Ken L

I believe every word. I also believe in cold fusion. I'm also convinced that Leonardo Da Vinci invented a viable perpetual motion machine that has been kept under wraps by the vatican for centuries. NOT !

Try this: http://www.keenaschips.co.uk/index.php?pag...inbow&showcom=1 Personally, I always thought the Jim Davidson clip was funnier.

Tis a Gibbon rather than a monkey. I watched a Black Gibbon do buch the same thing to a maccaque in Borneo 18 months ago. Both animals were young but the speed and agility of the gibbon was driving the maccaque absolutely buggo.

Have a look at www.anglersnet.co.uk/cgi-bin/ubb/ul...ic;f=1;t=015485

My favorite local place has to be "Bell End"

I'd say the the introduction of barbel into the middle and upper reaches of the Severn has had a significant negative effect on the silver fish polulation. The large shoals of roach and dace described by anglers of my fathers generation are no longer present because so much of the rivers biomass is now tied up in a few big fish.

Internet dating can be a tricky business.

Got in from a late summer lure session, kicked of my wellies (the socks came off with them) and carried the kit through the house. Unknown to me, I'd dropped a lure on the carpet comming in. Fortunatly, I missed it as I walked back to close the door but bang ! I got it on the way back to the kitchen. The treble had gone in through my big toe and had stopped with the point just visible through my toenail. There had been been enough energy in my kick to embed the other points of the lure into the carpet so I was stuck. There I was, nailed to the floor with nobody else in the house and no tools at all within reach to get myself out - great fun - and it really gets those thinking juices working !. The only thing within reach was the cupboard under the stairs. I already knew this was empty but I decided to look anyway. Litterally the only thing in there was an old scrapper blade that has been left lying flat on top of the door frame and fortunatly, this was sharp enough to cut the lure free from the carpet. It was then a simple case of hobbleing over to my lure bag and cutting the trebble that was in me off of the main lure so I didn't get impailed on a second point. I then discovered that human flesh just isn't like fish flesh because despite using a LOT of force, the barb wasn't going to come out the way it went in. I ended up cutting off the two spare points, grabbling hold of the shank and pushing the point right through my toenail. I then cut the point off behind the barb and pulled the whole thing back out. This is not a proceedure that I'd recommend but it's definatly preferable to some of the horror stories that I've heared about in hospitals. [ 16. August 2005, 04:09 PM: Message edited by: Ken L ]

Nah, You would have S*** your pants if you'd done what my mate Dave did. We were both standing thigh deep in fast water on the middle Severn spinning for chub. He hooked one of about 12oz and was playing it when WHAM ! the rod arched over and line started screaming of his reel. 10 minutes latter, he had a pike that was a possible 20 right in front of him at which point it rolled and spat the rather worse for weear chub out of it's mouth. Unknown and unseen, it then retired to the nearest available bit of slack water - about 18" downstream from Dave's legs ! He held up the rather sorry looking chub, looked at the holes in it, examined the missing scales and decided that it just might survive. He removed the hooks, bent forward to released the fish and WHAM ! It got taken by the same pike less than an inch from his hand. He squeeled like a girl and took a couple of very rapid backwards steps. It could easilly have put him in the hospital with a sliced and diced donny - and a loose scphinchter. [ 16. August 2005, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: Ken L ]

"The water is a 3 acre well stocked, what I would call pleasure lake." No, it's a carp puddle. A very hungry carp puddle by the sound of it. Unless it has a gravel bed, I bet the water is permanently coloured from fish searching for food. Odds on there's no weed other than a few lillies that havent been rooted up yet. You could probably catch fish by chucking some bait in and randomly fireing an arrow into the water. Why not go fish a wild water for some of our native species ? Suerly a water where you can not avoid catching fish and to have to resort to "donkey choker" sized baits to try to be selective isn't much of a test of skill.

Well, I confess that I'd happily let them get on with the wholesale destruction of these nasty alien invaders if they treated other environmentally damaging non-native fish in the same way - and put the Severn's barbel on the most wanted list. That isn't going to happen though is it ? Nor is the erradication of zander. No matter what steps might be taken, they are now here for good. I just wish that the BWB would realise that and leave the things alone.

Yep, they're called the BWB. I was elated to hear that here were Zander confirmed as present in my local canals (Great for a short autumn session) only to discover that the BWB are regularly driving up and down the network with electrofishing gear, killing every fish that's worth catching.

Newt hinted at some of the issues that lead to the "idiot" tag. On top of the medical issues, I was given no name on introduction (and it's illegible on the prescription), he had a very strong south asian accent making him hadr to understand (If I struggled, god knows how some of the old folks in thea get on), he made no eye contact during the interview at all. Not the sort of bloke that any self respecting practice would want as a partner and so he ends up as a perpetual locum. After a couple of years of this, he looses touch with patients because he never sees them twice and his skills start to deteriorate. Hey, he's become an idiot locum. Not all locum doctors are like this (far from it, some of them are very good) but there is a proportion. The point about dodgy medical degrees is well made. Having travelled extensivly in india, I can say without fear of contradiction that there are a lot of very dodgy degree courses available and the level of corruption out there would probably let Forrest Gump baksheesh his way to beccomming a qualified MD if he were inclined to go for it.

