Fishing has been a part of my life from an early age. My Dad introduced me to angling and I quickly developed a passion for not only being out on the water fishing, but being outdoors. I have a fascination for catching different species of fish on lures or flies, and I’m as happy exploring the tiniest of streams as I am being out on the open ocean. I’ve been very fortunate to have travelled to some spectacular destinations, both here in the UK and abroad, trying to catch as many species as possible. So far, I’ve caught 230 species.
I work for Farlows fishing, shooting and country clothing store in London, and I’m a Consultant for Fox Rage and Salmo lures. I’m also an Ambassador for the Angling Trust and have fished for England in two disciplines - the England Youth Fly Fishing Team and the Team England Lure Squad.
Through fishing I’ve met some great people and seen some amazing wildlife and scenery, and I’d like to share some of my experiences through my blog...
This past month has been, without a doubt, one of the toughest my Dad and I have experienced lure fishing on local venues. Apart from two full days fishing, the rest of our trips have been short afternoons, concentrating our efforts on trying to catch big winter stripeys.
Most of the rivers around our way have only recently started to look really good, after rain and snowmelt from January filled them with cold, muddy water. This, along with salt mixing with the ice and snowmelt, causes fish to become very lethargic. Lakes that were frozen over have now thawed and are very cold too, and the testing conditions have meant that we've had to experiment and try many different lure fishing tactics, in order to find out where the fish are, what's working best, and help us get some fish in the net!
One of the most successful techniques has been searching with lures that create a lot of movement and vibration, that will make the fish react and trigger them in to taking the lure, then using finesse tactics in the areas we locate Perch. A small 1/4oz (7g) chatterbait with a Berkley Pit Boss trailer has worked well as a search bait, and my Dad has caught some good stripeys on these recently. A good colour chatterbait that has worked well has been a reddy brown, which looks very much like a small Signal Crayfish.
On a session last weekend along the River Lea, my Dad was crawling and bumping a chatterbait along the bottom before hooking in to a snag. He tried to shake it off for quite a while, before deciding to go for a break, but luckily he didn't lose it, and a split second after it had pulled out of the snag he had a good whack, which turned out to be a Perch of 3lb 5oz!
The other tactic we've been using to search for fish has been a shakey head. A shakey head is a type of jighead that enables you to rig a soft plastic Texas style. They come in lots of different styles, but they're purposely designed for fishing straight-tail soft plastic worms and 'shaking' or 'wiggling' them along the bottom. However, I've found they also work equally well with all kinds of soft baits, especially shads.
Berkley Ripple Shads, Gotam Shads and Sébile A.T Minnows have been some of our most successful recently, and on one afternoon trip, Dad caught two cracking 3lber's in two casts - the first on a Ripple Shad, and the second on an A.T Minnow.
I also caught a lovely Brown Trout on a twin tail rigged on an Owner Ultrahead Finesse Ball head - one of my favourite shakey heads.
Another successful method that has worked really well this past month has been drop-shotting, and one of the top soft baits has been a Berkley Twitchtail Minnow. I first came across the twitchtail in the US a couple of years ago, and although it was designed intentionally for Bass, it works equally well for big Perch, as the tiniest of movements in the rod tip brings it to life. A couple of weeks ago, Dad and I were fishing a local stretch of river and a good Perch followed my jigged shad in, after casting to a slack area behind an overhanging bush - it even nosed the shad lying on the bottom, but refused to take it and turned away. Instead of re-casting my shad, I switched tactics and presented a drop-shot rig. Barely moving the twitchtail, after 2-3 minutes of holding the bait in the same position, I had a savage take and caught the Perch that refused my first offering! It was one of five over 2lb, plus a micro jack, caught in a couple of hours.
Over the past month, drop-shotting has helped me fool Perch of 3lb 4oz, 3lb 1oz and numerous stripeys over 2lb. Although some of the bites I've had have been aggressive, most of the takes have been quite subtle, often thinking you've hooked a snag at first, but then realising there's a fish on the end!
I've also caught some nice Pike drop-shotting - you can just about make out the twitchtail hanging out of this Pike's mouth!
Drop-shotting has also been very successful on a local gravel pit targeting Perch, but we've had to really scale down to get bites, using size 14 sedge hooks with chopped pieces of Berkley Gulp! Sandworm or Gulp! Earthworm. On one trip, we caught quite a few small Perch, but the biggest surprise of the day was when Dad caught a lovely Roach of around 1lb!
Last month I was asked to give two talks - one to the Pike Anglers Club of Great Britain's Suffolk Region near Ipswich, and the other for Get Hooked on Fishing at GHoF Ealing. I'd just like to say a big thank you to all the people who came along and gave their support, and to Jason Skilton from the PAC and my colleagues James Thornhill and Charlie Moore from GHoF Ealing for inviting me along!
