Innehållsförteckning för Issue 3661 från Angling Times

THIS WEEK IT’S official – Lloyd Watson’s 47lb 5oz pike is the biggest ever caught in our waters, after the British Record Fish Committee (BRFC) reviewed and accepted his claim. The fish topples the previous best of 46lb 13oz, caught by Roy Lewis from Llandegfedd Reservoir in Wales back in 1992. Praise has rolled in from far and wide for Manchester angler Lloyd’s feat. “What an overwhelming experience – such things don’t happen to guys like me, but it officially has,” he said. “The support I’ve had from strangers who’ve spent their whole lives chasing a fish like that was so humbling. “The piking community should be proud.”…

IT’S TRUE that having options in terms of where to fish in your swim will mean better catches but, to get the most out of each one, you need to limit the number of lines you put in to begin with – after all, there’s not enough time in the day to fish 10 swims effectively! I find that, at this time of year, having only three or four areas and then exploring each one fully is much the best bet. By this I mean that you may feed on the pole at 11m and catch before things go quiet. Then, by adding a section of pole and going a bit further out or to one side, you will find the fish again, in the process starting a ‘new’ swim.…

PRESTON INNOVATIONS OFFBOX ACCESSORY TRAY WHAT THEY SAY: A tray to hold your phone, drink, keys and suchlike, utilising the gap between your side tray and seatbox. The cup holder section is removable, should you want a larger main compartment. A slot in the end is designed to take your catapult, keeping it close to hand and preventing it from falling in. Compatible with 36mm and 30mm round legs. WHAT WE SAY: A neat little way to make use of the otherwise wasted space between your side tray and box. A must-have for the angler who struggles to store their smaller essentials safely. Price: £19.99, www.prestoninnovations.com KORUM PROGRESS FAST MAT WHAT THEY SAY: Now with more padding than ever, at 5cm thick, this pop-up unhooking mat is easy to use…

If you’re looking for somewhere to enjoy some rod-bending action on a UK-based fishing staycation, we’ve highlighted a selection of venues from all over the country. Whether you want to sit it out for specimen carp or are simply after bite-a-chuck action, you’ll find a venue to suit in this week’s guide. Many of these venues also have plenty of attractions nearby for the non-anglers in your party, so there really is something for everyone. ESCAPE TO THIS TRANQUIL RETREAT BROOM FISHERIES OFFERS A HAVEN FOR ANGLERS OF ALL LEVELS CAST your line into our well-stocked waters teeming with fish waiting to be caught with Carp up to 30lb . Whether you’re seeking solitude or a bonding experience with friends and family, our fishery with accommodation promises an unforgettable getaway.…

USE THEM ON SILTY LAKES EXPANDER pellets sink slowly through the water, lending themselves to shallower venues – and, because they weigh less than a hard pellet, they are brilliant on lakes with a lot of silt on the bottom, as they’ll sit on top of the muck and not sink into it. An old estate lake is a classic example of a venue where an expander will outfish other types of pellets. KEEP THEM ON THE SMALL SIDE UNLIKE hard pellets, expanders are meant to be fished in smaller sizes for a mix of fish or carp around the 5lb mark. That’s why you’ll struggle to find a 10mm expander on the tackle shop shelves! For F1s and small skimmers, the tiny 2mm expanders can be deadly, upping that…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW FROM THE WORLD OF FISHING NOT too long ago, the chalk streams of southern England were the go-to place for big grayling. While there are still specimens to be caught down south, recent years have seen an increasing number of anglers head to the wild rivers of Scotland to target the species. You can see why, when this week alone six fish over the 3lb mark were reported from the region. They cap a scintillating winter for the species as more anglers than ever make the pilgrimage north of the border to join in the bonanza. All the big fish reported this week fell to maggots trotted under a large loafer float. The first, and biggest, of these was Simon Ashton’s 3lb 2oz personal best.…

“A CRACKIING SMALL-RIVER SPECIMEN” Mark Erdwin – 7lb chub “LIKE many anglers this season, I’ve kept an eye on many river level gauges, due to continual flooding. Noticing a slight drop on a tiny waterway, I decided to head out and give it a go. “On arrival, I found the river still lapping the banks, so I planned to hunt down slacks, undercuts and breaks in the flow, using one of my favourite little rods – an 8ft Darent Valley specialist quivertip. “After fishing a number of swims, I had a good bite on a link-legered air-injected lobworm, resulting in a 6lb 3oz chub. I was very pleased, but little did I know what was to happen later. “Late afternoon, I was in an area filled with a multitude of…

