Unimexsol

River Roding near Buckhurst Hill station, small river, quite pretty along that stretch, some nice fish. You could also use Redbridge Station although the river is less aesthetically pleasing along that stretch it is a bit wider and can hold some decent roach and chub. River Lee/Lee Navigational Canal near Tottenham Hale, all species including Carp and Pike, although not an overly pretty place to fish. Water is no more than 10-15 minutes walk (if laden with tackle) in any of the above.

The canal where I sometimes fish is crawling with rats, I don't mind so much if I'm fishing on the "concrete" side as I know that they are just moving around in the bushes behind me. If I fish on the "field" side though where there is plenty of bushes all around it does sometimes sound as if they are co-ordinating some sort of ambush. Perhaps reading James Herberts Rats trilogy when I was young has made me a bit more nervous than I should be. At another spot on the same canal I have also seen a hanging man. He'd hung himself off an old riverside crane. It was only in the daylight the next day that I realised that his face was actually just bolts on the crane hook and that his ghostly shroud was a sheet of plastic that the wind had tangled around the hook. Even now if I look up at it in the right light it looks like a hanging man.

I've still got one in my tackle bag. Can't remember ever actually using it. What was supposed to be the advantage in it compared to an ordinary feeder? I can't remember, must have been convincing though if I put my hand in my pocket for one.

Fair point Vagabond regarding braided line, bite alarms and boilies being around BUT how widespread was their use? Were they things that you expected every angler to have even heard of let alone have? I doubt it back then whereas now I would be surprised if any angler didn't have/hadn't used at least one of those three.

Whilst not especially affecting my personal fishing I think the following have changed fishing significantly over the last 30 years: Introduction of boilies. The huge increase in single species specilisation, especially Carp fishing. Bite alarms Single rod licence Abolition of Close season on still waters and canals.

As I understand it you can also get some half decent perch and plenty of jack pike too from there.

Usually just coffee as tea tastes so awful from a flask. Try to make it hot, sweet and milky. For cold drinks I always have a bottle of coke with me too. A few years ago I went fishing with David Beckham, I offered him a bit of my coffee from my flask and he said "What's that?" "It's a Thermos flask," I said. "What's it do?" He asked, he'd obviously never seen one before. "Well, it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, it's really useful when you are out fishing." I replied. A couple of years later we went fishing together again and I noticed that he'd been out and bought himself a Thermos of his own. "What have you brought in your Thermos, David?" I asked. "Coffee and a choc ice." He replied. (Taxi!)

I concur, Roach/Bream looks most likely.

Loving the scenic landscaping! Ridiculous. Can't believe they've the cheek to ask a tenner a day.

It'd be difficult to fly fish the navigational canal as the towpath is so busy with walkers, cyclists etc that you would have to be very careful. Also there are bushes, trees, fences etc next to the towpath. There would be some spots where you might be able to use a fly but in my opinion you'd be far better with light spinning gear. One (possibly two) of the trout lakes in the resevoir is fly only.

I wouldn't have thought it was that many times that a pike will strike and miss. Certainly not 20:1. Could it have been several predators? Perhaps small perch causing the small ones to jump and maybe a pike or two for the bigger ones? Also it's been discussed on here that sometimes pike may work in cooperation with each other to shepherd a shoal of fish into an area where the pike can pick them off more easily? Alternatively the fish may have just been jumping to have a look to see if the angler was still there before deciding to feed - I'm sure that they do that just to wind us all up.

Any idea on how he caught them? How he challenged them? And how he got the EA involved? TBH I don't know how I go about anything if I saw a couple of big blokes starting to set up the same thing. I guess that I'd call the police (as surrupticioulsy as possible).

City of London Corp/Epping Forest have a leaflet about all the fishable lakes. There are some restrictions on bait and general fishing that I'm aware of (eg no livebaiting, no night fishing) but you'd need to have a look at the leaflet to be sure. Picked mine up at the High Beech visitors centre. For more specific info try asking other anglers there or even one of the local tackle shops.

I am of the opinion that I would never eat something that I could not kill myself. I guess this is a sort of conflicting way to approach this arguement but it is something that I truly believe in. If I didn't think that I could slaughter a cow or a pig then there is no way that I could buy it in a supermarket. Perversely I have had friends who have sat down to eat and then when I've told them that the fish being served was caught by myself or my father would decline to do more than pick at it. If I'd not said that the fish had been caught or I'd said that it'd been bought from Sainsbury's then I know that they would have gladly eaten the lot. As long as you intend to eat the fish, and your fishery can cope with losing what they have sanctioned then I see no harm in it. Just because you can take fish to eat though doesn't mean that every fish you catch should be killed. Years ago I was on a trout fishery where (I believe) the rule was that if you banked it you had to kill it. I saw an angler net a fabulous trout, unhook it whilst in the net and then turn his net upside down to let the fish go. When I asked my father why he'd let it go my dad said, that it was too good a fish to die so by not actually laying the fish on the ground the angler had got away with the rule. Still perplexed I asked why he'd let it go, I hadn't considered that over a certain size some fish don't taste as good, or that perhaps the fisherman lived by himself and would never have eaten this fish on his own, or that once a fish gets to a certain size the mere pleasure of catching it weighs far, far more than the eating.

Mainly down to time/money availability. Used to make some of my own floats when I was a kid but now that floats are comparitively cheaper and my time comparitively more scarce I find that it makes more sense for me to buy them. I make my own snap tackle though as I've had some less than satisfactory experiences with ready made pike rigs. My father made many of the rods that I currently use but I never learnt how to turn a set of blanks into a complete rod. Not sure that with tackle as cheap as it is that I would ever invest the time to, even if I had the skills.