, As you know I used tactics similar to these at Wingham last year and they catered for 13 beautiful tench to a new pb of 7lb 6oz but that was the last time I used them and we don't have lakes around here where tactics like this are required. Cliff hasn't used these tactics before so it was all new to him. These couple of sessions were exactly what we needed and to catch a pb each was enough to give us the confidence to know that if we're on fish at Wingham then we should be able to catch em. Thanks Steve, we sometimes have to remind ourselves that lakes like Wingham are very rare and without paying alot of money to fish syndicates or travelling 100's of miles we can only fish for what is within our reach and even fish of this size are very special. As you rightly said they are good fish for an estate lake and would probably be considered a specimen by some. We hope to see some bigger ones in a couple of weeks

Hi Guy's, Thought I'd bore you all with a write up of our day's fishing. Hope you don't mind. With the Wingham Fish-in only a few weeks away myself and Cliff have been getting a few practice session in on our local estate lake. Now ordinarily light float rods and small wagglers on the marginal shelf would be the tactics for this lake and accounts for some good bags of tench but there aren't many pegs at Wingham that lend themselves to this style of fishing. So to brush up on our medium range feeder fishing tactics we decided to fish to the same spots but from the oposite side of the lake which means that we'd be casting around 40 - 50 yards to an area the size of a dinner table in order to get our rigs in the usual tench hotspots. Our first practice session was a couple of weeks ago and our approach was to find the spots with a marker rod and to then spod a large amount of hemp, maggots and grounbait over the clear spots found. Once the bombardment was over it was then time to experiment with some rigs to find a presentation that we'd be confident casting out at Wingham. Now bare in mind that we normally fish intimate little waters with float gear or fast flowing rivers for barbel and chub so spod, marker work and mini bolt rigs is not a style of fishing we do very often but it's something we're very keen to learn. In that session we managed a few small tench but more importantly we had settled on a couple of rigs that would do the business. One was a mini bolt rig fished inside a PVA bag with maggots and stick mix and the other a maggot feeder, short hooklength and a couple of rubber grubs on the hair. Today's session: Well we decided that we'd have another go with these new found tactics and headed back to the lake at dawn. Cliff was there first and was dissapointed to hear that he would have to pack up his gear and move as half the lake had been booked up for a match which meant that we'd have to move down to the shallow area of the lake. Now this time of the year this end of the lake is completely choked with weed and presenting anything other than float gear is almost impossible. Hasten to say the couple of hours spent here were fruitless and a chat to the match organiser, as our preferred pegs were not being fished, meant that we were upping sticks and moving again. As we've had some colder nights followed by easterly winds during the days this week we decided that we wouldn't go over the top with the bait so a couple of maggot feeders were attached and launched the 40 or so yards to the far bank trees. After 45 minutes of regular casting I got my first run which came in without any dramas and once it was in the net it was obvious that she was full of spawn and in fantastic condition. On the scales she went 6lb 4oz and was a new estate lake pb for me and a cracking fish to boot. Here's a pic. An hour later and another run resulted in another spawnbound female at 5lb 14oz, could this day get any better!! A quiet spell for a couple of hours meant that we were beginning to think that we'd seen all the action we were going to get for today. but then I heard an alarm sounding from Cliff's swim and when I looked up I noticed that he was well bent in to a good fish and it was making a powerful run towards some nearby snags. He did very well to guide it into open water and when it surfaced it was obvious that this was going to be another very special fish and Cliff's pb of 3lb 8oz was well and truly smashed. On the scales she went 6lb 5oz and a new pb for a very happy Cliff. Here she is. Now I know these fish are not monsters compared to gravil pit fish but for estate lake tench these are a very good size so we finished the day 2 very happy bunnies. It was a fantistic day and I now have one thing to say: Bring on the Wingham tench!!!! Ant

I'll be after the tench on a local lake while the girlfriend has a 'tiara party' I'll be taking the bedchair though as we've been doing 14 hour days at work so that we can have Monday off. Ant

Maybe not like concrete but you would probably need to use a dedicated method mix or maybe add some PV1 binder to your normal groundbait mix to make it stiffer. One tip is to have a bowl of water next to you and when you've created your method ball, wet your hands and give it a final mould. This creates a skin around the ball which stops the ball breaking up on impact with the water. I'm no expert on method feeder fishing and I'm sure someone will be able to give you some pointers but hopefully it'll give you something to think about. Good luck Ant

You can get 3 DAIWA EMBLEMS FOR £150. Ant

Oh ok, that's not so bad! With a little bit of chrome plating and a Realtree spray job I could manage to strap them on to my rod's Sorry! I do get your point about the spool shape/line lay though. Thanks again Ant

Hi Budgie, Is this the one you were thinking of? Please don't take this the wrong way, and I wouldn't consider myself to be a tackle tart by any means, but I wouldn't be seen dead using these reels. I hate the old style Mitchels and think they're some of the ugliest reels ever made. I was given one of these by my dad many years ago and stuck it on Ebay for a fiver. Don't worry It wasn't a sentimental gift because he hated it as much as I did . I do appreciate the suggestion though . Ant