Soft plastics - not just for predators...

At the end of last month, my Dad and I were at the CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace on the Angling Trust/Get Hooked on Fishing stand, showing different lure fishing techniques in the casting pool with Gary Palmer and John Cheyne. It was very busy all weekend (and very hot too!), and great to catch up with friends and meet so many anglers. On the Sunday afternoon, Liz Truss, the new Secretary of State for DEFRA, came over to the AT/GHoF stand to have a look around. I introduced her to lure fishing, and she decided to have a go at trying drop-shotting in the casting pool!

When the weather was at its warmest, we decided to target Chub on lures along my local rivers. On one afternoon fishing the River Lea, where temperatures topped 31°C, we both caught some nice rubber lips on Berkley Crazy Legs Chigger Craws and small crankbaits, however Dad also caught a Pike, Perch, Dace, Roach and a Minnow on jigged Berkley Power Maggots and other soft baits whilst targeting the Chub.

The most amount of species we've caught in one day on lures in UK rivers is seven, and with a couple of hours of light left that afternoon, we thought if we targeted certain species, we felt there was a chance Dad could beat it. We decided to try and catch a Brown Trout from a weirpool further downstream, then try for a Gudgeon!

Within minutes of arriving Dad caught a pristine Brownie of around 1lb on a small crankbait, so we both changed over to a scaled-down drop-shot rig with a short length of leader from the hook to the drop weight, in the hope we could land a Gudgeon. After catching a few Dace, Dad had an almighty whack on the drop - we thought he'd hooked another trout, but as it revealed itself through the whitewater foam, we realised it was a small Barbel! This was Dad's second Barbel he'd caught on a lure, making it a new personal best of eight species on lures from the River Lea in one afternoon!

A few days later we travelled to Gloucester, as on the 9th August, Gary Palmer organised 'Zandermania', which was a lure (and zander!) only competition along the banks of the Gloucester Canal, with an aim to raise money for the Team England Lure Squad. The team are heading out to France at the beginning of October to fish in the Lure Fishing World Championships on Lac Bourget in France. The muggy conditions made for difficult fishing, but well done to the anglers that caught Zander and won some great prizes, and Gary for organising a brilliant match. The fishing was very hard and although Dad and I weren't in the match, we managed to get a few hours fishing in!

It was great to meet up with like-minded lure anglers and a massive thank you to everyone for supporting the Team England Lure Squad!

Staying on the subject of Zander, Dad and I have had a couple more trips back to Grafham flyfishing for the zeds using our new fishfinder. The Zander fishing on Grafham hasn't been easy this year, but a couple of weeks ago we both caught our first doubles of the year. I landed one of 10lb 8oz and Dad caught a 10lb 1oz, both on the same afternoon!

The Lowrance HDS has also come in very handy on a few recent trips to Pitsford targeting Perch. Pitsford has always previously allowed lure fishing during the summer months with lures over 18cm in length, but now anglers can target Perch and Trout with much smaller lures.

We've found some huge shoals of baitfish, and we've had some action-packed trips, boating lots of stripeys to 3lb 5oz as well as plenty of jacks on a variety of different techniques.

Recently we've been trying the new Shakespeare Agility range of lure rods, which will be coming out soon - there are six in the range for all types of lure fishing. I really like the drop-shot rod, which has a white tip to help detect bites in low light levels.

The Agility drop-shot rod is also perfect for targeting coarse fish on lures. On the 17th August the Angling Trust and Get Hooked on Fishing organised a 'Family Fishing' day at Get Hooked on Fishing's complex of lakes in Ealing. Around 70 people came to have a go at fishing - my Dad and I were showing lure fishing and the participants caught Roach, Rudd, Perch and even Tench on jigged and drop-shotted Berkley Power Maggots and Honey Worms. Dad also caught two Carp!

It was great to catch up with James, GHoF Ealing's Project Manager (pictured above with my Dad), Charlie and all the other volunteers, and it was a brilliant day all round.

On Monday evening, at around 5pm, I had a phone call from Keith Arthur asking whether I'd like to film a day's lure fishing for Sky Sport's Tightlines the following day (as his Bass fishing trip off the south coast had been cancelled due to strong winds). I jumped at the opportunity so Monday night was a mad rush getting gear ready for the following day! What a great trip we had, especially for Keith who caught a new P.B Perch of 3lb 11oz!

