Unimexsol

First thing you should make sure that you have is a rod licence. If you get caught fishing without one you could be landed with a big fine and have all your gear taken from you by baliffs. As for the rod I'm sure that other members of the board are far more qualified than me to advise you on what to get.

Interesting that you should bring that up, before I went fishing the previous evening I went into my local tackle shop. The owner knows where I fish very well and when I spoke to him about using braid as mainline and explaining the advice that I'd been given he asked to see the line that I am currently using. Fortunately I had my rod and reel set up in the car, he had a good look and advised me to save my money. He said that braid wouldn't offer any advantage over the line that I currently use, especially in the locations that I fish. He too reckoned that the previous snap was caused by line damage due to the shot. I did check the pike that I caught for any other hooks/traces but there was no sign of anything untoward so either a) it threw the hook itself or b ) there is another large pike that patrols the same area.

Just back from a successful evening's fishing. Following a dismal evening (fishing wise) last night where my sole catch was a tiny roach only just bigger than a starlight I decided to go out again this evening. Went out about 8.30 and caught a few 4 inch bleak, dace and a couple of even smaller roach. Put my pike rod up and fished about 2-4 ft out in the same spot where I'd had a 10lber last week . About 11.30 I caught a 3-4lb jack, lovely condition, hooked just in the scissors of the jaw. Quickly unhooked and returned. Out went the pike rod again, same spot. At 12.30 the float went, as soon as I struck I knew that this was going to be a good size fish. Sure enough after a brief but strong struggle my brother in law slipped the net under a fine esox. She was hooked just past the teeth and with the aid of a pair of forceps it was a simple job to unhook. The scales read 21 1/2 lb, a quick photo (which will follow as soon as my b-i-l emails it to me) and then 3-4minutes of lying in god knows what supporting her in the water. A couple of shakes of her tail and off she swam. Me, I'm stoked.

I pay full price for my license and think that it is pretty good value for money. The only thing that I'd like to see is more people checking to make sure that everyone has a license - if we could make all the people who fish actually pay then it would bring in much more money (which naively I would hope would be spent on the waterways.) If you join a gym for instance it costs about £30 per month, playing in a pub football team is about £10 per game, hiring a tennis court is about £4 per session. For the £25 or so per year for a rod license I think you get pretty good value for money. Even if it is half a weeks Income support.

Thanks for that Grandma, before I switch are there any other negatives to braid? If not I'll switch lines in the next week or so, certainly before I go fishing again. Bear in mind that most of my fishing is done between 2-20ft away, I'm not casting miles. Indeed most of the best that I've had have been taken from bites less than 6ft out. Thanks

Again, braid v mono - I read advice somewhere that I should not use braid as it was more likely to result in a tethered fish. I'm not exactly sure where I read it but I think that it was on here somewhere. What are other peoples perceptions of using braid.

Thanks for that Grandma, I almost exclusively fish in the local canal where due to the presence of regular boat traffic there are areas where the water is both deep and weed free. Due to the constant flow and the regular opening of the loch gates I would imagine the water to be quite well airated. I am aware of the arguements regarding summer piking and to try and negate this I only fish in the late evening or at night when I have been led to believe that the negative effects are minimised. Interestingly about the deadbait v livebait debate I have read that summer pike are more likely to swallow deadbaits quickly and whole leading to deephooking rather than with livebaiting where the pike has to make a take thus giving the angler a better chance of avoiding deephooking. To try and counteract any risk of deephooking I always strike as quickly as possible, even when I'm not convinced that the bait has been taken. As to the actual fight, I always try to get a pike into the bank as quickly as possible, I am quite a bully when it comes to landing them. I also unhook the pike as quickly as possible and return it to the water by holding it in the water until it has recovered enough to swim off of its own accord. Now that the answers have led to me finding the likely cause of the snap (split shot damaging the line) I have taken action to remedy this and have taken the opportunity to inspect the rest of the line and remove any that I thought may have possibly been subjected to any type of weakening or damage. Anyway, enough of me justifying my fishing, thank you all for the positive and constructive points that you have raised.

Thank you for that Brian. I am confident that the tackle that I use is strong enough for the fishing that I do. With this being the first time that I've been snapped up I wanted some constructive suggestions as to why it had happened this time and the responses that I've had so far have been both helpful and informative.

