Several species to end a super season!

Thank goodness Sunday was the first day of Spring! We've had a strange winter, with temperatures up and down like a yo-yo, which I think has affected the fishing and our run-in to the end of the river season. The last six weeks of the season were the hardest my Dad and I have ever experienced targeting predators on rivers - thankfully we've caught a few nice fish this past month, but we were certainly made to work for them!

At the end of February, I had a call from James Robbins, Shakespeare's Brand Manager, asking if I'd like to fish the River Wye for a shoot advertising some new Shakespeare products coming out next year. With our local rivers fishing so hard, I jumped at the opportunity and a couple of days later I was gearing up for my first day targeting Pike and Perch on the Wye. The last time I'd fished the Wye was when I went Salmon fishing when I was 10 - my Dad and I were embarking on 'A Reel Challenge' - trying to catch as many species as we could over the course of 28 days, raising money for the charity, Children with Cancer UK. Unfortunately, we didn't catch a Salmon then, but I did catch a Flounder on a spinner! Hopefully, this time, we could catch our target species - Pike and Perch!

Unfortunately, overnight rain had caused the river to rise by about 3ft and turn to the colour of chocolate, but we fished hard in the slack marginal eddies and after an hour or so, something whacked my Powerbait Slim Shad right at my feet, and shortly after we had my first River Wye Pike in the net, not far off double figures!

After another hour or so without any bites, James suggested we move upstream to Hereford, where hopefully the river would be clearer. Dad and I were amazed by the place - it's incredible how so many big fish of so many species get caught from one stretch! There were silverfish topping everywhere and sure enough, it was full of Perch too, which were suicidal for drop-shotted Floating Mice Tails and Twitchtail Minnows! It was a complete contrast to how our local rivers had been fishing for Perch!

James suggested we have another move right at the end of the day to another stretch downstream of Hereford for another attempt at a big River Wye Pike. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to cover the stretch, but Dad managed to bank his first Wye Pike, as well as a greedy Trout that took his chatterbait!

Dad and I really enjoyed fishing the Wye, and we're both already looking forward to hopefully spending some time fishing it next season.

It was then back to our local rivers for the last fortnight of the season, which, as I've already mentioned, were fishing really hard. We tried a number of different lure fishing tactics, but jigged or Texas rigged soft baits seemed to catch most of our fish. One particular soft bait saved us from a few blanks and has also caught most of our biggest Perch this year so far. The Berkley Havoc Sick Fish Jr., designed by Skeet Reese, has been brought over to the UK from the US for 2016, and we've been very impressed by both its unique action and fish-catching ability. The Havoc Pit Boss Jr. has also been very effective for Pike, Perch and Chub.

Not long after giving the Sick Fish Jr. a swim for the first time, we banked a few fish with it, including a 3lb 9oz Perch for my Dad.

However, when we returned home from fishing after my Dad had caught his 3lb 9oz stripey, he unfortunately came down with the flu. A couple of days later, conditions looked good for a big Perch so I said to him that I was going fishing for the last couple of hours before dark. He said he still wasn't feeling too good and he wouldn't fish, but instead he'd have a wander along the river to get some fresh air and then sit in the car. About half an hour before dark he turned up and asked me how I was getting on. I told him I'd only caught a small jack and lost one too. He then asked if he could have a cast with my new Abu Garcia Villain rod and Revo STX 20 reel to see how it felt with a 10g jighead and the Sick Fish Jr., so I gave it to him. What a mistake that was! On his one and only cast, he hooked and landed a fantastic looking Perch weighing 3lb 13oz. I couldn't believe it! He even had the nerve to ask to borrow my cap for a photo, before wandering back to the car!

A couple of days later, Dad started to get a bit better and he manage to drum up enough energy to fish for a few hours with me. This time we fished another stretch of river, and out of the six fish we banked, he caught the only Perch, and amazingly, it was another, different Perch weighing 3lb 13oz, this time on a smelt coloured Ripple Shad!

We all have bad patches and I certainly seemed to be on one - thankfully though, I did manage to catch a few nice fish before the season ended.

During the last week of the season, we did pick up a couple of nice Chub too on the Havoc Pit Boss Jr.

As always, the last weekend of the season came up really quickly, and we fished hard, covering around 10 miles of bankside along our local rivers on the last couple of days. I managed to bank a nice Chub, which took a Texas rigged twintail, and we also caught a good number of Pike and Perch.

