chevin

Yeah that's it mate. Sort of when it gets blunt. Actually if you look at the edges of the teeth it soon becomes apparent when the teeth just behind the cutting edge begin to look a bit polished. That happens because the saw is not cutting properly at the edge of the teeth. I have recently bought one of those electric sharpeners and while I have to take the chain off the saw to sharpen it, the results make it worth while.

But it's not a good idea to forget that you have them in your bait box though. It can be a problem when you open up the box a few weeks later. Roasting them used to prevent that problem.

Would Rex really know the difference?

It is true that it is best to know where they are but mackerel are pelagics and they move around quite a lot, also they tend to follow their food source which might be small fish or sand eels and they move around as they are being chased. So knowing where they are today may not be much help for tomorrow. There are places of course that when the mackerel are in that part of the world they will be in those areas, but in my experience you need a boat to get to most them, and you probably won't find too many people who know of them being prepared to divulge the position of those places. I had two favourite places off the west coast of Ireland where I could normally get the mackerel I needed for bait. On the odd occasions they weren't there, I looked around for working flocks of gannets. Sometimes a shoal of mackerel will stay in place for ages and that is when anglers can take huge bags of them. But as with any other fish, you may have to hunt for them during the time you have available and you might have to be lucky to hit on a spot where they are on a day trip from other parts of the country.

And learn to swim!

Chub Frenzy. You have been asking about mackerel of three or four years now and along the way you have been given quite a lot of advice on how and where to catch them and also advice on where to get local information. Have you made use of any of that advice and caught any mackerel yet? They are probably one of the easiest summer fish around the coasts of the UK and by now you should know enough about them to be able to catch them pretty much anywhere. So, I ask again, have you caught any yet?

Just take a fillet off each side and then cut pieces the size you want from them.

Yeah I remember that Le Mans crash and there has always been a lot of controversy about it. Mike Hawthorne was blamed by many for causing it and, as you say there has always been doubt about the number of dead. Also the track officials were criticised for allowing the race to continue but, as they said, if they had stopped the race the roads would have been blocked and emergency services would have been unable to get through. I guess when you have a catastrophe of that magnitude there is always going to be dissent concerning blame and decisions. We know that motor racing is dangerous, but unfortunately that incident took the danger to a new level.

Another remarkable talent who self destructed. I wonder why so many do that?

I guess that being as that is the only serious accident I have seen at a motorcycle race meeting in 50 years, I will be at the next meeting in a month's time. It spoiled my day for me yesterday but really motorcycle racing is a pretty safe sport. It's certainly an exciting one to watch!

I went to a motorcycle racing meet today at the local track and it was a perfect day for it. No wind, cloudless blue sky - shorts and T-shirt weather even though it is mid-winter. Now we all know that unpleasant things can happen in motor racing but before I had even got my chair unfolded a guy came off and I was horrified to see him get trapped under the bike. Eventually the bike kicked up into the air and released him to roll away from it. I was so relieved to see him get up, I ran along the fence to ask him if he was OK, he said that he was and I told him that it scared the crap out of me when I saw him being dragged along like that, he said, "Yeah, I didn't f*****g like it either." Anyway, I stayed with him while he checked his hands and went back to my chair. A little while later someone else came off at the far side of the bend which is rather like Gerrards at Mallory. It was a pretty normal spill, the guy rolled along the track, got up and had his bike going in no time flat. A couple of races later the same thing happened in exactly the same place. The racing was good but during mid afternoon there was an horrendous crash from which the riders didn't roll away and they didn't get up either. My heart sank when I saw four bodies laying in the track with none of them moving for an increasing period of time. The race was red flagged and service vehicles and ambulances shielded my view of what was going on. The longer they stayed there the more worried I became. Then came an announcement that the race had been abandoned at that the day's programme was going to be shortened. I didn't have any heart to stay. I know that motor sports are dangerous but when things like that happen that knowledge doesn't soften the reality in any way. I still don't know how those riders are but being as the ghouls on the news this evening weren't salivating over the deaths of any motorcycle racers I think that I can safely assume that they are still alive. I just hope that they aren't too badly injured.

Yeah, I have gone to chrome and while it's not as I would really like it in appearance, it at least does what I want it to do. Definitely less frustrating than Firefox.