Well, I didn't get the fish that snapped me up but I went a couple of nights ago and got an absolutely beautiful 10lb pike. Really interesting take - I could see that the bait fish was getting agitated but no sign of an actual bite, then very slowly the floati went still and then sank very gradually. For a second I thought that something had got snagged and was pulling the float under - it didn't look like a bite at all. Nonetheless I struck, better to strike and miss than to risk deep hooking. Lo and behold off the line went and after a brisk fight I had the most lovely and beautiful pike in the net. TBH from the length of it I thought that it weighed more but the scales never lie -(although I'll be testing them with a bag of sugar at sometime soon!) 10lb bang on. Hooked perfectly on a single in the corner of the mouth, unhooking took seconds. Another reminder as to why I use singles rather than trebles. Perhaps I'll get the big one next time :-)

Might be worth pm'ing RussellF, I know that he fishes for zander in the Lee and thereabouts. Plenty of pike and perch too.

Budgie, snap was below float. In general I fish a 12-15" trace to swivel and mainline, then about 4-5" to the weights and float. because of the depth that I'm fishing I'm not sure that an uptrace would be feasible? Line to float was floating.

Line was no older than one season and is kept out of sunlight apart from when actually fishing - and I do most of my fishing in the late evening/nighttime. I guess that it may well have been weakened earlier when trying to free the line from a snag, or (and this is my favourite theory) it could have been weakened when I was pinching the swan shot onto the line below the float. This was approximately where the line snapped. I have since checked the line and removed a length that I think may have been under stress or strain in the last season, so as to try and prevent this from happening again. I am planning to go back to the same spot tomorrow evening to see if I can do better this time. I will take a camera and scales, so fingers crossed that the fish is hungry again.

Thanks guys, I'm picking up some boat tackle next week so I'll be looking at going some time fairly soon. Thanks to those who pm'd me too. I'll give the Happy Hooker day ago when it starts in October - although I may call it something else when I tell the missus I'm going! :-) I was surprised no-one recommended any Essex or Kent based boats, is the fishing not so good there at the moment?

Hmmm, you know that I said I wasn't sure what breaking strain my line was, I just found the spool - it was 11, but 11KILO not 11lbs bs. That's 25lb breaking strain. All I can think is that there must have been something wrong where it snapped - it must have got damaged and weakend somehow.

Although I don't coarse fish the resevoirs myself, I live very near by and often speak to people who do fish there. It's mainly carp, bream, and pike that people fish for there. There are some big ones there too. However if you are coming to this part of the world then I'd suggest that you give the Lee Navigation a try.

I'd be looking for just a single seat on a boat as I don't know enough friends that would come with me, and I couldn't afford to charter a boat by myself. Yes I do drive, and would be happy to drive for about an hour/hour and a half to get to the boat. I'm not too fussed about wreck fishing, at least not at the moment, perhaps when I've a bit more experience I'd give it a go.

I quite fancy doing a bit of sea fishing, I'm normally a coarse fisherman but have done some boat fishing when I was younger. I live in London, where would be a decent and fairly cheap place to go? How much am I likely to pay? Ta

It all depends on what he wants it for. I have a cheap 6ft telescopic that I keep in the back of my car and use for general float fishing. It's easy, always made up and whilst I wouldn't like to try and play anything above 10lbs on it I still find that it gets used more than all of my "proper" rods. A decent telescopic makes an excellent travelling rod. Admittedly I doubt that it'd be any good as a ledger rod, but maybe that's because I've never tried ledgering with it.

This sounds like a daft question but how would you use it? It comes with 60m of cable, is there some way of casting it this far as I doubt that most people would be able to throw it that far? Even if you could, how would you make sure that it is facing the way that you want to see? And how far would you be able to see with the camera anyway? I guess that I can perhaps see an advantage if you have a boat and wanted to explore "fishy" looking holes but apart from that I don't see it being much use. Or am I just cynical about new fishing gadgets?

