Brian Carragher

As long as your fish reach the minimum landing size for each species, it might differ from area to area so if you're fishing in the Merseyside area for instance, I'd find out the information from your local sea fisheries area . Mackeral are generally 30cm up here but they are smaller in Cornwall (just an example) so its worth checking to make sure you don't do any thing illegal Catch it and eat it, nothing wrong in that , sea fish fresh from the water are superb but cod is better the day after capture when it firms up a bit As for mackeral you'll find that most of your coarse gear is no good for mackeral unless you're going to fish with one spinner and catch one mackeral at a time If you're going to catch mackeral with a string of feathers (daylights are the best by the way) with a 3 or 4 ounce lead at the bottom then you'll find the majority of your coarse gear won't stand the strain of casting the weight in the first instance as you're rod will probably snap and your reel won't cope with constantly reeling in the lead and it won't cope when you've got the lead and three or four mackeral on as well. A 1lb mackeral punch's well above its weight and if you've got a few on your ordinary coarse reel won't have the guts to winch them in If you have a decent carp type rod capable of casting 4 ounces a big pit type reel or proper sea fixed spool reel (Leeda make some good cheap fixed spool sea reels) and 12 or 15lb mono then you'll be OK for feathering, its still called feathering even though feathers are very rarely used Use a decent spinning rod and reel and 8lb mono and single spinners and you'll get the best out of mackeral

Do the bream shoals and roach over winter in the wider deeper parts then?

Don't worry, in the 9 years since they posted my guess is that those kids will be grown up adults now and nothing like they were then and the new generation of angling kids will be better than the last lot

It looks like an out of condition brownie to me, long and lean just like a sea trout but its got way too many spots below the lateral line and too many spots on its cheeks to be a sea trout generally I'd say that where the belly flaps are there should'nt be any spotty markings but they're showing on this fish, shame it was'nt a ten pounder and we'd know for sure but on the photo evidence I'd say brownie

Nice article Mr B I notice you always use open bale arms and its not something you only mention in this article but every time its asked and on the waters I fish, I won't and don't as I prefer the baitrunner on the very lightest of settings Do you prefer the open bail arm approach on every water or just the slower moving rivers, reason for asking, and no I have no notion to change styles, is that on the faster moving northern rivers I fish I find the open bail arm approach a chew when the line is caught by crap in the flow and the alarm showing a "run", so I'm wondering if the rivers you fish in your area are slower flowing rivers without a lot of tow or do they flow as fast as they do up here Not a critisism of styles or preference but a question as to how you've arrived at your preferred method and what types of water you fish, ie fast or slow rivers

Pauline Black, she still looks very tasty

You B'stard Murphy You've got me at it now I love all that old two tone stuff and Ska music sort of my era been on you Tube for ages listening to Peter Gabriel, Jethro Tull, Genesis (early stuff) The Specials and a favourite of mine the Selector Watching the old tapes of The Selector you can't keep your eyes away from the lead singer (female in case anyone's wondering) well you would would'nt you if you were still 18 and single,it'd be rude not to

Enjoy it I bet you have a great time and whilst you're away this place will run like clockwork remind us again just when you're away, we'll need to get the stirring sticks ordered in good time

An American President bashing an American company in the run up to major elections, I won't hold my breath I bet he wish's the timings had been different

Has he been upsetting Doris Stokes?

It seems "Dave" is encouraging "Scial Entrapenaurs" to take up the work currently provided by Government and Councils, the same work thats ever so surprisingly going to be affected and decimated by the cuts Is that not the same as privatisation of service, the outscourcing of service providers for shareholder profit

No work and no pay for the employees No money to trade with No money to pay creditors Work suspended Customers advised to seek other windscreen firms for work to be done Can't see much of a queue forming to buy it can you?

WOW Some of those photos are amazing

I have a fride/freezer and an under worktop freezer in the garage and they're soley for me for my baits and anything fishy or fishing related , the food one is in the house but I have to agree that the front opening ones are the best ones for anglers as I can see what I've got where it is and what I'm dragging out One freezer is full of dead baits for winter piking another has bags of cod fillets for eating with a couple of shelves of frozen baits for freshwater and the fridge bit is generally full of stuff I've forgotton about Non of them has ever gone off but they do sufer with condensation on the front doors and sometimes they're a bit wet underneath

Reason for asking is I'm after a set of 4 wireless alarms so I'll wait till then and be having a look in then on the web site Web site infected again if you were'nt aware some installer trying to get into my PC , same one as last time, google flagging up an infection but getting in via another link off another site I got i no problem