Our biggest fish of the weekend came on the last day, but it wasn't any of the species I've listed above. About 18 months ago I caught a Carp on a jigged Rocket Craw, and on the last day of the season this year, Dad managed to catch the same fish on a Smelt coloured Ripple Shad, about three quarters of a mile downstream from where I caught it! It weighed 18lb 1oz and was a lovely looking fish!

March is normally a very busy month for Get Hooked on Fishing - not only do we have the first Family Fishing days of the year coming up in the next few days (the first is taking place at Rib Valley this Saturday), but it's also a time when there are quite a few shows, such as The Big One, where the charity hold fishing-related activities at the 'Get Hooked on Fishing Funfair'. These include casting games, a fish fighting machine, tombola, and also the lure pool, where I'm normally based, showing people a variety of lure fishing techniques. I've been to the Glasgow Angling Centre Spring Open Weekend and The Big One recently and both have been very busy - it's fantastic to see so many people having a go! We're very lucky to have a great group of volunteers that, without their help, it would be very difficult to run these events, so a massive thank you to them!

Whilst I was in Glasgow it was my Dad's birthday. Normally we fish together but unfortunately, it wasn't possible this time, but he did manage to get out for a few hours and catch a few nice 2lb+ Perch.

A couple of weeks ago we also had our first group session at our project at the Walthamstow Academy. I was a bit concerned what the weather would be like, but we were very lucky as it turned out to be one of the warmest days of the year so far. Although the fishing wasn't easy, and the smaller silverfish weren't showing, there were some very nice fish caught - the first fish of the day was the biggest Bream I've seen caught from the academy so far, and the sixth formers from Tottenham UTC also caught quite a few nice Tench, as well as a pretty looking Mirror Carp, to round off a very enjoyable day!

I've looked at the weather forecast and, unfortunately, it looks like we may not be so lucky with the weather for this weekend's Family Fishing day at Rib Valley, but I'm sure there will be a few nice fish caught!

Targeting Grafham's big winter Zander with lures

Over the course of a month, my Dad and I normally fish a number of different venues. However, this January, with the exception of a couple of afternoon trips along my local rivers, all of our fishing was based afloat on Grafham. January is the last month Anglian Water allow predator anglers the chance to fish their reservoirs before a closed season that, unless you're fishing for Trout (which you can fish for from mid March), lasts until mid May, when Grafham re-opens for flyfishing only for Pike, Perch and Zander. It's not until September that you can start to use lures again to target the monsters that lurk within the 1500 acre venue, so our trips to Grafham this January were spent targeting a big Zander.

We battled it out through a real mixture of weather conditions on there last month - from cold, crisp, calm mornings where the temperatures dropped as low as -9°C and the guides on our rods were freezing up, through gusty conditions with sleet and snow showers, to much warmer conditions with temperatures you'd expect to find in March or April! Despite the ever-changing weather, the anticipation of hooking in to something special is what kept us going back!

Our first trip of the year was more to get a feel for how Grafham was fishing, as it was the first time we'd fished the reservoir since October, but it only took an hour or so for Dad to hook in to his first fish of the year - a Zander of around 9lb, which took a Sébile A.T Minnow.

Shortly after, in the same area we found a shoal of Perch and backed up Dad's Zander with around 8 fish over the 2lb mark to just under 3lb, plus a nice Brownie, although Dad's first fish of the day was our only Zander that day.

Over the next couple of trips we found most of the fish in deeper water, rather than the shallower water we'd caught our fish from on our first outing of 2016. We caught lots of Perch up to just under 2lb and a few nice Zander on a variety of the new Berkley soft baits for 2016, including the 3.5" Pro Shads, Pro Grubs, Havoc Subwoofers and a favourite of mine, the Havoc Rocket Craw, rigged on jigheads as heavy as 40g (about 1.5oz).

The Pro Shads are a brand new shad that have only just been released in the US as well as the UK, and the Havoc range, designed by the likes of Skeet Reese, Mike Iaconelli, Scott Suggs and Brandon Palaniuk, have also been brought over to the UK from the US this year.

Getting back to the Zander, we found that the bigger fish were much more elusive and seemed to have short feeding spells, so if you did pick up a nice Zander, there was a good chance of catching another one or two shortly after. That was definitely the case when Dad caught his biggest zed of the year so far, weighing 11lb 3oz - after catching that fish he caught 3 more nice fish within the space of half an hour!