Went fishing along the Lee Navigational Canal this evening. Saw a lovely shoal of bream and watched a couple of kids fail to catch them, poor lads were trying everything but the bream were just sitting below the surface and ignoring everything these lads tried. Pulled out a couple of little roach and put in a pike rod. Had it out about 4 ft from the side and watched a very nice perch terrorise the bait but without taking it - I wonder if it saw the wire trace and decided not to take it or whather I spooked it when I lifted the rod in anticipation? 10 minutes later I pulled out a 4lbish jack pike - something had had a proper go at the jack before though as there was a large bite mark just by it's rear fin. Anyway, a bit later when it had got dark I cast out my pike rod, and not being happy with where it had landed I decided to recast. As I started to pull it in I noticed that it was retrieving in a very strange way, there was no drag or pull on the line but something seemed odd. I thought that perhaps a crayfish had grabbed the bait and was causing this...and then it went! It was as the float disappeared at 100mph and my rod bent in two that I realised that I'd got a big pike on the end. I had no choice but to give it some line and it dived straight for a large weed bed. I managed to steer it away from this weed bed and then the pike surfaced, it's always difficult to tell the size of a fish whilst it's still in the water but there was no mistaking that this was a good sized pike. My biggest so far is 18lb and this was clearly a fair bit bigger. I got it under control and started to bring it in and it dived for another weed bed, this time I wasn't able to stop it and now I was not only trying to bring in the pike but also about a ton of weed too! My tackle is always heavy, I was using wire trace, a size 4 sea hook and I think that this reel has 13lb bs line, it might be heavier, possibly 18lb. I got it to the side, weed and fish together and as my brother in law went to net the pike suddenly there was nothing there apart from a ton of weed. When I managed to disentangle the weed I saw that the pike had snapped my line. It was not at the join of the trace but further up nearer to the float. I guess that it's possible that something in the weed was sharp enough to have cut through the line, although I didn't see anything, or perhaps the pike managed to bite through the line at some point during the netting process. Either way I lost a pike that I am sure would have easily smashed my previous best. I feel really bad that this beauty is now swimming about with a wire trace in it's mouth but I'm hoping that is will be able to unhook itself, as I was using a single rather than a treble perhaps this is more likely? This is the first time I've been smashed up using this line/trace/hook set-up and even when I caught my 18lber I didn't have a problem landing it, is it likely that the added weight of all the weed caused it to snap or could there have been another reason, I thought that 13lbs bs line would be heavy enough? I guess that there is always a possibility that the line may have been inperceptibly damaged where it snapped? Anyway, one thing is for sure, I'll be going back there again to see if I can catch it! I'm sure that this one that got away was well passed the 20lb mark.

The Roding is a lovely little river to fish. I spent most of my formative fishing years on its bank between Woodford and Loughton, especially by the twin lakes down in Buckhurst Hill. I hadn't realised that any stretches were club only.

Fishing the Lee with my sister and B-i-L I managed to catch the stuff that cartoons have been making fun of for years. It was a used workmans boot - it looked as if it was the original inspiration for all the gift card cartoons. I've a photo of me with it somewhere.

Could you have offered to cast it for him? Perhaps you could have said that you saw a big carp and would cast it where you saw it! I've had trouble in the past with young kids (8-13) throwing stones either at me or in the river where I've been fishing. In general they do it because they don't think that they will be challenged. I find that legging it after them a little way usually works (although this isn't practical if you are fishing by yourself). I've held one boys entire kit over a bridge as he dropped it as he ran. It was amazing how apologetic he suddenly was and how it wasn't him that was throwing the stones but his friends! On another occasion a kids father turned up as I was telling his son off - he asked what was going on and I told him that his son had been throwing stones at me - the next thing I know the father has slapped his son right across his head knocking him flying. The father apologised to me and then made his kid apologise to me through his sobs. I very much doubt that kid will throw stones again just in case his dad turns up at the wrong time again! We should always challenge anti-social behaviour, usually kids are so amazed that they've been challenged that they'll stop.

I fish the Navigational Canal quite a bit although not as far up as Broxbourne, Enfield is about the furthest out of London that I get. In the stretches that I fish there are lots of crayfish at the moment but it's not so bad that it's impossible to fish bottom. I'd expect to catch one or two per 6 hour session if you are fishing bottom. I hope this helps.

As long as there are not any specific local rules prohibiting it then yes, of course it's fine to pre-bait before the 16th.