Ken L

More success ! Went out last night with Scott (The English/South African guy mentioned above) and we rather outdid the locals. I only landed one fish of 12lbs but lost three including one beast of well over 25lbs. Scott did rather better and although he only got two solid hookups, he landed both fish for a brace at 19lbs and 22lbs. Only two other fish were landed between the 12 other guys on the beach. Tonight, we managed to cram in a short two and a half hour session between sunset and a meeting in the pub. We both had hits to the lures but I got the only positive hookup and landed a fish of about 9lbs. Again it was 1 fish between the two of us verses one fish between a dozen locals. The strange thing is, we tell them what we're doing and they just look and say "No, that won't work". We're madly tring to make the most of my few remaining days out here and I'm really not looking forward to comming back to the cold weather and flooded rivers in the UK.

Yep, if it's a stillwater as you describe, I have to agree with Peter that lightly weighted soft plastics are the doggies danglies, with spoons a close second - particularly if the water is on the cool side. Keep a Moss Boss or the lilies though. I tend to find that on stillwaters, spinnerbaits with either take them apart or won;t get a look. If it's a pressured water, one thing to try is long range range fishing with something like a pencil poppers walked ultra slow over the surface.

My fishing exploits have been a bit mixed on this trip. On ariving back in Arombol (Goa) after a bit of a tour arround. I had a bait fishing trip and caught half a dozen catfish and a moray eel as well as hooking something that I couldn't stop. After meeting an English/South African guy who's also a fishing nut, we went out again with baits to fish a slightly more promising looking part of the beach. More catfish were caught (all small), I got bitten off twice (probably small sharks) and hooked something that ran 40m at high speed before straitening out the hook. Lure fishing has been a bit more hit and miss and in two sessions at Querrim, I had a bunch of bumps but only managed one hookup. That one hookup was however a THING that smashed into a six inch Bomber lure and then took off on a 60m run against almost two KG's of drag before destroying two of the treble hooks and spitting the whole thing back at me with just a scale on one of the points to taunt me. It didn't jump or thrash, in the surf so I don't think it was a monster Barramundi. My money is on it having been a BIG Indian Salmon but we'll never really know. Last night, everything came right. Four of us went over the boarder into Maharashtra to fish a smallish river. It started slow but as the tide rose, fish started moving in and I ended up with four Barramundi to ten and a half pounds landed, three lost and half a dozen bites that I failed to connect with. The other lads managed a fish each with Ashok a waiter in the local bar) matching my ten and a half pounder for equal top place on the night. I learned a lot and confirmed some things that I'd been thinking about before comming to India. I also renewed my faith in some lures that have never really worked for me in the UK and which I only packed because of the distance that I can chuck them. I now have less than a week to land one of these beasts that I don't seem to be able to stop but on the plus side, tonights dinner is Barramundi tandori.

Assuming you want lots of fish of various species and will be fishing rivers upto about 2m in depth, I'd go with. Mepps Angila's in sizes 2 & 3 for the chub and perch. To fish the surface, grab some Heddon Moss Boss's for the pike in the snags and a couple of Heddon torpaedo's (in dull colours) for open water fishing. A couple of decent shallow running minow lures like Bomber Long A's and Cordell Riplin' Redfin's are always a good idea. Spinnerbaits are usefull and can be fished through water of varying depth very effectivly. Finnish up with a couple of deeper diving shad type lures ( I like the Salmo's but they're hard to find) and a few soft plastic swimbaits and you have a start. If you wan't to chuck big lures and specifically target the bigger pike, the selection would change but if I were told that I could use just three lures to fish the Severn, they'd be a size 3 Mepps, a large Heddon Moss Boss and a half ounce spinner bait.

Another vote for a total smoking ban I'm afraid. If there was such thing as a considerate smoker, I wouldn't even consider it but restauraunts where people are eating in the next seat, bus shelters filled with old folks and kids and the "smoke free" areas of the few pubs that have them all seem to be considered appropriate places to smoke by some of the ignorant to55ers that I've had cause to have words with recently. Caught between being ripped off by the taxman and arrested for evading excise duty - GOOD !

