Specimen Hints and Tips
My real love in angling is Tench fishing, and it’s mainly on the big pits where all my serious tench fishing is done. I’ve been doing this since the mid-1970s, so I think it’s fair to say I’m addicted to big pit fishing, but most of the ideas and methods in this article will work on any water, of any size.
Winter is on its way and Sam details the preparation and tackle he uses to land his targeted pike on the bank.
If you’re a river predator angler, then the last few months have been pretty awful! With nothing but dirty brown floodwater filling our running waters for what has seemed like an eternity, with opportunities to do some pike fishing having been limited to say the very least. We have floods every year but I [...]
For as long as I can remember my barbel fishing has been focused around location. Finding where the fish like to be at different times throughout the season and once located keeping my methods minimalistic and simple. The less components that are used to make a rig, the less there is to go wrong. [...]
Perch are a species that are often synonymous with cold winters, yet autumn and the early winter months of September, October and November are a great time to target perch. Often they can be fairly plump at this time of the year as they prepare for the onset of winter and will often feed heavily [...]
Imagine we are now leaving the summer behind, the greens will be turning to golds, browns and oranges and the nights will be gradually getting longer. What does this mean for the nation’s barbel anglers? Well we certainly need to start thinking about what bait we are using and more importantly how it’s going to [...]
Barbel fishing throughout the winter months can be a very hit and miss affair. If you get it right and fish when conditions are great then the results can be spectacular - but if the conditions are poor (which is the case more often than not) then unless you put your hookbait on the nose [...]
Well, hopefully by the time you are reading this, the weather will have finally cooled off enough to dig out the old pike gear again and I will have put away the summer gear. Lovely though the long summer has been, I am glad to see the back of it. Not only as with my [...]
This autumn I have been bang into my barbel fishing. After gaining a ticket to a rather special stretch of a Thames Tributary, I decided to dedicate a fair amount of my time trying to track down and catch some of its big, yet nomadic residents. I have fished some hard and low stock section [...]
Where do I start with this piece, well if I am honest, I think the best place to start is by asking you to read (or hopefully re-read) Alan Stagg’s article entitled ‘Bream Dream’ last month, as this one runs alongside and follows on after Alan’s piece. Going back a few months, I too was [...]
Picture the scene: Low water levels, high light levels, barbel that have probably been hammered in the weeks leading up to my visit, a complete change of scenery, totally varied aquatic topography and a few as yet unknown technical challenges thrown in for good measure. All in all a perfect set of circumstances to charge [...]
Here’s a rig that I have been using very successfully on the quiet for several years now. It's one that I have found exceedingly effective when fishing gravel pits targeting bream, tench and carp. Tying the rig is very simple and all you need to construct it is a grain of Enterprise Tackle Pop Up [...]
When it comes to tricking wily chub there is one rig that does the business and that’s the mag-aligner. The rig was devised by two hugely successful big carp anglers who cleverly incorporated an Enterprise Tackle Mag-aligner grub slid over the eye of the hook, creating a line aligner effect which ensures that the hook [...]
Targeting Roach and Rudd lends itself to two very different methods; the float and the feeder. The float is the more traditional approach of the two and wading out in the shallow margins spraying maggots can lead to some good fun fishing. When the winds strengthen, things can become difficult on the vast open water [...]
Well, this article was originally planned to be one telling you all of our amazing exploits of non-stop hauling of twenties and thirties from pike mecca Chew, but alas after spending a few days there in November (not to mention quite a few quid in the process), we came away with just three fish landed. [...]
Well what an abysmal few months we’ve had for fishing recently, if it wasn’t biblical levels of rainfall turning the rivers from meandering streams into raging torrents bursting their banks and flooding the surrounding countryside, it was the eternal biting cold winds blowing across the land with a daily occurrence. It was in fact this [...]
There is one rig that I have found extremely successful when targeting perch on both still and running water and that’s a simple float paternoster rig. Being simple in design (as are many of my rigs) I hope you will be able to get as much pleasure from it as I have. I recommend a [...]
I favour a fairly simplistic approach when targeting barbel but by adding a few little tweaks and thought, simple rigs can help trick even the biggest and wariest of fish. All of my barbel fishing revolves around using a running lead set-up, with the idea of keeping as much of the line around the rig [...]
Tony King is an angler who needs little introduction, an established specimen angler with an enviable list of PB’s to his credit. With years of experience under his belt, he is an angler who really knows what he is talking about. Recently Tony got in touch to tell me he had been slaying the tench [...]
Well, where do I start? I suppose with my desire to break my crucian carp pb, which from last year stood at 3lb 7oz. A good fish in it’s own right, but I knew the lake in question held bigger and I was confident if I caught them at the right time, I would be [...]