How did your love of collectable tackle start? I’d always been an angler, but my introduction was with repairing older rods. I got quite handy at re-whipping rings. As a reward for mending a rod, an elderly chap gave me a Saltssar wooden sea reel – and it was that item that changed my life forever and made me a collector. At some point I had so much tackle, I sensed an opportunity to sell it rather than just amassing more! I gave up my job in Kwikfit and opened a shop in Stoke with my wife called The Tackle Exchange. Early on, there were days when I wondered “what on Earth have we done?” but I’ve never looked back. What’s the most valuable single item you’ve ever seen? The…

KORUM SUPA LITE RIVER BROLLY THE first brolly ever designed to be intentionally used on a sloping river bank, though it can be used on normal swims too. As the name suggests, the weight has been kept to a minimum with graphite poles and Supa Lite 5000mm fabric to help with those long walks. The pre-positional inner pole can be sited on two different angled connection points, and the brolly comes complete with pegging points and pegs. WHY WE’D BUY ONE: Weighing just 2.4kg, there’s no better design for sheltering from the rain on awkward and steep riverbanks. Price: £99.99, www.korum.co.uk GURU LARGE UMBRELLA WITH oversized 8mm fibre poles, two D-ring pegging points, a detachable angled centre pole and a mammoth 2.2m span, this is a brolly on steroids! Designed…

MARLOW PAVED THE WAY I WAS very sorry to hear of the death of Roy Marlow. Many years ago a friend and I used to fish a carp lake on the outskirts of Leicester. If we ran out of bait we’d call into the Marks & Marlow tackle shop to stock up. I vividly remember my first visit. What struck me most was how modern and well laid out it was.Back then, most tackle shops were nothing more than small converted grocery shops. Tackle hung from the ceiling, floats were randomly thrown into old shoe boxes, and unless you specifically asked for a certain item you’d have no chance of ever finding it – total mayhem. Marks & Marlow was something else, truly the forebear of all modern tackle shops.…

FROM the late 1970s to the mid-1980s I managed a tackle shop in south London. One of my customers was the late John Carding who, at the time, was probably Britain’s foremost expert on modern Continental – specifically French – match angling. He was a regular visitor to the famous Favry Peche store in Angers which, at the time, had five floors of predominantly match tackle. He counted Robert and Jacques Tesse and Jean Desque among his friends, and considered Jean Pierre Fougeat to be the best angler he’d ever seen. He wasn’t far wrong! I know ‘Sir’ Dick Clegg rated him very highly too. Fougeat, at the time, fished exclusively with a pole and, with all domestic and international matches fished to virtually the same rules – points per…

FAULT FIXERS ANDY MAY Expert help to give your match fishing the edge THE TUTOR ANDY MAY Former Fish O’Mania champion and recent winner of the £10,000 On The Flyer TV Winter Classic. THE LESSON 1 DON’T OVERFEED TO START Piling the bait in to try and draw skimmers into the swim is a recipe for disaster. After the first hour or so, bites will fizzle out as the fish eat the lot and leave. Instead, start with a golf ball-sized nugget of groundbait packed with dead maggots or pinkies. Once things slow, add another ball of a similar size. This creates competition among the fish and they’ll stay put. 2 USE A LONGER ‘LASH’ Water will still be on the clear side, making it easier for fish to sense…

THIS WEEK THIS spring, an event in honour of the fish voted the nation’s favourite species will be taking place, with the return of the Tenchfishers National Championships. Running from May 17-19 at Oxfordshire’s Linear Fisheries, the event will celebrate everything great about tench fishing. Species enthusiasts will compete against one another in this friendly event, the winner being the angler who catches the most tincas. “After a successful debut event in 2023, we’re pleased to announce the Championships will be returning this year,” Tenchfishers group secretary, Ben Kennedy, said. “We’ve got bigger, better and more prizes, plus some beautiful trophies. “The competition will be run seriously, with dedicated stewards on call 24/7 to weigh any tench caught as soon as possible, to keep fish retention to a minimum.”…