I'm currently living in Smethwick which is just to the west of Birmingham. It has a largely asian population with a large proprtion of then originating in the Punjab. Even though I know this, I was still convinced that some wag had been at the border sign with a magic marker the first time I read "Welcome to Smethwick.....Twinned with Amritsar". It is however official. About the only thing that the two towns have in common is the ethnicity of their majority population - 's funny though.

You could always tie up a big tube fly so that it can be slid down the leader to the hook.

Personaly, I'm a great fan of Jelly Head.

Why not keep it simple ? Just try "Unique New York"

Oh those terrible pulic servants and their pensions. Well, we may have a pay package that includes a "non-contributary pension scheme" (yeh right) but this is more than made up for by the pathetic salaries on offer. In my own office, roughly a third of staff are on fractionally more than minimum wage, another third earn less than 17K a year (these are the folks on the counter being spat at, sworn at and assulted on a daily basis) and a little less than another third of the staff have a theoretical pay maximum of 22K a year but in reality, most of them earn nowhere near that because despite working in the grade of upto 10 years with satisfactory (or better) servis, they haven't got to the top if the (utterly impossible to understand) pay spines. Fancy a management job ? My own ofice manager has responsibility for 580 staff, the building and a buget of billions of pounds (salaries, contracts and benefit payments) and earns a little over 30k a year. Just as a point of interest, it's worth knowing what a terrible burden on the public purse that "none contributary pension" costs the taxpayer. Well, for the majority of customer facing public servants in the big departments like the DWP have a salary maximum of 17K a year. After 40 years of service, they will retire with a lump sum payment of about 20k and a yearly pension worth half of their final salary or about 8500 pounds a year. Yes, there are some fat cat well healed public servants with almost no chance of ever getting sacked. One of them, Sir Richard Mottram was involved in the "Good day for bad news" scandal and when rumbled, came out with his classic quote "You're fu**ed, I'm fu**ed, we're all fu**ed!". Did he get sacked ? No, of course not. He got put in charge of the DWP to serve out his time prior to retirement and a nice little earner from the tax payer. I really should take some time to look up his biography ut I suspect it will start off with "Attended the well know public school at...."

We share 98% of our DNA with Chimpazies and 2% with Bananas. Thats why, when you see a Chimp eating a Banana, they look almost human.

I'll stick with photobox and continue to run the printer for basic work.

You, go out, you get drunk, you buy a kebab. But being in a drunken state leaves you vonerable to assault and road accidents. If the worst should happen, carrying the new "Donner Card" will ensure that your family know that your last wish was to have your kebab given as a gift to another drunk. Make your last act in this world an act of kindness - carry the card.

So, no more heart stopping lunges at surface lures. No more walking the river changing tactics for each peg to target whatever's likely to be present, whether it's going to perch, chub or pike. Instead we have a totally unworkable ban that can be got arround with an ounce of thought - "no mate, I'm not after the pike, I'm trying to catch perch/zander/chub/trout but all I keep getting are essox". Better to leave well alone.

So, I can replace the batery pack, the straps and the bulb assembly. Isn't that called "buying a new one" ?

I'm no great fan of the food at Mcdonalds and hate their presence in almost every city in every country on the planet. I do however confess to a weakness for their vanilla milkshakes even though I know they're loaded with fat. As a company though, they do seem to have no shortage of horror stories about thir environmental record, their food hygene and their working practices. So, what's the worst story that you know about Mcdonalds ? I think that we'll stick with "story" because there's no way of verifying what is and isn't true but I am interested to know just how bad they get. My favorite concerns the first drive through branch in Birmingham which opened up on the Bristol Road about 10 years ago. having taken on a bunch of new staff, they had the usual percentage of workshy idiots and decided to sack them. One guy was told that he was loosing his job and instead of escorting him form the premises, he was allowed to work the remainder of his shift. Clearly feeling rather disgruntled, he went to the toilet, came back with a brown sewer trout and opened up the syrup container for the rootbeer (All the draft soft drinks in these places are made up as needed from syrup and carbonated water) and slipped in his little friend. Rumour (and I believe the local paper) indicates that said rootbeer was served to over 30 customers before anyone complained......