Thanks anyway mate. Strange things happen. Oddly enough I am finding Chrome to be very good. It is faster (for me) than FF was and I keep the settings I have entered. There is something in my FF settings that is telling my computer to keep the Yahoo search engine as the default. I can change the default and remove Yahoo in the search management panel, but the next time I log on to FF I get a note telling me that my search engine has been restored to default which, of course, is Yahoo. Thanks for your help anyway, it is appreciated.

I dont have a quivertip or swingtip and i like watching a float for bites so i looked up float ledgering, i read through a few (out-dated) coarse fishing books and found what i needed. However when i searched it on anglers net and google i got next to no results, and the results i did get were mainly just for pike and sea fishing. I tried it the other day on a lake near me, i only tried it for the last hour and a half of the day and caught nothing, but the bites were registered quite clearly. I admit it was a bit of a pain having to plumb the depth so precisely to get the float positioned properly but other than that it was very clear, very simple and a great balance between ledgering and float fishing and i shall be trying it again. What im really wondering is, why is this method hardly used at all? It just seems ideal to me and is there a reason carp, specimen and other fishermen/fisher-women dont use it more regularly??? Thanks P.S: My rig was basically a free-running ledger rig with a float attached with rubbers on it, as it said in my book. If you are going to have your float fixed to a depth, there is little point in using a ledger weight because the water is obviously shallow enough to float fish normally. Float ledgering is normally a method that enables you to use a float in water that is far too deep to allow you to fix your float and still cast. In float ledgering, there is no need to fix your float, you have it running from the bottom eye with your free running ledger as you have it. You cast and leave the line to run freely until the sinker has hit bottom and the float has reached the surface and is laying on its side. You then put your rod in rests with the tip as near the surface of the water as possible and then you begin to gently tighten up. As you do so, the float will eventually cock and once it is stable you sit back and watch for any movement. When you get a bite, the line will try and straighten between the ledger weight and the rod top, which means that the float will be pulled under. When you strike, you must remember that you don't have a straight line between your rod and hook. From your description of your swim, I would suggest that a more effective method for it would be the lift method.

Sounds like it might be High Force falls mate. I can't remember what it looks like ( last time was there would be around 60 years ago) but if you remember the word "Force" then it does seem likely.

It is there mate, Chris was just too embarrassed to admit it, so he swung it on to us. (Sorry Chris.) I heard about an immigrant of a certain religion in New Zealand claiming benefits for three wives. When the authorities investigated they found that he owned three sheep.

Any question frequently results in a serious discussion from which many of the rest of us can benefit. I have read the subsequent posts with interest and quite frankly I have been surprised by the support the spade end has enjoyed. I use spade ends when I am fishing for smaller fish here in Oz and I still have some of the lovely blue wire spade ends that I used to buy when I lived in the UK. I do have some much larger spades of around 5/0 and I also frequently heat and bend the eye on 5/0s backwards and use the spade end knot to secure them. I put the line through the eye and then whip to the shank. I like the attitude of the hook on the line better than if I simply tie to the hook's eye. Of course I also use the eye on many occasions - it just depends on what I am doing and what I am hoping to catch.

I don't know if it is still available but I found Velveeta Cheese made by Kraft to be a very good cheese bait and that is more or less a paste when it is in its box. It's an easy cheese to use and chub love it.

A well presented one.

Well, I uninstalled AVG and then re-installed it and Fire Fox still kept Yahoo as the default search engine even though I told it not to. So bugger Fire Fox, I am not going to be told what I have to do, I will Use Google Chrome instead!

Thanks for your help guys, I am trying everything suggested. I will stay in touch and let you know if I get round the problem.

Thank you very much

Just tried the about.config thing, but as usual, I don't get what should come up when I have done that.

Reminds me of the story Wordbender told of Morris who upset a large bull and was running back to WB for protection! These dogs of ours do get into some situations, don't they!

THanks for that. I will have a go at that tomorrow. (Had a few beers) but I have tried that config about thing. I just need to have the predicted path to come up. I don't know if Yahoo thinks it is gaining by having this happen but it icertainly is NOT with me. In fact I hate bloody Yahoo now and I will never use it when I can avoid it. Every time I switch on my browser I delete Yahoo even though I know that it well be back.