Ken L

I agree that Akubra's are a top quality product, especially the "Snowey River" model. I've had a couple of hats and several coats from www.ausiebushhats.com with no problems.

If it's comming up fast, why not take the opportunity to introduce a little extra structure ? Half a dozen pallets with a paving slab on the top should do it and if you could get it in in the evening, it might even be covered the next morning. Nothing like a few secret features that you can go to for a bonus fish or two.

Thanks for the warning Budgie. Most of my big surface flies have been brought on my travels and either have a foam body or a glue head that's soft but holds the air really well.

With the amount of lure chucking that I do on the Severn, I'm amazed that I've not had a Zed out yet. I do fish the river down as low as Worcester regularly but most of my time is spent between Bewdley and Bridgenorth. The question is, how far up the river have they got ?

Removing the market for oil by rolling out cars powered by Hydrogen fuel cells would really stick one up the middle east. The trouble is, to electrolise water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, you need lots of electricity which would have to be produced in a massive and sustainable way to replace the worlds infernal combustion engines. The best option would be solar and guess whose got loads of land that's no good for anything much and gets loads of sun. Yep. It's the ****** Arabs again ! They got us by the short and curlies until fusion power hits the shops.

I've got some Halco catch scent that I picked up in Oz. I've not tried it yet but it's apparently based on hormones rather than the usual fish oils. I meant to give it a bash with big slowly retrieved pike flies this summer because I figure that it's goota be better on a slow moveing bait, but I never got the chance to give it a try.

Cor. That Hyperthetical bloke comes up with some good ones. Almost as good as his mates Pythageras and Socrates

A bloke goes to the doctors and explains that his girlfriend kept telling him that there was something green up his backside. The doctor tells him to drop his pants, turn around and bend forwards. "Hmmmm" said the doctor "I see what she means" "well, I've got some good news and some bad news" "What's the good news?" says the rather worried bloke. "Well" said the doctor "It's definatly not a tumour or anything like that. In fact it's nothing more than ordinary lettuce" "And the bad news?" "Erm....This is just the tip of the iceburg !"

Some interesting replies. I have to admit to having a couple of old stars that I just love to pull out for very specific situations. They spark fond memories every time I mount a reel on 'em. And I love Kendo's line about the garden cane. I used to fish a pool that had so many carp in it you could hand feed them. Only tiddlers but I always fancied trying to catch one on a bent pin tied to the end of a cane with sewing thread just to say I'd done it. It would have been easy on that pool too but I kinda doubt that I'll ever get the chance to try it now.

Of course I should have added the question. What are other peoples favorite rods and why ?

I'm lucky enough to have a lot of rods available for my fishing. Some of them hardley ever come out of the bag and some of them only ever get broken down when they're put away for the winter. My favourites would be: A 3lb TC Pike rod made by DAM that hardley ever gets used for Pike fishing but which is a pleasure to use on a beach in the summer because I can hold it all night without getting tired and I get to play my sea-fish instead of just crank em in. A Loomis and Fanklin 1 piece baitcaster that's reignighted my interest in this branch of lure fishing. More like hand to hand combat than fishing, this rod is great fun with medium to large plugs. A G Loomis spinning rod that I've been using for the last year. Totally responsive, superlight and much more powerfull than it looks or feels. This rod is great fun and would have been No1 if it was just a fraction longer and a tiny bit more powerfull. But. My absolute favorite rod to use though has to be a little #5 weight Shimano Perfection fly rod. I don't do a great deal of fluff flinging but this rod is so alive that it brings a great big smile to my face every time I catch a fish on it, even if it's just a little dace. Next year I plan to push it to the limit with an artificial caster and a prebaited barbel swim

No argument from me about the way that the lottery money has been spent to date. By rights there should be a fully equiped social and sports hall in every town in the country by now but instead, all we have is a bunch of cash going to a bunch of spurious "minority" interest groups and a massive subsidy for cultural cr*p that's of no interst whatsoever to the average man in the street - but is no doubt enjoyed by a tiny minority of the population who could bl**dy well afort to cough up full whack.

You can't stop a major landslide any more than you can stop earthquakes, hurricaines or the setting of the sun. I'm afraid that the good people of Ironbridge are just going to have to move if and when the land starts to slip into the river. The clarion call for Lottery money went up from the locals when this thing hit the media but thinking that this would help is a bit like old king kineut thinking that with a bit more gilding on his throne he'd really be able to hold back the tide.

ARHH. It breaks me heart to hear such a sad, sad storey so it does. I'd like to bu the poor little bugger a pressie I would. But then again, how many hats can a boy use ?

You've got two basic options. The fist is to go down the ultralite route and fish with a tiny spinning rod (about 5 feet)and reel. Fancast micro sized plugs and spinners, walk 5 or 10m and do it again. This is my first choice method for spring fishing because by then, most of the previous years fry have been chomped and you're more likely to get an aggressive responce to the lure. Bridges are a top place to target with this method especially on bright days. Remember that just because it's to dark for you see the lure, it doesn't follow that the fish can't see it. The second choice is to make yourself a sideplanner and tow a lure behind it by walking along the towpath. Varying the amount if line that you have out will let you fish the lure anywhare from dead centre of the cut to a foot from the far bank and keep it there until you hit a fish or a snag. This is my fist choice for early winter fishing because it let's me really search the water. If you have access to both sides of the canal, try walking on the sunny side with the lure working a couple of feet off the far bank. In the clear water, the fish tend to sit in the shade and will hit a lure that's passing by. If it's been really cold for a while, the opposite can be true and the fish might be on the sunny side soaking up a few rays. There does seem to be a third choice using big soft plastics but it's never worked that well for me.