He also caught a 'Pitsford Super Slam' - a Perch, Pike, Rainbow Trout and Brown Trout! Although I didn't manage to catch anything big during the filming, three casts after the cameras left I caught a Perch of 3lb 4oz, followed by another of 2lb 15oz, along with a few others. I've been very lucky to fish with Keith a few times now and it's always a really enjoyable day!

Just two days later I was practising on Rutland for the Lexus European Flyfishing Championships Team Final with the Pitsford Pirates, followed by two match days on the Friday and Saturday. The Pirates had managed to qualify at the Grafham heat, which was one of many held across the country, where teams contested for a place in the final. Apart from fishing in the Anglian Water Loch Style 4 Man competition with the team the week before as a practice, it was the first time I'd been trout fishing since June, but recently, Rutland has been fishing really well. The rules for the match were that you killed your first 4 fish, then release 8 after that. The fish were very high up in the water and both the practice and match days were very windy, so I fished 3 flies on either a slow glass or fast glass line and mixed up my retrieve between long strips and a fast figure of eight, and often it was just as you slowed down or hung your flies at the end of the cast the fish would take - some of them were savage! Unfortunately, the Pirates came 15th out of 21 teams, but it was a great experience and I really enjoyed the three days we had together. Congratulations to the winning team, Rio Masters (who have been runners up on three previous occasions!), and also Hanningfield for finishing second.

Now we've had a few good downpours, and temperatures are starting to cool down, predator fishing should really start to switch on, especially on rivers. Many reservoirs also open to lure fishing next month, so I'll be organising my lure selection in preparation!

A sizzling start to the new season!

For the past few years, my Dad and I have always talked about spending June 16th afloat on the River Thames, but somehow, we'd never got round to it! Last year we decided to stay local and concentrated on the River Lea, trying to catch as many different species as we could on lures, and prior to 2013 June 16th always fell on a college day or school day, which was very frustrating! This year though, we were determined to fish the Thames and with recent rainfall freshening up rivers, prospects looked great for the opening day.

However, June 16th was on a Monday this year and 4am obviously wasn't early enough to set off, as we got stuck in heavy traffic on the M25, and after cleaning up the boat before fishing (as we hadn't taken it on the water since before Christmas, due to the floods), we didn't get fishing until 10.30am! We were surprised how much water was still going through the river and how coloured it was, with visibility of not much more than 1ft where we were fishing!

Luckily, it didn't take long before we had some action, landing some small jacks, then at around midday, whilst fishing in one of the big weirpools, I caught a Perch of 3lb 4oz on a Berkley Havoc Rocket Craw, Texas rigged on an Owner Ultrahead.

We stayed around for another half hour before venturing off to some other areas, where we caught a few more Pike and Perch.

Later on that afternoon we returned to where I'd caught the 3lb 4oz Perch, and at around 6pm I hooked in to what I thought, at first, was the bottom, but it then woke up and I realised I'd hooked a big Pike. The fight was unbelieveable – we were anchored on the edge of some rough whitewater and I was using my Perch set-up - a light 7ft Abu Veritas spinning rod with a 1000 sized reel, loaded with 0.12mm Nanofil, using the same Berkley Havoc Rocket Craw! It fought so hard in the fast current it actually up-anchored the boat, which made for a crazy battle as we quickly drifted downstream! Thankfully though, we got it in the net. One of the owners of a house on the riverside opposite where I'd landed the fish kindly let us weigh and take photos of it in his back garden! He also supplied a tape measure as he was interested in how long it was - it measured 45.5 inches (115.5cm). I just wonder how much it will weigh this coming winter?

I couldn't have asked for a better June 16th, so we had another trip back to the Thames the following week, but this time we decided to fish until around midnight, getting some sleep in on the bankside before setting the alarm on my phone for the crack of dawn and continuing fishing again. This time, the fishing was much harder, and we were really struggling for bites until the next morning. The highlight of that trip for me was catching a Chub an ounce under 5lbs, again on a Rocket Craw!

Unfortunately, Dad lost a very big Carp that he stalked on a drop-shotted Berkley Gulp! Earthworm, that could have weighed over 20lbs, but he did land this Pike of 14lb 3oz on a spinnerbait right at the end of the second day.

Since then, Dad and I have had a couple of short afternoon/evening trips lure fishing along rivers closer to home, and they've also proved quite challenging. We've managed to catch a few small Pike, Perch and Chub, plus my Dad landed this pretty looking Brown Trout on a small crankbait.