Fishing with crayfish might be illegal but 90% of the raw prawns sold in blocks at your local chinese supermarket are farmed in freshwater and these should make an interesting bait for carp, barbel etc. To the best of my knowlege, these's no ban on using prawns and I seem to remember someone saying (in a discussion about pike deadbaits) that there's never been a recorded case of disease being introduced to a water via frozen baits. I've not tried them in the river but (before I twigged that they were freshwater prawns) I did try using them off the beach. They only caught a few wrasse and doggies but they stayed on the hook a treat and I really should try them when I have a day's bait fishing on the river.

I'm definatly in the market for a new one 'cause the headstraps on My Pezel have gone all manky and I'm tired of the weight of the thing and of having to hunt arround for those funny old fashioned bateries that they take. Not sure about the one in your link though Ant. From what I can see. the angle of the beam cant be adjusted whisch is important to me because I want it pointing down at my hands when I'm re-baiting without it shining on the water. Then I want it pointed down at about 45 degrees when Im walking or on the beach and looking for a fish in the surf. Then again, if I wan't to check who's walking arround behind me in the dark where my takle is, I want it to point the beam straight out - although with only three LED's, I really doubt that it'd penetrate very far into the night.

So, is that bloke Dobby the house elf or is it Jeebs from Men in Black ?

I came across this story this afternoon on my webmail providers main page http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,69...html?tw=rss.TOP Give it a slightly smaller size and a slightly improved top speed and I reckon it'd make a decent fishing platform for the UK. Alternativly, forget the solar and maybe all electric boats have a future if they have a range of 30 to 40 miles and a recharge costs just penies.

Online storage is a none starter if your friend is travelling in anything other than first world countries where the internet cafe's will have a BB connection. Whatever the operating system on the PC's they're using, most of the time, they'll end up spending a fortune while they try to upload their images over a slow and unreliable dial up connection that's being shared by half a dozen other machines. Burning to CD is an option but is again frought with problems as the disks offered by internet cafe's are inevitably the cheapest on the market and arn't suplied with any sort of case because they buy thier disks on a spindle. This raises the question of how you get the disks home without then getting scratched by sand, damaged by heat/light or simply busted up inside your backpack by airport bagadge handlers who couldn't care less whether they damadge your stuff. Carrying a laptop isn't very practicle because of it's bulk, power requirements, weight and fragility. The only realistic option is big memory cards. They're cheap as chips and I usually stick a 1 gig card in the camera and carry a 250 meg as a backup. I've yet to fill the main card on a three month trip despite using the camera on the 6 and 12 megapixel settings most of the time. Data on these cards is incredably robust (unlike portable HDD's) and if they are required, additional cards can be brought along the way - they're even cheaper in places like Singapore and Hong Kong than they are in the UK. Hope this helps.

Obviously, the solution is to introduce Asp and Small Mouth Bass to help to control these infernal pests. Seriously though, if they are already as widespread as the article indicates then trying to eradicate them is a lost cause and the money would be better spent on general environmental improvements. The situation seems to be rather similar to the hue and cry over the discovery of "motherless minnows" in the Sumerset Levels a few years ago. There was much hand wringing about invasive species and the terible damage they were going to do at the time but to be honest, I don't think I've heared a single mention of these fish in the last five years.

So you've gone and bought a tortoise. Well, first thing is to realise that it's not so much going to be a pet as a family hairloom - the things live for 80 years. The second is to realise that your salad bill is going to impress the local supermarket manager. The third is a reminder that if the tortoise starts to develop nasty scrapes and sores on it's belly, you'll have to tell little Johnny that it won't go faster just because her picks it up and goes WRUMBBBB, WRUMBBBBB on the carpet....

This just keeps getting better and better. Now they're being sued. Better yet, this issue is going to be playing on the mind of anyone who is making a choice betwen a PS3 and an XBox 360 and wondering what sort of little software goodies might be bundled with their games system - details of your CD, DVD and games playing habits forwarded to www.sony.con every time you log onto online gaming servers anyone ? How about a bit of automated snitching if you decide to buy a pirate DVD or PS3 game from a bloke in the pub ?

So many Manga movies, so little time.