gudgeon - good or bad?

[RUDD]

During the warmer months small fish are a pest.

On a freezing cold winters day they are a god send.

I have sat next to a water for 5 hours biteless only to catch a tiddler which makes my day.

I have a serious obsession with fishing and don't care what species or method I am using as long as I am fishing.

[PeterJC]

When I trot for chub in winter using maggot I love gudgeon. I am convinced that the chub come in to see what the gudgeon are finding so interesting. There is one stretch of the Kennet where I have almost never caught a chub unless I have had a number of gudgeon first!

Peter

[Stewart_Bloor]

My very first fish was a gudgeon - from the Bratch at Wombourne on the Staffs?Worcs canal in Staffordshire.

 

Just started a winter roach campaign and had a few so far when fishing with maggot while exploring waters.

 

Once I locate some roach I will switch to bread and pastes and bigger baits, so it will be au revoir gudgeon.

[colsmiff]

A gudgeon was the first fish I ever caught. That was at a commercial. Now I have moved and am fishing club waters around Northwich, the humble gudgeon was the only fish between myself and a blank on my first session on the Weaver. At this time of year, a fish is a fish and any excuse to get out and about on those crisp sunday mornings!

[Vagabond]

There's nothing frivolous about gudgeon - just note that serious, solemn, sober and slightly sad expression.

 

Unlike Ballan Wrasse, which grin at you with their National Health Service dentures, you won't see a gudgeon smile!

[chevin]

Leon Roskilly:

If I want to be transported back to that day of my first ever fishing trip (54 years ago) I spend a couple of moments gazing at those blue spots along a gudgeon's flank, glinting in the sun, and suddenly I'm 7 years old again,

Funny how incidents like that can affect you for so long into your life. My first fish, almost 60 years ago now, was a bullhead out of the North Sea and from that moment on, I wanted to catch a bigger bullhead or a bigger fish of any species. A few years after that, while I was fishing off the steps of a breakwater at Hartlepool, a dolphin rolled almost under my rod tip.(I thought they were fish then). From that moment on, my greatest ambition in fishing was to catch a fish as big as that dolphin - or even bigger. Since then I have caught a number of fish as big - and a couple many times bigger than that dolphin - but whenever I see one close to my boat, that wonderment still returns and in my mind I am sitting on those steps again. I no longer want to catch a fish bigger than anything I have caught, I don't even want to catch them near the size of my biggest fish - but dolphins still fire up that old excitement within me!

[Andy Macfarlane]

I feel like I'm missing out now. I've caught one Gudgeon in my life and that was on holiday in Yorkshire. I caught the little fellow, while fishing for Chublets in the Wharfe. I must have been 12 or thereabouts.

Chevin, I didn't know Bullheads lived in the sea as well. That is a Miller's Thumb right??

[chevin]

Andy Macfarlane:

Chevin, I didn't know Bullheads lived in the sea as well. That is a Miller's Thumb right??

They are very similar to a millers thumb and we used to call them bullheads when I was a kid. I don't know if that is their proper name. I think that they are sometimes called polywogs but I can't be sure of that either. Some people said that they stung, but I think that while they had spikes, there was no toxin

[kleinboet]

I agree with all the previous postings - where would we be without the humble Gudgeon.

 

I live in Gloucestershire and the last three years the Gudgeon were few and far between, but have started to pick up again this year. Anglers were blaming the influx of Zander, the weather and anything else they could think of, but I think I heard somewhere that there is a 'cycle' where they "disappear" for a couple of years.

IS this true??

 

[ 06. December 2004, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: kleinboet ]

[Andy Macfarlane]

chevin:

 

chevin:

Chevin, I didn't know Bullheads lived in the sea as well. That is a Miller's Thumb right??

They are very similar to a millers thumb and we used to call them bullheads when I was a kid. I don't know if that is their proper name. I think that they are sometimes called polywogs but I can't be sure of that either. Some people said that they stung, but I think that while they had spikes, there was no toxin

Ahh. Aren't they litle Scorpion fish? We used to catch them off Anstruther harbour and folk used to say they were poisonous also, even though they weren't.

Is this the chap Chevin??

 

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