On one evening trip, my Dad spotted what he first thought was a Bleak attacking a feather on the surface, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a tiny Pike struggling to eat a Roach two thirds of it's size! The Pike was trying to swallow the Roach head first and had got it stuck half way down it's throat! Both had a happy ending though and swam off fine - after we managed to separate them!

For the past few months, we've both been looking very carefully in to buying a new fishfinder/chartplotter, and after some advice from Dan Brackley and Paul Garner, we decided on buying a Lowrance HDS Gen2 Touch. The very next day after setting it up, we took the unit to Grafham. Using the structurescan was very fascinating - it gives you a completely different dimension to your fishing, viewing features and fish from a birds eye view with the sidescan, and equally detailed images with the downscan. This sidescan image shows a small section of the pipeline that runs between the North Tower and the Dam Tower, which was around 50ft to the left of our boat when we took the shot.

Finding shoals or groups of fish was very exciting - and we also caught a few too!

The image below shows a Zander of 9lb 12oz we saw on the sounder, that my Dad cast to and hooked on his second cast. The image shows the Zander taking his fly and most of the fight, although he needed a hand with the net so I had to take the picture whilst he was still fighting it.

I'm really looking forward to exploring with the unit on other waters, recording data, and learning more about it.

At around this time of year we always seem to pick up some big Roach/Bream Hybrids from Grafham on Pike and Zander flies. They fight really well and Dad caught a cracker of 5lb 14oz on our last trip there. It's not the biggest we've caught there, but still a fantastic looking fish!

One thing that Grafham often produces is a stunning sunset as you're heading back to the harbour.

Lastly, I had a great weekend at Fish'O'Mania XXI, showing different lure fishing techniques along with Eric Edwards and my Dad for the charity Get Hooked on Fishing. Conditions were far from perfect for catching predators, just like last year, but a few fish were caught, including a couple on surface lures. Two participants caught their first lure caught Pike on the Abu Rocket Popper and Sébile Splasher popper, which was exciting to watch!

The Essex PAC's RO Sean Ellis' son, Ronnie, caught the only Perch of the weekend on a drop-shot rig.

It was great to spend the weekend with Eric and other members of the Pike Anglers Club of Great Britain. Tomorrow Dad and I are going to the CLA Game Fair to show Abu, Berkley and Sébile lures in the lure pool outside the Angling Trust and Get Hooked on Fishing's 'House of Fishing'. The charity will be providing many more fun activities there too, including a fish playing simulator!

One of my favourite venues...

If I was to name a lake or reservoir that has taught me so much about flyfishing and lure fishing, I'd have to say Grafham Water. Renowned as one of the most iconic trout fisheries in the country, it's also become a Mecca for producing other big predators - Pike, Perch and Zander. Although Grafham's not an easy venue at times, the rewards are there for the taking if you put the time and effort in.

A couple of weeks ago my Dad and I flyfished Grafham for predators for the first time this year, and I was lucky to get off to a dream start! We targeted Zander and Perch for the first few hours of the day, with no success, so at around midday we decided to switch to floating lines, step up our leaders and target Pike in the shallow bays. It wasn't long before Dad and I were both off the mark and had boated our first Pike of the year - only small, but still great fun!

We continued searching this area for another couple of hours, before we both decided on a change of location. Then, just as my Dad had started the motor and was about to put it in to reverse, as I was stripping my fly back, a Pike flew out and slammed my fly in just four feet of water! At first, I thought the fish was around 14-15lb, but as the fight went on we both realised it was a lot bigger - I think Dad was shaking more than me as it was hooked on one of my Dad's barbless flies! Thankfully, I got it safely in the net and we were both blown away at the size of the fish - it was like a crocodile! At 30lb 2oz it had beaten my P.B by over 1lb, and I think it would have weighed more had it have not been spawned out!

We didn't catch any more fish that day, but Grafham's not an easy place to catch Pike, on any method, so I was well chuffed catching such a special fish from Grafham, especially on the fly!

