Lewis Read Articles
After a pretty lacklustre winter, this March has already proven to be one of those magical once in a decade wonderful Marches, where the weather, water temperature and daylength come together to kick start an early flurry of carp feeding and happy carpers...
I was being treated like a VIP, rather than a slightly portly and mildly eccentric carp fishing tackle employee, I had choice of which lake. Go in the drawer on The Commons Lake that looked good for a bite, or man it up and fish ‘Mirrors’ with a chance of a monster; and with the big harvest moon due on Saturday night if ever the big one was coming out, this had to be a good window...
In this piece Lewis Read looks at the evolution of carp rigs, and how developments in terminal tackle, new ideas and angling situations have effected this.
Sometimes it’s very easy to get in a flap about nothing! Take last week for instance... The Long Suffering Wife and our (utter hero) daughter went off to sun themselves in Greece leaving me to fend for myself with my big slobbery soft arsed Milk Chocolate Labrador called Kev. So [...]
I’ve been playing away lately, taking the first exciting and teetering steps on the amazing (and slightly daunting) Burghfield, fishing for what could arguably be the last of the great historic fish, the Burghfield common. As usual I quickly got quite obsessed and started flitting around the amazing convoluted pit [...]
Thursday evening heralded the end of ‘time out’ on the 3 day 4 day off rule at Welly and as always (as a habitual carp addict) I was eager to get home and pop to the lake. Too eager it would seem, as I rushed in grabbed the gear and [...]
Hooking Arrangements Cyclic fads and the constantly changing fashions in carp rigs sometimes undermine us angler's perception of some amazingly affective ‘tried and tested’ hooking arrangements. I guess that it’s just the way we’re programmed making it absolutely natural for us super keen carpers to assume that new rigs somehow supersede the [...]
I sat there frowning as I pondered my next move and how I could possibly recover from the metaphorical check mate that angling leviathan ‘Dominator’ Dave Finn and Ed ‘the Crow’ Wade had cleverly contrived to wrestle me into. If we were wrestlers in a ring, then it would [...]
Despite having a short week after a thoroughly fantastic trip to the Carp Societies Farriers water, it reached Friday night and all I wanted to do was be down the lake – continuing my personal quest to snag The Chestnut Common or The Big Sutton [dreamy sigh]. What with [...]
Way back in August 2017 a gentleman named Damon White bid for the privilege of fishing for 48 hours on Farriers. The only drawback (for him) was that the poor man had to put up with me too, as I was part of that bidding package – poor man! [...]
The scope of rig variation constantly seems to roll out with anglers having an almost dizzying array of options and choices. As the variety of clever little riggy components slowly inflates, so does the broader acceptance of novel rig ideas that incorporate them, as technically minded carpers seek to add [...]
Why is it that winter weather windows always seem to jostle their way across the North Atlantic to arrive over the British Isles at the most in opportune times? Normally, midweek when I’m languishing here at my desk beaver’ing away at Gardner HQ, or typically on a weekend when [...]
My angling has taken a different turn of late. Whilst I have still been angling on the hallowed banks of the famous Wellington Country Park estate lake I’ve necessarily been accompanied by ‘Kev the Destroyer’, my uber lush 10 month old chocolate brained (and furred) Labrador. Let’s just say he [...]
The summer has been a dizzying mixture of the wonderfully sublime and the downright painful. Life away from the lakes has been wondrous, with a great family holiday; our first with our beloved Chocolate Labrador Kevin in tow, and was day after day of ‘bimbling’ about on Cornish beaches and [...]
It was last Thursday (29th June) and the ‘Lake of Dreams’ had re-opened at 6AM. The expected stampede of super keen old and new syndicate members never materialised and when the ‘lovely Lordy’ put something up on the group page that there was only a couple on mid-morning my mild [...]
Some of you guys will already consider moon phases as being important when it comes to arranging holiday and getting out on the bank. The debate on whether the moon phase has a direct impact on the fish we angle for has been raging for many years and both sides [...]
Let me ask you a quick question squire. What do you think of when you think about all matters related to the rig concealment? No doubt the first thing that you would think is obviously the visibility of everything from the rod tip down to the terminal tackle (not forgetting [...]
I consider myself to be very lucky being a member at Welly, as it is a VERY friendly syndicate, in which there is virtually no jealousy or sniping; it’s part of what makes angling at Welly so enjoyable. The syndicate is populated by a great bunch of rapscallions; a real mixture of larger [...]
It has been a little while since I have had the opportunity (or reason) to write for the website. Like many in the trade this is mainly because of the dual evils of the weather and show season that have inevitably impaired my time on the bank. But finally, after [...]
Shows are enjoyable graft sometimes. I was ‘hatched’ locally to Sandown where I have a lot of old friends that I rarely see. I knew I would have 2 days of hyperactive gibbering and relentless playfulness (in amongst the customer liaison of course), so it wasn’t too bad for a [...]