IN AN era when image is everything, you have to feel for Anguilla anguilla, the European eel. While many of our fish are under threat, silver-scaled, athletic species like salmon hog far more headlines than the bottom-hugging eel. And yet their plight is just as urgent. Any clamour to stock eels or engage in detailed research is rather limited, even from anglers, yet this could be hugely significant. Besides boosting ailing populations, bringing eels back into our rivers could have other positive impacts. To take just one example, their presence would lower the heat on other species such as barbel, as eels have been the first choice food of otters for countless millennia. Where, then are the authorities when it comes to long-term planning and conservation? After all, only two…

“I FOUND A LARGE SLACK AREA” Adam Bassimeh – 15lb 2oz barbel “KNOWING that most of the rivers near me were in flood and unfishable, I took a walk by the River Kennet on my lunch break to see if I could find any areas where I could hold bottom. “To my surprise, I found a large slack on a part of the river I hadn’t fished before, so I threw in a handful of fishmeal boilies and returned that evening. “I cast to the ‘crease’ and allowed my 2oz inline lead to be pushed into the slack by the pacier water. “Around an hour later the rod hooped over and I slipped the net under this 15lb 2oz fish.” “TWO BIG BARBEL IN TWO TRIPS!” Tony Kay – 16lb…

TACKLE GUIDE HOW WE TEST OUR GEAR Our team of tackle experts use their years of angling experience to test new gear to its limits. Mark Sawyer, Tackle Editor IT’S A FACT, Daiwa produces some very impressive commercial fishery rods these days – and, what’s more, they are nearly all designed and manufactured right here in the UK. You can lay your hands on anything and everything from short rods for chucking modest distances across snake lakes, through to turbo-charged beasts that will hit the horizon. And whether you’re a prince or a pauper, Daiwa will have something to match the depth of your pockets. As a quick aside from the rod-and-reel combo on live test duty this week, allow me to list Daiwa’s current commercial fishery rod line-up, starting…

THE JOY OF FISHING TIME to make the last cast of the river coarse fishing season, so let’s hope it’s a fruitful one. But what species should you choose? Well, for my money, nothing beats a battle with a powerful barbel. It starts with the classically aggressive ‘three-foot twitch’ and doesn’t let up until the fish is safely in the net! On a recent trip, that’s exactly what happened to me five times, on a river brimful to the bank and as powerful as the Ganges. Each time the rod crashed over I grabbed it and hung on, relying on the drag to exert some control over the situation. A torpedo in a raging river ensured there was no quick victory, which was fine by me, as it meant I…

HOW often fish are targeted, the baits they most frequently come across and the physical make-up of the venue are all factors that will affect their behaviour. All these things are considered by silverfish fanatic Mark Wilton, who spent decades fishing canals before turning his hand to commercials. His experience allowed him to understand that roach in stillwaters behave differently to those in canals, but he believes that taking inspiration from his former passion has stood him in good stead for his newest venture. “There’s a lot more finesse to canal angling, and I’ve found that applying that to commercials works a treat for roach,” explained Mark. “That said, there are changes that I’ve had to make, and a blend of my old and new ways of thinking has helped…

I OFTEN hear my mates say: “I hate zig fishing” or “zigs never work” when we’re out together on the bank. I couldn’t disagree more with this, and I truly believe zigs can be a devastating tactic – especially now! For people who might not be familiar with what a zig rig is, it’s a tactic used by anglers to target carp which are swimming or feeding in mid-water. A lot of people believe carp constantly feed on the lakebed, but this really isn’t the case, in fact the only sure way to catch them when they’re swimming around up in the water column is with zigs. GO ALL OUT ON ZIGS At this time of year, whether you’re fishing on the deck or up in the water, you want…

WE ALL need things to go our way in matches, and in this year’s Cadence Northern River Masters Final it seemed to be Rich Pulford’s title to win. Totalling 17-7-0 over two days on a very out-of-sorts River Don around Cadeby and Sprotbrough, Hull rod Rich picked up the £6,000 main prize as he finished 1lb 11oz clear of Chris Gowling, third place going to Chris Greensides with 15-1-0. Day one produced 1-10-0 from Cadeby, before four bream on the feeder at Sprotbrough on Sunday catapulted Rich into the lead, winning him the day outright. However, he almost never made it, as the original final date last autumn clashed with a holiday. Floods caused this to be moved to early March this year – which was just as well, as…