Dad and I couldn't wait to return and since that trip, we've been back to the 1500 acre reservoir three times. Again, we've spent most of our time concentrating on the Pike, stalking and sight casting to fish, just like when fishing on the flats for Bonefish and Permit. What's very encouraging is that we've been catching quite a few small jacks - one day these could be future 30lb'ers! On the other hand, we've seen some of the biggest Pike we've ever laid eyes on. On our latest trip, in an area not far from where I caught my 30lb'er, we saw a Pike of frightening proportions. Dad got a better look at it than I did, and it blew him away - it certainly looked bigger than my '30'!

Dad's caught the two biggest fish on our most recent outings - a 16lb'er (which took his fly instead of an even bigger Pike he'd cast to and was intending to catch!) and an 18lb 12oz, which this time wasn't beaten to the fly by another Pike!

When we've not been targeting Pike, we've been fishing for Zander and Perch. Although this hasn't been easy, we've caught a few of both species, including a couple of 3lb+ stripeys, with the biggest weighing 3lb 9oz.

My next trip to Grafham will be trout fishing with the Pitsford Pirates in the Airflo Midland Heat - fingers crossed the team can do the business and qualify for the final!

In just under four month's time, the Team England Lure Squad will be heading out to Lac Bourget in France fishing in the Lure Fishing World Championships. As the team currently have no sponsors, we have to fund our own way to the World Championships, with the cost working out at approximately £2000 per person. To raise awareness and try and pool together some cash to cover our costs we've set up a PledgeSports page, which is similar to a Just Giving page, but for athletes, teams and clubs asking for funding and attracting sponsorship. There are rewards for certain amounts of sponsorship - I won't go through them all but for £10 you'll be listed on our supporter's page, and the more you donate the more rewards you'll get. Please click on the link below for more information - if you'd like to donate we'd all be very grateful!

https://www.pledgesports.org/projects/team-england-lure-squad-world-championships/

Anyway, June 16th is just a matter of hours away - and I can't wait!

Team England Lure Squad 2014

For the past couple of months, my Dad and I have spent a lot of time preparing for the Team England Lure Squad trials. Last year, both my Dad and I were lucky enough to be selected to represent the first ever Angling Trust Team England Lure Squad in the 6th Carnivorous Artificial Bait Boat Angling World Championships on Lough Erne, however this year, trials have been introduced to select a team. There were two qualifiers earlier in the year, on Esthwaite Water and Bewl Water, where anglers competed to fish in the grand final staged on Llangorse Lake in Wales.

Most of my lure fishing recently has been spent on local gravel pits, experimenting with rod/reel set-ups, lines and of course lures we thought could work well on Llangorse. We caught some lovely Pike too - two of the most successful lures we used were the 114mm Sébile Suspending Stick Shadds and the 160mm Sébile Magic Swimmer Soft.

There's nothing better than practising on the venue you'll be fishing though, so a week before the trials we made the four and a half hour drive to the Brecon Beacons in the hope of building a picture of how Llangorse fishes and what lures and tactics worked there. When we arrived we didn't get off to a very good start - it was windy and raining heavily, and when we went in to the shop to ask for a ticket we were told it was probably not a good idea to head out as the weather was meant to get worse in the afternoon, so we could only fish for an hour and a half!! Not only that, it was unlikely we could fish the next day as the weather conditions were forecast to be similar! In a mad rush, we dashed down to the jetty and loaded the boat, and whilst fixing the outboard on to the back of the boat, Dad slipped and fell in!!

Despite his legs being soaked through we fished for an hour and came back in, but after returning to the shop and pleading to stay out and fish, we eventually got permission to head out again. Thankfully the weather didn't worsen too much and we caught 10 Pike to around 12lb. One of our most successful lures for Pike were the Berkley Flex Slim and Berkley Flex Rib Shads.

After a wet night sleeping under the oval in the campsite next to Llangorse, the weather didn't seem quite as bad so we headed back out on the lake again. Using a wide variety of lures and tactics we boated 15 Pike, plus a few Perch.

The first Perch I caught weighed 3lb 2oz and took a jigged 3" Berkley Power Grub! It probably would have weighed a lot more had it have not been spawned out.