Sorry about posting and then vanishing for better than a week, the phone line's been playnig up and I've not been able to get on the net. Some intersting replies relating to the unmanned sewage treatment works for caravan sites and small villages in the area. These all seem to flood out raw sewage when it rains or somebody looks at them in a funny way. I know that these things have done incredible damage to the trout and bullhead populations on a couple of streems that I used to play in as a kid and no doubt they're due a portion of the blaim for reducing the salmon stocks too. I can't figure a mechanism for these killing the weed though because the extra nurients should promote plant growth unless I'm missing something. I agree that dam water has been damaging the river's fishing for years. Back when I was match fishing, almost any sudden turn off was blaimed on cold/deoxygenated/acidic water comming from the Vyrnwy but the fact that it's been going on for years would seem to count against it being the cause of the sudden loss of weed. Maybe the problem is the fact that so much water is being drawn off at weekend that the yoyoing of the water temprature as compensation water goes in is making the enviroment unsuitable for the weed.

About five years ago, almost all of the streamer weed along the middle Severn suddenly vanished. It does seem to have made a very slight recovery but there's still only 5 - 10% of the weed that there used to be in the fast shallow runs. Intiially, I'd assumed that the weed was routed out by severe floods but I've since heared rumours of a herbicide spill and even a full blown conspiracy about a link to the strange brown colour of the river at the start of several recent seasons. Does anyone know what actually happened and whether anything is being done to put it right ?

If you want to wind up the veggies and vegans out there, just tell em that their sugar is nice and white because the inpurities are filtered out using activated charcoal and activated charcoal is made out of heated animal bones. If they are spouting from an enviromental standpoint and wearing gold, you could always point out that gold production in South America is responsible for polluting the Amazon with cyanide and mercury.

After almost 12 months without a PC, I'm finally back on line. It's kinda nice to be back.

No idea. Does a dog have a memorial for a flea ?

I know exactly what you mean. Having been travelling for five months now, I picked up loads of new lures that I'd never seen before (not as if I don't have enough sat in boxes at home) and I'm thinking that the only way to give them a fair trial on UK species when I get home is going to be to leave all the old standbys at home and just go for it with the new ones. Trouble is, I've also brought kit that opens up a whole load of lure options so I'll have to find time for that as well - Oh the agony With luck, I'll end up with a whole new list of first and last choice lures. That's the first one you clip on cause you know it'll work and the last ones you clip on when all else has failed.

I'm not expert on this subject but as I've been travelling through some of the most technology obsessed part of the planet recently, I may as well stick my oar in. Anything above 3Mp will give excellent results. The image quality on a 6Mp digital camera is simply awsome - if you're a good enough photographer to make the most of it. So, did I rush out and buy a new digi ? - erm...no. The reason is simple. I would use it largely for fishing and travelling and there are just not enough places arround the world that will let you dump you pictures to a CD yet and I came across a little jem from Casio that is waterproof and shock proof and would be the ideal fishing camera were it not limited to only 1.2 MP. Me, I'll stick with the 35mm for now and slash out on next years model from Casio when it hits the shops - provided it has decent memory and at least 2.5 Mp resolution.

£10770 pa and on call 24 hours a day, everyday, doing a job that is potentially very dangerous - clearing weirs during heavy rain. That has to be one of the worst job ads I've ever seen PARKING METERS EARN MORE !!!!

Ho hum, I see we're back to (hopefully tongue in cheek) yank bashing. Well yes, they do do some strange things but then so do we. I wonder if the hands would be thrown up in the air in quite the same way if Snakehead were found in a small pool within the Severn, Trent or Thames catchment area ? Try a fishbase search and you'll find that snakehead do very well thankyou in North Korea and parts of Siberia so there is no question that they'd survive in the UKs climate. I even think the EA has gone so far as to list them as a species that it's illegal to import into the country because of potential adverse impact. Without active measures to counter idiots who release species into new enviroments, there will soon be no unique ecosystems left and well all see the los of biodiversity that results. If that means poisoning a small population of none native animals or plants, then so be it.

More snippets from the BBC news website. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2151754.stm Has the world gone mad ? You've got bronchitis. Don't blame yourself for smoking, sue the tabaco industry. You're fat. Don't blame yourself for eating to much and not doing enough excersise, sue Mcdonalds. You walk into a telegraph pole. Don't call yourself a pr@t for not looking where you were going, sue the council for not painting it flouro yellow and failing to put a warning sign on it. You order a hot coffee and burn yourself on it. Don't treat it as a lesson learned, sue the restraunt that sold it to you and force them to print warnings on every future cup of coffee stating the bl**dy obvious. It seems that nobody is capable of taking responsibility for their own actions anymore. Even sickos that attach kids are "victims" of their own upbringing. And whilst this is going on, people with serious life destroying illness caused by genuenly negligent employers who witheld details of the danger of asbestos or radiation are fighting a loosing battle to gain a pittance.