martin@tryangling

A group of my angling mates and I regularly meet for a curry and because of the different backgrounds the subjects of conversation can be pretty varied. One night the subject of sex change operations came up and someone was explaining in explicit detail what they did to a man to change him into a woman. I am not squemish but was worried about the future of the biriani I had just eaten, when one of the group asked a question that closed the topic. He asked, "At what stage in this proceedure do they lose the ability to park?"

I have just found the facility to check my previous posts and apologies again. The man I have to thank is Chris Plumb. You'll all get like this when you get to my age.

I used this line when it first came out about five years ago, I too had always been a fan of Berkley, but was let down badly by this line as a hook length. I was wondering if the amount of fish I was losing was down to my knots or if I had lost my touch. I compared notes with the late Gordon Scott my business partner at the time and found that he was having the same trouble. As I wrote in a review on my website "vanish is its name and thats exactly what it has done from my tackle box"

Apologies to Alan for misspelling his surname!

I too am a centrepin fanatic, as those of you who remember me will know. I use them for most of my fishing, often choosing to fish a swim suitable for my 'pins rather than one that holds fish. Some years ago now I asked a question on this site about a suitable low diameter floating braid to use for long trotting for grayling. I seem to remember it was Alan Rowe who put me onto 4lb Fireline (many,many thanks) and I've never looked back. I use a short length of 4lb flourocarbon between the braid and the hook length, I like to think that it doesn't cast a shadow when it passes over the fish. When trotting for barbel on the Kennet I found that the heavier breaking strains of Fireline were too stiff and I found a braid marketed by Shakespeare called Bionic Dynacord in 15lb. works very well.

I think Pete is right. As a rough guidline if the space between the tip of the nose and the edge of the eye is larger than the diameter of the eye, then its a bronze bream. Silver bream have disproportionaly large eyes.