You see this is whats wrong with angling just now The " fook you I'm all right Jack " attitude that exists among certain types os species hunter is whats dividing angling and providing sucour to the anti's Attitudes like "I'm all right jack" stem from the failed BMP ( Bass Management Plan) where members of the National Mullet Club and BASS were quite prepared to sacrifice certain rights and certain parts of OTHER anglers pastimes and accept restrictions on THEIR (the other anglers) access and restrictions on what they ould and could'nt do in order to promote the BMP Thankfully there were enough anglers who saw through those proposals for what they were and spoke out against them and there were others who realised that what was on offer was a poisoned chalice and also spoke out against it Unfortunatly some of those people and some of those attitudes have'nt gone away and there are some who would have impositions placed on the mass's in order to secure their minority interests And then we have the AT, god help us Anglers need to see the bigger picture for ALL of the various aspects of our sport and we should'nt be accepting of or encouraging restrictions on ANYONE's pastime but unfortunatly self preservation or ignorance seems to be the way some groups are heading and that puts them in direct conflict with the vast majority of anglers who just want to be left alone to enjoy doing what they've done for years without interference from anyone Theres an old saying, divide and conquer, but really as anglers we should'nt be doing it to other fellow anglers and we should'nt be encouraging other groups to do it to different species anglers either

A non mandatory licencing scheme where if you choose not to participate in the non mandatory scheme you end up getting fined Seems very compulsory to me and something we need to watch out for from our government if they go down the same route Date collection is just another way of determining how much revenue you can milk out of a set of statistics in this case anglers without any benefit or real need to implement any sort of scheme

No idea Elton but I'm guessing its a figure dragged out of the air without any basis of factual evidence at all and repeated often enough for people to start believing it

Is'nt Savay lakes a recently dug man mad lake complex?

It turns them into coalies

Recognise those cliffs in the photos and can make out Huntcliffe in the background and its within the travelling limits of my little craft so who knows? I'll be putting in some hours this year attempting to catch tope from Redcar and I'm pretty confident of doing it, we've had them before in years gone bye, admittedly in nets so it should'nt be too hard to remember when and where and try and get a bait to where I think they'll be, the chartplotter and sounder should help though Bass and pollack fishing is still something new to the area I fish from and for those that just put their cod goggles on ( and I'm sometimes guilty of that ) they don't know what they're missing, lure fishing for bass from a boat with 8lb mono and freshwater spinning gear is great sport but even better than that is fishing for crash diving pollack, catch them in shallow water and they go off sideways at a rate of knots you just struggle to believe I'll be doing a lot of live launce fishing under a float this year for the bigger bass and pollack but of the two the pollack win hands down every time, if I never caught another bass but only fished for pollack I would'nt be in the least bit sorry as they're a much better angling experience, if I was Mick on Sea Urchin thats what I'd be heavily advertising a pollack only day and he'd be full in no time The inshore waters up here have yet to be fully tapped into but I believe when folk eventually get their heads round exactly what can be caught with a slightly different approach and tactics then I think we'll see an angling revolution and an upsurge in folk wanting to go sea fiahing Plastics and lures are'nt the first choice of most who go afloat but they really need to try new ways of fishing if for nothing else just to re invigorate themselves in their fishing ways, once you try it theres no going back to the dark side

Its part of the Bristol Avon, Isombard Kingdom Brunel country near to where the iron clad battleship is Parts of it will be a bit saline but its mostly fresh water and roach bream and pike and eels can withstand a bit of saline water without any worries and they seem to thrive in there now its been cleaned up

Best advice I can give is put your coat onand go for a walk around the docks and talk to the anglers there If theres any pike about and there should be they'll have shown by now when bite offs happen with small skimmers and roach so any pike hot spots will be where the bait fish usually show You could do with finding out what depths the various parts of the docks hold and who controlls the fishing rights, seem to remembe its one of the local clubs, and you could also do with finding out if theres any rules on methods of fishing allowed, ie livebaiting, which should help you find the pike a fair bit quicker especially now the water temperature is warming up a bit You could do a lot worse than visit the local tackle shops for more up to date info on whats getting caught and where and ask about acces to the docks and permits or clubs controlling it Take a pair of polarised glass's with you and have a good peek into thewater and see if you can see any fish lurking near piles or structure or retaining walls and you'll have a more than even chance of catching when you go down with rod and line, if you go with a lure rod and a pocket full of lures make sure you can land the fish before you cast in off high dock walls where a landing net won't reach

No ones spotted the obvious then ? Those 5 mackeral are'nt They're coalies

I have a pair of Wychwood 1.75lb barbel rods and find they make for a good close in livebait rod, providing you're not wanting to cast to the horizon and just want to position a livebait close in they're great for the job Best fish so far using them has been 17lb 15oz and they will set the hooks So your rouge barbel rod will do for close in stuff but for a more general purpose rod that can cast out weight and bait, you're better off going for a purpose made pike rod