Something we have found is that, especially in the winter months, you have to be extremely careful when bringing Perch and Zander up from deep water. When you hook in to a fish, if you bring them up quickly the swim bladder can sometimes gas up, not being able to tolerate such a sudden, dramatic change in depth. I think the reason it's more likely to happen during the winter months is because the fish have become acclimatised to being near the bottom most of the time. It can be hard to judge how quickly to bring them up, as obviously you don't want the line to go slack, resulting in a lost fish that could be that catch of a lifetime (which happened to my Dad on one trip a few weeks ago), but it's best to bring the fish up as slowly as possible without letting the line go slack, and we've found it definitely reduces the chance of this problem occurring.

On our last trip of the season it was great to end on a high with a nice double weighing 10lb 12oz, along with two other nice zeds.

Since Grafham has closed it's doors to anglers, we've switched to targeting Perch on our local rivers. I remember writing in my blog post for January and February last year that the fishing was about as tough as we've ever experienced it to be, but somehow this year seems even harder! Although we've had quite a bit of action from small jack Pike, tracking down a 3lb+ Perch has been hard recently, but Dad did manage to tempt this 3lb 7oz, the only Perch of the day, in to taking his Ripple Shad a few days ago, on an afternoon trip.

A couple of days after he caught the 3lb 7oz, he had a better day numbers wise, catching a few 2lb'ers to 2lb 14oz.

With only a month to go until the river season ends, I'm really hoping the Perch will switch on a lot more than they have been, and fingers crossed we don't have too much in the way of rain that colours up our rivers, making them unfishable!

Lure Fishing Gravel Pits for Pike

Gravel pits, especially those that are very large and crystal clear, are exciting places to explore with a lure rod when targeting Pike. They can be challenging, casting and retrieving big baits for hours on end and walking many miles in the process, but the anticipation of a bite or a follow from a big Pike is well worth the effort! Frustratingly though, they can be very wary in such clear water and will often turn away at the last minute, but there are times when they just can't help themselves - and to watch their gills flare out, and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth engulf your lure is an awesome experience!

I'm quite lucky to have many gravel pits within a half hour drive from home, but the only thing is a lot of these are controlled by syndicates, and there are only a few day ticket venues. One of the day ticket fisheries is run by the Lea Valley Regional Park and consists of two small pits - the Banjo Lake and Stock Pit, and despite being within a 15 minute drive of our house, I only fished them for the first time three weeks ago, which was for a feature. The lakes are mainly fished for Carp, but it's a well known fact that predators thrive on neglect, so after months of meaning to have a trip over there, I finally decided to give them a go.

Starting before sunrise turned out to be a good move, as within the first hour of fishing I'd landed 3 Pike, all on Berkley 4.5" Rib Shads, although the biggest was only around 4lb and I was hoping for something bigger. I didn't have to wait too long though before I did hook something that really put a bend in the rod, but unfortunately, it came off! After that, the fishing went quiet for quite a few hours, and despite trying many different types of lures and areas, I didn't have a single take.

Thankfully, at around 2pm I hooked in to a slightly bigger Pike than those I'd caught in the morning, which was still not massive, but certainly the prettiest!

Most of our fishing has been on a syndicate gravel pit much larger than the two I've talked about, at around 130 acres. It's a tough nut to crack, but not only is it a fantastic looking pit, reminding me a little of the Everglades, but there are some big Pike in there too. When we fished it for the first time last year, I caught a good double and a fish that I reckon could have been 23-24lb follow me in, so with all our local rivers the colour of chocolate and wind speeds of over 40mph, we decided to have a day exploring it for the first time since the spring.

Within 20 minutes I had a fish I'm guessing was around 17-18lb, maybe bigger, follow my Stick Shadd in, but sadly it turned away. Then in the next swim down, Dad hooked a good fish at range, which we think was around 15lb, but somehow it came off - not the best of starts! Just a few minutes later we did finally get a Pike in the net, unfortunately much smaller than the fish that had followed me in and the one Dad lost.

Between that fish and the end of the day, Dad managed to land one more Pike of around 8lb, but we'd only managed to cover around half of the lake, so we decided to return a couple of days later and try and cover more of the venue.