Four weeks today will be March 14th and the last day of the river season. The last few weeks of the season always seem to fly by, so I just hope I can make the most of it!
It's always exciting planning a holiday, and one of the most important factors for me and my Dad is choosing a destination where we have the chance of catching as many different species as possible, preferably on lures and flies. Prior to our holiday, we normally spend some time researching the internet and looking at Google Earth at rivers, lakes and shorelines in different countries. My Mum, Dad, Nan and I decided Mauritius was somewhere we'd all love to go, as not only would it be a great place for my Mum and Nan to chill out in the sun, but from what we'd researched, it looked the ideal destination to bump up our species list.
Our good friend, Keith Arthur, had recommended a good guiding company, JP Henry Charters, who he'd fished with before in Marlin tournaments, and although we weren't so interested in billfish, we booked two half days and a full day fishing with them, jigging over reefs and deep water drop-offs for various species, in the hope of Dogtooth Tuna, Emperors and many others.
On arrival, our hotel looked great, but better still, there were plenty of interesting looking spots right on the shorefront, including jetties, rocks, walls and some small islands that we could wade to. That's not forgetting the beach! All of these places looked ideal for catching new species.
On our first afternoon Light Rock Fishing, using the new Shakespeare Agility 7' LRF rod, coupled with the Abu Revo Premier 10 reel, we caught 9 new species - Lizardfish, One Spot Snapper, Blackspot Sergeant, Mauritian Gregory, Yellowtail Goatfish and Broadstriped Cardinalfish, to name a few, on chopped pieces of Berkley Gulp! Sandworms, and Powerbait Shrug Minnows, rigged on tiny Berkley Rock Heads.
Occasionally, a group of four or five Giant Trevally would charge the shoreline in front of the hotel, chasing shoals of baitfish, but this would only last for moments at a time. We managed to catch a couple on Sébile Magic Swimmers and Sébile Stick Shadds fished very fast and erratically, which was very exciting!
My Dad also hooked a GT whilst flyfishing for smaller species on his 8wt, and what a fight! It ripped off plenty of backing and took him all over the place, including around some sharp volcanic rocks. Using only 8lb fluorocarbon, he did really well to land it and got a standing ovation from a crowd from the hotel that had gathered behind us!
A couple of days later, Dad and I were picked up from our hotel at 5am for our first day of guided fishing with JP Henry Charters. Pascal Henry, whose family has been running the business for three generations, also runs the famous La Pirogue Fishing Club in Black River. Decorated with historic photos of huge fish and tournaments, IGFA world records as well as replicas of enormous Sailfish and Marlin, it's a great place to chill out and have a beer after a day's fishing!
Using many of the soft baits we use to target Pike, Perch and Zander (Berkley Ripple Shads, Berkley Power Tubes, Flex Rib Shads, Havoc Grass Pigs, Gotam Shads and Sébile A.T Minnows) we had a great day fishing inshore over reefs in around 30ft-50ft of water.
We caught some colourful species such as Lyretail Grouper, Sky Emperor, Blackspot Grouper, Blacktip Grouper, Honeycomb Grouper, Cigar Wrasse, Wedge-tail Triggerfish and a few others - one of which I've yet to find the name of! We must have caught at least 30 fish that day, which was great fun on light jigging gear.
One of the main reasons we'd chosen to holiday in Mauritius was because Dad and I wanted to try and catch and Dogtooth Tuna, but for our best chance of catching these and other larger species, we had to head further out in to the ocean and fish over drop-offs in around 200ft of water. Two days later, we were back at Black River aboard a different boat of the JP Henry fleet, called the Moana 2 - a 42ft Bertram, which is the most luxurious boat we've ever fished from, with an air conditioned cabin, toilet, beds and even a shower!
As it took about 2 hours to reach the drop-offs from Black River, our guide Babooram and his son recommended that we troll out to the areas that we were going to be jigging, and within 20 minutes of starting, we had a blistering run on one of the rods and I found myself in the fighting chair, playing one of the fastest fish in the ocean - a Wahoo! I was well chuffed as it was my first ever Wahoo, and a nice one too at around 50lbs!
Not long afterwards we arrived at the drop-offs. We both started with 4.5" Berkley Flex Rib Shads in Purple Chartreuse and Natural on 35g jigheads (1 1/4oz) and dropped down. Almost instantly after hitting the bottom, Dad was hooked up and battling what looked like a decent fish. It turned out to be a beautiful Spangled Emperor.
On our next drop down I also hooked in to a fish. As I looked below the boat, I could see I was playing a nice Grouper. At first, it looked dark grey, but as it got closer to the boat it began to change colour, to a glowing red/yellow/orange - it looked like it had been Tango'd! It was a Lyretail Grouper, and what a stunning looking fish!