We headed home that evening feeling very confident we had some idea of where to and how to fish the following week. Well, what a roller coaster ride my Dad and I had during the match days! Day one went really badly for us, and most of it was my own fault. On my very first cast I cracked off on a lure that had worked really well in practice, then I tied on another trace and replaced it with the same lure, not realising I hadn't clipped it on to the snap. I threw it out of the boat ready to make a cast, then realised I had just thrown a lure in to the water! All the other spares of that lure in that colour were back at our B&B, and from then on, the day continued to go wrong as I lost my first three Pike I hooked. Dad had got off to a good start catching a Pike on just his second cast, but he wasn't amused with me to say the least and my frustration rubbed off on him. We lost so many fish on the first day it was ridiculous. I didn't catch my first fish until 1.30pm and we ended up with 7 Pike between us, Dad with 4 and me with 3. Gary Palmer, Eric Edwards and Dan Brackley were on 9, 8 and 7 - the top 6 anglers qualify for the team and although Dad was still in the running, I had some extreme catching up to do on the second day.

Unfortunately, day 2 got off to another nightmare start. Just before the match was about to kick off, our electric motor packed up and stopped working. We thought we were doomed! We were still determined though and tried not to let it get to us, and fortunately we both had a spectacular turnaround. We started catching fish within minutes, and the sport seemed to get better and better. Thanks to a slight adjustment to a specific type of lure, we lost far fewer fish than the day before, and after landing just 3 on day one, I landed 16 on day 2, and Dad caught 9.

Gary Palmer had caught some cracking Pike to 99cm, including a 35cm Perch, and although I caught one more fish than him, his greater length won him first place, and I finished in second place - what a day! I was so chuffed to have made it back in to the team - Dad had also taken the sixth place, so we'd both managed to retain our places in the Team England Lure Squad, along with Gary Palmer and Eric Edwards. The 2014 squad is: Gary Palmer, who is now Team Captain, Eric Edwards, Dan Brackley, Rikki Cooper, my Dad and myself. The two reserves are Evaldas Skablauskas (who fished in last year's team) and Ron Dalton.

Mike Skipper, the team manager, put on a fantastic event held at a stunning venue. It was also great to meet other like-minded lure anglers I'd never met before, and to say I'm really looking forward to attending the 7th World Championships on Lac Bourget this October is an understatement!

That's not the only match I've fished in this month. At the beginning of May I fished in the Lexus Individual and Team Flyfishing Championships on Grafham. I didn't do so well in the individual match on the Saturday, but our team, the Pitsford Pirates, qualified for the Lexus Team Final this August on Rutland by finishing in 4th place, which was a great result, especially as none of our team members had much time to practice on there! To qualify, we had to beat a strong field of top teams, fishing midge tip lines with nymphs, and either a sunburst blob or booby on the point. I also really enjoyed fishing with Fen Oakley, who was representing SKB Fishbums - it was the first time we'd fished together since we were both in the England Youth Flyfishing Team.

I've also had some other great news recently. Just in the last few weeks I have been given the role of Project Manager for an initiative being run by the charity, Get Hooked on Fishing, called GHoF Bedfordshire. Thanks to lottery funding, the lakes at Shuttleworth College (coincidentally where I completed my Extended Diploma in Fish Management course) have been dredged and the plan is to create the site in to a teaching facility for those wanting to learn to fish. We'll teach all kinds of fishing there but I am very keen to introduce people to lure fishing once it's all up and running. Things have only just started to get underway, and it's going to be a massive project, but it has masses of potential and I'm really looking forward to it. As the project is still in it's infancy, there's not much more I can really say at the moment but to find out more information check out the recently-launched Get Hooked on Fishing Bedfordshire Facebook page, which we'll update as work progresses. We're hoping to open it in April 2015, so if you're interested in helping out, please feel free to drop me a message on the GHoF Bedfordshire Facebook page.

On Good Friday, I also helped Get Hooked on Fishing at their complex of lakes in Ealing, for the launch of GHoF and the Angling Trust's 'Family Fishing' campaign. Over the course of the day there were 119 participants and Dad and I were showing people jigging and drop-shotting for the coarse fish.

As there are no Pike in the lakes at Ealing, and the Perch are only small, we were able to use light fluorocarbon leaders, using 0.5g jigheads rigged with Berkley Power Maggots and Maxi Bloodworms, or drop-shotting with the same soft baits.

Every participant really enjoyed trying lure fishing for the first time, and everybody caught a fish, many of which was their first! We caught a real mixture of species, including Goldfish!

Finally, we managed to squeeze in an afternoon flyfishing for Carp on a local gravel pit, which is awesome fun if you've never tried it, and our favourite way to catch Carp. Using Mixer flies made from Deer hair that my Dad ties, we caught 3 to 17lb 7oz.