We had a much slower start on our next trip, covering all of the areas we'd had action on the previous session without a follow or a bite. Then, after two hours of covering half a mile or so of bank, I had a follow from yet another good fish, certainly a mid double. This fish was very interested in my Stick Shadd and after swimming a full circle around the lure, it didn't take, and after trying two different lures in the same spot, which again took it's interest but still wasn't enough, I was becoming quite worried, as I was trying to work out what I thought I was doing wrong, but couldn't find an answer!

We decided to move on and in the next swim, on my very first cast, I had another fish of a similar size follow me in, this one even more fired up than the last. I let my suspending Stick Shadd fall to the bottom and the fish was nosing it, literally about to take when Dad, a few yards to the right of me, yelled "Sam, I've hooked a big'un!" I didn't want to leave this fish as it was so close to taking, but he then shouted "I think it could be a twenty", and it was then that I decided to wind in, drop the rod and give him a hand netting it through thick marginal vegetation. It was big alright - not quite 20lb but still a fantastic looking fish, and took a chatterbait rigged with a Berkley Havoc Pit Boss trailer.

Once we'd weighed and photographed the fish, I decided to change my Stick Shadd to a slightly lighter chatterbait with the same trailer, as the swim was very shallow - maybe 4ft max. I was hoping the Pike that had followed me in hadn't spooked, and on my second cast, the fish followed me in and slammed the lure right at my feet! It wasn't quite as big as Dad's fish but still a immaculate looking double.

As the light faded things seemed to pick up as Dad landed another smaller jack, and on one of my last casts, I hooked and landed my biggest fish of the day, a 15lb 7oz.

We've had a couple more trips on gravel pits since then, and caught quite a few nice Pike up to around 15lbs.

Some of the fish we managed to capture on film on my GoPro camera, and I've put together a short film of around four minutes of some of the fish we caught over the Christmas and New Year period:

We were even lucky enough to get out for a few hours on Christmas morning, and although I was hoping for a bigger fish, at least I didn't blank!

This Christmas, my Dad and I treated ourselves to a couple of new fishing books, which we knew would be right up our street, and if you like trying to catch lots of different species around the world on a number of different tactics, especially lure fishing and flyfishing, then I would certainly recommend these two books. Both are written by different 'Mikes' and both have caught a serious amount of spectacular fish. We sometimes bump in to Mike Green when he's out fishing on the midlands reservoirs, and he has a passion for catching big predators on the fly, especially Pike and Zander here in the UK, but abroad he's caught some amazing fish. Since I've become involved with Pure Fishing, throughout the year I help out at retail and trade shows, which I really enjoy, and every time I go, one of the highlights for me is bumping in to Mike Thrussell. He has an incredible knowledge of all things fishy and he's one of the very few anglers to have caught over 100 species of fish in the UK alone, which is some going!

Since Christmas we've had a couple of trips on our local rivers targeting Perch, although now it's unlikely we'll be fishing a river for a while, thanks to the recent heavy rain. I've mentioned the Sébile A.T Minnow throughout many posts on my blog as it is one of my favourite shads, especially when the fishing hasn't been easy, and recently it's been working well, landing fish up to just under 3lbs.

Dad and I had a good afternoon on Boxing Day, landing 10 Pike and a few nice Perch to around the 2lb mark, mainly on A.T Minnows, and one of the Pike I caught certainly took a liking to them!

I'd cast to some tree roots on the other side of the river and about half way back had a good whack, which turned out to be a jack Pike of maybe 2lbs. I lifted the net out of the water, very quickly unhooked it and returned it, and it swam off fine. I checked my offset hook and re-rigged the A.T minnow back on, cast out, jigged the shad back to my feet and had another good whack, virtually exactly where I'd put the Pike back, and I hooked and landed what looked like exactly the same fish. I lifted the fish out of the water, and sure enough, it was the same fish - if you look carefully at the photo you can see where the Pike was hooked the first time I caught it on the right side of the jaw, and the second time I caught it, I hooked it on the left side of the jaw!

I'm not quite sure where 2015 went, but it was a fantastic year and a privilege to work with Get Hooked on Fishing and Pure Fishing, and to fish in the FIPSed Lure Fishing World Championships with the Team England Lure Squad,  and the Pitsford Pirates in the 6 man team loch style competitions. I'm really looking forward to this year, and I hope 2016 is a good one for you too!