I decided to change soft bait to a 6" Berkley Hollow Belly in Orange, and after dropping down, hitting the bottom and a couple of jigs, I had a savage take. Even though I had the clutch on my Penn Spinfisher set very tight, it tore off and I wondered when it was going to stop!
After a few minutes of more runs and lots of head shaking, I finally managed to pump it up from the depths. It was an amazing looking fish - quite different to anything else I've ever caught before, nicknamed a 'Captain Fish' by the locals, but as I've recently found out, the real name is a Longnose Emperor.
We had a great morning's fishing and caught a few more exotic species including a Golden Hind and Mackerel Tuna, or KawaKawa, before we had to head back in. Luckily, we had the following morning booked too for some offshore jigging, and this time we decided to try speed jigging as well as jigging soft baits. Our first fish of the day, which my Dad caught, was one of the species we'd been hoping to catch - a Dogtooth Tuna. It wasn't a big one by Dogtooth standards, but it still gave my Dad a great fight on the speed jigging outfit he was using.
Not long after, Dad also caught a colourful Lyretail Grouper, again speed jigging.
Unfortunately, on the second half day, we lost the odd fish. However, on the last drop down, Dad hooked in to a hard-hitting fish, which turned out to be a Giant Trevally, to round off what had been a brilliant few days fishing.
I managed to film a few of the fish we caught jigging offshore, including the Wahoo, Longnose Emperor and GT on my GoPro camera and put together a video - here's the link:
We thought that was going to be the last of our offshore fishing, but on the plane we'd met a fellow fisherman called Jon Walker, who happened to be staying at the same hotel as us. When we got back from our morning's fishing, he kindly asked us if we'd be interested in joining him on a trip the very next day with a charter boat not far from our hotel, on the hunt for a Marlin. An offer like that is very hard to turn down, so we were up again very early, ready for another trip!
After a few hours trolling with no sign of a Marlin, we decided to change over to crankbaits and target Wahoo and Tuna. Unfortunately, I lost a Wahoo, but both Jon and Dad caught some fantastic Yellowfin Tuna. A big thank you to Jon for inviting us to fish with him - it was a great day!
Although we ended up fishing most days for at least a couple of hours, we did get round to some sightseeing. Strangely though, whenever we go sightseeing we always seem to end up near water, and our taxi driver, Rajiv, decided to take us to Grand Bassin, a Hindu Temple beside a beautiful lake. He'd mentioned that if we took along some bread, we would see some large Eels - they weren't large, they were HUGE! They were the biggest freshwater Eels we've ever seen - they must have weighed between 20-30lb, maybe bigger. They looked more like Congers! What surprised us more was they were gulping bread off the surface just like Carp, which was amazing to watch. Unfortunately though, you can't fish Grand Bassin as the lake is sacred!
As well as visiting a volcano and a tea plantation, we ended up at another Hindu Temple called Sagar Shiv Mandir, situated on the estuary of a river. Just by chance, we happened to have the Shakespeare LRF rod and an Abu Rocksweeper 7' in the boot of the car. After looking around the temple, out came the rods!
We couldn't believe it - almost straight away we were catching new species we hadn't seen around the hotel. I even talked my Nan in to having a go and she caught a Ring-tail Cardinal. The Hindu Temple was probably one of the most unusual places I've ever fished, but it was excellent fishing!
On our penultimate day we asked our taxi driver, Rajiv, who had been very helpful, if he could take us back to the temple, but also try a couple of other places on the way. We wanted to try and catch some freshwater fish, so he took us to an allotment, fishing in some drains/ditches that were connected to a river, to provide the allotment with fresh water.
Although we saw some big Tilapia, they were very spooky and weren't interested in our tiny soft baits, but we did manage to catch lots of Glassies, and Dad also landed a Widehead Sleeper on a curtail.
After fishing in the allotment for an hour or two, we followed the river downstream to the estuary where the Hindu temple was situated. Jigging Berkley Shrug Minnows, Gulp! Sandworms and Berkley Johnson Beetle Shads and Tubes, some of the new species we caught included Blacktail Snapper, Thumbprint Emperor, Creole Damsel, Dusky Spinefoot, Ring-tailed Cardinal and my Dad even caught a small GT on a Berkley Beetle Critter!
After fishing one more spot and catching five more new species - Doublebar Goatfish, Indian Ocean Pinstriped Wrasse, Blue Chub, Grey Demoiselle and another I'm yet to find the name of, we were back at the hotel by 2pm, adding another 10 species to our lists that day! Dad and I also filmed 14 different species we caught Light Rock Fishing and put together a 3 and a half minute video:
We had a fantastic time in Mauritius - it's a beautiful country with very friendly people, and a place I'd love to back to again sometime. I think we only scraped the surface as far as species are concerned, but we still managed to catch 43 in total - 28 new ones for me and 35 new ones for my Dad.
