Grandma

I think you're getting your otters mixed up with your beavers there Budgie. Actually, there has been some talk about reintroducing them too!

There are numbers of cases where specimen carp, barbel and pike have been dragged up the bank and had had their insides eaten by otters. Obviously it's impossible to prove otters actually killed the fish, but I suspect in most cases they did. Otters are quite capable of tackling large fish and they don't need to eat carrion unless their preferred food is in short supply. I am not vilifying otters. I believe the biomass of fish will balance out in most waters, but the balance will often be at the expense of the larger fish, so in simple terms one 5lb chub would be replaced by twenty 4oz chub. Some waters will cope better than others, but big fish in small waters would seem to be at particular risk.

I don't get angry or upset about otters, there is nothing to do but accept them. You can find pictures of half eaten 20lb pike if you do a google search. I've heard of 30lb pike and 40lb carp being taken also. I guess that such fish will become even more scarse on waters where otters are not excluded.

Quite right. It's a bit of a quandry. As an angler, I like seeing otters but I also like catching big fish. Otters obviously aren't going to wipe out fish stocks entirely, but I think the balance they end up achieving may have a dramatic effect on stocks of specimen fish. A number of 'celebrity' barbel and carp have been taken by otters, which may not be a concern, depending on your viewpoint, but it does nevertheless illustrate the point that they are very capable of decimating the stocks of bigger fish in a given water. Obviously non-anglers won't be worried whether the otters are taking 20lb pike, 2lb roach or 5lb chub, but personally speaking, if I'm targetting any specimen fish of any particular species, I'd prefer to not have to compete with otters.

Thank you from the anglers that fish Hickling. I don't suppose it occured to you that when holiday makers ask experienced Norfolk anglers where they caught their last 40, they're usually given a location some distance away, because it's politer to bend the truth rather than telling someone to mind their own business. Of course it may have come from Hickling and this could be a double bluff.

I see Mona is holding A J

I smell of wee.

I've seen some decent chub around there,I've mostly been casting lures when walking with the family. A couple of years ago I was surprised to see a heron with a tench of half a pound or so that it had caught from one of the drains in the meadow 'behind' the weirpool.

Apologies for that, I've been inadvertently poaching.

Was that before the 'tidal barrier' was put in at Cattawade, or was it fishing the saline tidal stretch below the sluice at Flatford? I'd be surprised if mullet etc would survive in the main river nowadays. There's a fair bit of free fishing around the watermeadows at Sudbury

Pike are normally pretty easy to catch if the conditions are steady, they're also well adapted to thrive in cold water conditions. If there's a sudden change in conditions, it will either encourage them to feed, typically before the event, or put them off feeding. I think what you're seeing now is the fish coming back onto regular feeding now the cold conditions have stabilised. Or it might be the full moon. Or the photoperiod.

I think you'll have a job targetting chub in the How Hill stretch and I doubt you'll see any to stalk. They're usually easier to stalk in the upper reaches of rivers, where there's more variation in depth and flow. I don't know what the upper reaches of the Ant are like in that respect. I don't fish for chub in the winter, but you see plenty during the summer months in the upper stretches of the Waveney, Yare and Bure, basically upstream of the limit of navigation.

Your question at the beginning of the poll needs rewording because the answers you offer will not allow you to interpret the responses. You can't answer the question 'are they good or bad?' with the answers yes or no. Yes they are probaby good or bad.

None of those look enough like fish for the relatively minor variations in their colours to make much difference. They bear a passing resemblance out of the water, but their movement gives the game away completely, because real fish don't need to reach a certain speed before their tails move, they don't swim in a dead straight line and they don't sink like a stone when they stop. They still catch pike on their day, but that's because they suit being fished at a certain depth and speed. Most lures fit this description and the presence or otherwise of stripes, spots or orange bellies won't make any difference most of the time.

I'd fish it with spinner baits, but I should think a bass angler might use soft plastics rigged weedless. You could fish either right in amongst that lot.