ColinW

That's a curious idea! It all depends on the thickness of the blank relative to its diameter and whether it can withstand the flattening distortion of the tube as the rod bends. I've got fly rods that I can bend round in a full circle, but that is because they have a relatively high wall thickness compared to their width. At the other extreme are poles with a very thin wall thickness and large diameter which can take hardly any bending at all before they collapse. I will grant you that most rods will bend a LOT further than people seem to realise. I take the "give them some stick" approach as well and I've never broken one!

I'm finding hard to picture how it is even POSSIBLE to break 12lb line with a 1.75 pound test curve rod! To do that you must be doing something seriously wrong.

The most important thing about lead making is to do it safely. Lead fumes are poisonous so do it outside. Molten metal "explodes" on contact with water so make sure your moulds are COMPLETELY dry. It also helps to heat them up with a blowlamp, at least for the first lead you make, as it helps stop the lead solidifying on contact. Wear safety goggles and leather gloves (all your equipment can get very hot). Remove the leads from the moulds as soon as they solidify then put them aside to cool down before you handle them. If you make them one after another fairly quickly then the mould stays hot and the lead runs better. Use a small, strong pan because you don't want molten lead slopping around in a big pan, it's heavy stuff.

We live in a world where people pay £100 for trainers with the right label on them. It's not compulsory though!

Do you seriously expect sympathy for commercial fishermen from anglers? Why should anglers have any concern for people who are happy to wreck our sport for a few quid's worth of pot bait? Local to me, a guy fishing the Dee estuary refuses to use seperators in his shrimp nets because "he wouldn't be able to catch his 50% bycatch" which consists almost entirely of baby flounders. Say no more!

Pound for pound mackerel are one of the hardest fighters but the fact is that a one pound fish can only do so much when it's dragging a dirty great parachute of a fly line around!

Something must be wrong. There have been two programmes in the space of a week that I actually found interesting! "Wreckers" about Cornish writer/beachcomber (wrecker) Nick Darke and "Coast", the new series on BBC2. Is this a record?

I would also think that dragging a fly line around would take some of the fight out of them, they are pretty small fish after all. I've had them on floatfished fish strip on 3lb line and a freshwater match rod and on that tackle they go like hell! Garfish are also good for a laugh on the same gear, but check the line for tooth damage after you unhook them.

I'm not saying that piking from a yak is a bad idea, I fancy it myself. What I am saying is that it should probably only be done by anglers who have experience at handling them. There are ways to do it which are not difficult to learn but probably best learnt on dry land.

If you are fishing for pike then I hope you know what to do with them if you get one. There are a lot of serious pike anglers who fish Windermere who won't take kindly to seeing anything they regard as poor handling! Some of the pike in Windermere are very large and can be a bit of a handful lying on an unhooking mat on the floor of a normal boat, I'm not sure how you'd manage one on a yak. It might be better to go after trout, perch or roach. Also make sure you have a licence because they are red hot about checking up on everything you do in the Lake District.

Keep out of the pub the night before and don't meet up in a Little Chef for a fry up an hour before going out!

I've bought mackerel from my local fishmongers that I've just thrown away as it's just not fit to use as bait. The point is that this was sold to me as FOOD, I never said what I wanted it for. It's a strange world we live in where it's easier to buy good conditioned bait (like the Ammo range) than it is to buy fish that's fit to eat. You used to be able to buy Young's frozen sardines which were in perfect condition, and delicious, in my local Asda, now you can't get anything that's not in bits and covered in breadcrumbs!

Well you'd think the "puppy with its tail cut off" might have given it away!

Wasn't this done in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."?

Not my idea mate, people have been doing it for years. To get a syphon started don't suck it and risk a gobfull, just push a couple of feet of the tube under the water so it fills up, then put your thumb on the end you'll put in the bucket and pull the tube you've sank back over the edge of the tank. As long as you've sealed the free end with you thumb properly, the surface of the water in the tube will come over the edge of the tank and once the level gets below tank surface level it will start flowing when you release your thumb.

What you want is a fairly narrow bore fexible tube like an air line hose to dangle into the bucket connected to a short wide bore tube (most people use an old undergravel filter lift tube) to poke about in the gravel with. This gives you quite a slow flow of water but doesn't get jammed up by gravel. How you connect the two together depends on what you have available but it needs to be quite watertight or you won't get proper suction.

Fantastic! If I were you I'd find some that live in shallower water, that looks like hard work!

Throw the book at the sods. The problems the fishing industry is suffering is down to one thing. It's not the EU, it's not the CFP, it's not us anglers, it's not seals, climate change, pollution or any of their other excuses, IT'S BECAUSE OF GREEDY TRAWLERMEN. When they got high powered engines that could drag massive trawls, fishfinders, GPS and all the other aids, they were like a bunch of greedy kids let loose in a sweet shop - and now the pigs have eaten all the sweets they are crying that it's everyone else's fault.

I've been boiling lake and loch water to make tea on fishing trips for years, sometimes it's been so brown it hardly needs a tea bag! I wouldn't drink it "raw" though (well I did once but I was so desperate then I would have drunk my own...)

When I used to pike fish from a small boat in big lakes I found a fishfinder indispensable, especially when trolling, when you need to follow a particular depth contour so that you know you baits are working at the right height off the bed. They also help you find the drop-offs and other structure that predators lurk around for static fishing. I imagine that in the sea they would have similar uses, especially in combination with the modern accurate GPS. Anyway, who cares about all that, they are probably the best toys in the world. I guarantee if you've got one you'll never turn it off!

Simon, read the stuff written by Mike Ladle about fly fishing for mullet, here's an example http://www.ukswff.co.uk/ladle.htm There's loads more if you Google his name.

If a club can't survive without litter dropping scum then maybe it would be better if it didn't exist at all.

Worst day of my life (which paradoxically contained one of the best moments) was spent in the approaches to the English Channel on a Looe shark trip in the early seventies. I was only about 14 and I think that set me up for a life as a poor sailor I was OK on the trip out but as soon as we started drifting side on to a huge Atlantic swell and the skipper hauled out his bag of decaying mackerel bits I was done for! [ 08. July 2005, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: ColinW ]

Cheers Speciman. To be honest I might buy a yak even if I can only use it in freshwater. I reckon it would be great for pike fishing on Windermere now the speed merchants are off. Getting dragged around by some of the beasts that lurk in there could be fun. It's just that I only live ten minutes from the sea and it would be a lot easier to justify the expense if I could go out for quick evening sessions. Good luck for today, weather's great up in the NW today!

Hi all. I've been reading about yaks for a while and it looks great fun. This might seem a daft question but do you get seasick in a kayak? I used to have a boat and just couldn't use it on the sea. I could go out on lochs or lakes in 3 foot waves no problem but go out on the sea like a millpond and within five minutes of anchoring I'd be nauseous. I'd like to get a yak but the consequences of being ill in a boat I have to row could be nasty. So, is there anyone out there who is a bad sailor and if so how do you find it?