No night sessions and very few bait fishing sessions specifically aiming at Zeds. Even with the lures, a fair bit of my time is spent on the gravel runs chasing chub, abother chunk is spent throwing weedless surface baits right in close allong the bank for pike but I still spend enough time playing with jigs, diving plugs and deep fished spinner baits that I'd have expected some contact if the fish were in fact present in the middle reaches of the river. That said, I may well be taking a trip out to the Avon in the next couple of weeks to try to snag a few fish from the Barton area. Will post results if I manage to fit the trip in.

Nah, That wouldn't work. I mean, it's not like anyone could forget the words is it ? Dar dar dar dar dar dar dar. Dar dar dar dar dar dar dar. Dar dar dar dar dar dar dar.

Basically, anywhere between Worcester and Gloucester on the Severn will contain good numbers of Zander with Tewksbury weir having a particularly good reputation. Ray Armstrong always stated that he took his string of big fish on trolled baits along the Uckinghall stretch but it's kinda hard to verify because one section of the lower severn tends to look like any other. I've heared of a few fish having come out as far up as Stourport but nothing definitive and as there are several weirs in that area, you could waste time fishing water that is upstream of the fishes current range. In the mid eighties, there were story's of illegal stockings of the middle Severn at Black Rock (Bewdley) and Ironbridge but I've never heared of any comming out from anywhere above Bewdley and Despite having fished that part of the river extensivly with lures for the last 10 years, I've not seen a sniff of one.

We have to respect their ways and embrace their culture so that our own grows stronger through diversity. No. Hold on a minute. Not all Travellers are thievig disrespectfull little 5hits. Maybe they're just ********s. Intestingly, it looks as if a few fines have been dished out but I wonder how much has actually been collected.

In pubs, they use specially produced DVD discs where there is a video, a sillywalking dot thingie, music and a separate vocal track that can be faded in or out with the right kit. Some of these discs can be found here: http://www.play.com/play247.asp?pa=search&...&Go.x=30&Go.y=8 There might be some software out there that attempts to remove the vocals from normal CD discs and there even used to be a few CD players that tried to do the same thing. Either way, the music ended up sounding like a dogs breakfast.

I saw the doctor today. Unfortunatly, he was just another locum idiot ! He told me that there was a lot of it about at the moment - fair enough. He told me that my chest was a bit crackly but was clinically clear - no suprise there, I've coughed up all the interesting stuff over the last four days and now my chest is just sore rather than congested. He told be that the fact that what I had coughed up was clear was indicative of a viral problem rather than a bacterial problem - so far so good. THEN, AFTER ESTABLISHING THAT I HAVE A VIRAL INFECTION WITH NO EVIDENCE OF SECONDARY BACTERIAL INFECTION, HE HANDED ME A PRESCRIPTION FOR AMOXILLIN ! Steve: I hope you've got a mild one mate. The worst of mine now seems to be over but I still have a sore chest from continuous (and ongoing) coughing, a squeeky voice, zero stamina and I'm soaking the bed with sweat every night. I'm still a physical wreck but at least I can think straight now.

"NEXT!" Well, you could always try fishing for something that isn't a bottom feeding scum sucker.

From a personal perspective, I' got sick to the back teath of seeing dozens of gill nets allong a section of coast that I occasionally fish in Devon. One net in particular was always place just 20m out from a popular swimming beach and was a danger to people as well as fish. This year, I e-mailed the local tourist authority, DEFRA, the local council and anyone else who might be able to pull strings to get dodgy netters shifted or shut down. In the end, I couldn't make it but I'm told by someone who was down there for the main fortnight that there was not a gillnet to be seen. You don't need artillary, you just need a bit of political clout - and in the case of daytime trawling, a very good camera.

Use a float and fish off the bottom. Easy !

"If i ever see them within casting distance i'll be tying a plain lead to my shockleader and casting at them." 6oz of lead at casting speeds is potentially lethal if it impacts almost anywhere on the head or torso and capable of serious injury if it were to hit a limb. I really think you need to get a sence of proportion here.

It's true that bigger pike will take a percentage of small waterfoul. So by removing some of the pike, you might end up with three or four more ducks at the end of the summer. Of course, the ducklings that the pike would have taken will primarilly have been the ones that were stupid or injured or otherwise unable to keep close enough to mom to stay safe and the chances of them making it through their first winter are probably a bit slim anyway - even if they do, they're not exactly going to boost the gene pool. So, you've removed the natural predators and you may or may not have allowed a couple of ducklings to grow to adulthood that would otherwise have been eaten, what effects will this have ? Well, the most obvious one is that the pike won't stay gone ! You will very soon have an explosion of small pike and lots of small pike eat lots and lots of small roach, bream, gudgeon etc. Now, the big pike were interested in larger fish than the lakes piscarvarious birds but the hordes of little pike are in direct competition for food with kingfishers, heron's, egrets, grebes etc. The numbers of these birds will reduce as competiontion between pike and birds increases and the only things that'll be left are ducks, gease and swanns - a duck pond rather than a nature centre.

Was I the only one to notice that the catfish pictured at the half way point is a wells ? Not many of them about in Hillbilly country ! If I'm not mistaken, it's even being held aloft by none other than Kevin ********. Back in on the edit here because I'm intregued by that word barring thingie. Lets try "Kevin M@ddocks" instead. [ 15. August 2005, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: Ken L ]