River Dee Bolo Session and The Little Daley Angler...

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Settling back into a routine with the blog and other commitments now on Youtube and it does seem to be knitting in nicely.  I have found as long as i get the videos out of the way and scheduled early in the week then it leaves the rest of the week to put together the corresponding blog update,

That said this week has been a week where the Internet in my house has been down so the distraction of other peoples content so time will tell in the coming weeks if there is still scope for this routine.  One thing i can say is look out this Friday for a special capture in a pike video!  Its a video for me that i think shows what pike fishing is like for most people around the country, hard work, blanks and moments of joy as you come out the other side.

On to the update..

Trip Down Memory Lane....

This week i snagged on bottom whilst wobbling a roach on the river which involved me pulling hard to straighten the hooks out but after only moderate pressure on the line the line just exploded.  Doing some tests on the line i noticed the line was fragile in places and must have literally gone all of a sudden as i certainly had no issues in previous weeks.  A trip to my dads was in order to pick up a new spool of braid to replace the reel with.

While i was there my dad pulled out a box he had found at the bottom of the cupboard during a recent clear out, what it contained saw memories come flooding back form my youth.  Firstly the two lures in the picture tell quite a different story, with the rainbow one being, as i remember it, absolutely useless  on the local cut.  On the opposite side of the coin the Abu Garcia "Terminator" was a killer lure as the scars down its flank are testament to.  Shallow diving and flashes of silver i remember it being the best lure for the canal as it did not dive deep and kept out of the way of the trolleys, bikes, dead bodies and traffic cones in the local cut.

Now this picture of the pike bobber brings back memories of my teenage years fishing with my dad.  Pike had just started to appear on the canal and where becoming a regular appearance on our trips for roach and bream.  My dad always had a cantilever tackle box and in one of the compartments was this old school pike bobber float and some may remember when pike traces came in a see through bag with a yellow that i think where made by kamasan.  How pike fishing has taken off from these days when a live bait was presented under a float that was held in position only by the tension form the stick through the middle.

I always remember me getting one pike on a live perch, quite a funny story and one maybe for another blog.  In my head it was certainly a double but at the time it was my PB pike and with no pictures back then when we went fishing i have the best image of the pike you can have, in my memory.

A Little Angler Called Camie...

From my memories of  my childhood to a father and son creating their own memories right now, a journey that will create moments in time that, like mine with my dad, will last a lifetime and will need no pictures to recreate the magic.  I have had the pleasure over the past 2 years to have met a polite young gentleman called Cam he is a cracking little lad who already has developed a love for catching the fishy's that live beneath the water.

Under the wing of his dad Ste he has been placed firmly on the right path to becoming a cracking little angler, learning his trade on the local canal and ponds this summer it was not long before he had bagged his first silver fish on the whip and moved up to tackling some carp later on in the warmer months.

Winter has come and after seeing his dad catching some "sharks!!" as Cam calls them he decided himself the time had come for him to catch one for himself.  In what is a cracking feat for an angler so young he hooked and played from start to finish his first pike.  Not happy with catching one he then went on to catch another with his PB now standing at 8lb6oz!!.   Showing the grace of a gentleman he let his dad have the last run of the day having fed his appetite for shark catching for another week :-)

A side bet of a quid with Ste has me betting he has his first 20lb pike by the time he is 12 :-)  At this rate it will before his next birthday! Well done Cammy!!!

Forget Me Knots....

A quick final piece before we get into this fishing is a cracking little diagram a company sent me this week and asked me to share on the blog.  Noticing how great this little picture is i quickly agreed and below is a collection of fantastic knots for all your fishing needs i know i certainly have saved it for my own personal use.

River Dee Session on the Bolo...

A video of the session below is available here on the youtube channel:

Early evening and with hemp seed cooking on the stove myself and my uncle discussed out plans for the following day.  A weekend where weather conditions in the week meant all of our venues where in prime fettle to wet a line on and to be honest all would have produced the goods on the day.

We had spend a good amount of time on one or two venues this season but one that had not saw our foot prints was the banks of the muddy river Dee.  A big decision for us to visit at this time of year as it involves a very early start to get there in time to get a peg so its a venue we love to fish but the jaunt of going there is a little off putting to say the least.

Arriving under the cover of darkness we where met with the familiar sight of a number of pegs already taken so we both settled on pegs we knew would be an awkward fish but we could catch from.  Not wasting the hour before first light i got to work using the car light to tie up a few hook lengths.

First light revealed a river in fine fettle with not a breathe of wind and a cracking pace to her, it looked bob on for a few bites.  

The video explains this a little better but the swim was situated to the Right of a tree that over hanged the water causing a big slack behind and the flow coming off the end of its branches.  This tress over the years had diverted the flow as such that a deep hole had been created behind the tree so for about 10 to 15 metres of the run it was deep and then of course it shallowed up slightly as the normal bank side depth was found further down the run.

It left me with two options. 1, feed heavy with hemp and castor on the tree and try and control my feed to catch in the deep water or 2, feed downstream on the shallow run and completely miss out the deep water. On the day i felt fishing the deep water would be the best as i felt this is where the fish would be and also striking up i did not have to worry about my 17ft rod becoming a 12ft rod on the tree to my left. 

A 3 gram bolo fished with a bulk shot and two number 8 droppers to a size 20 hook on 2lb 1oz bayer perlon was the set up for the day and  feeding castor but fishing maggot on the hook i was soon catching dace of all sizes steadily.

The bites where coming right on my hemp and with the fish coming in with a mouth full of maggots it also told me i was getting my feeding right and my castors and hemp where both getting down to the bottom. The fish will always tell you if you are feeding right/  The bites go then maybe you are feeding to heavy or too far up the swim and the fish are above where you rig is settling. 

Alternating between maggot and castor saw fish coming all morning and when bites went funny on castor a change to maggot would always give me two bites at the cherry at catching on the trot rather than the one bite and done scenario with the castor.  This is a approach that can work well and when using red maggot you can get away with as they kind of resemble the castors in colour, more so than say a White maggot.  

The castors of course brought better fish like the roach above and i did hope at the time that a shoal of these fish had moved in, a scenario that can turn a good days fishing into an exceptional one.  

Into the afternoon and the bites did start to dry up on the out side line.  Experience had taught me to expect this so i had purposely fed the swim in a way that the feed covered both the outside line and slightly into the slack.  This tactic i knew would mean some maggot would be falling into the slack behind the tree.  

Dropping in here kept the bites coming and remembering to keep feeding the outside line meant i knew fish where building up confidence out there with no line going through.  The fish where of course not as big in the slack but it kept the net ticking over.

After around a hour i moved over to the outside line and it worked a treat as a shoal of small chublets had moved in and although i was travelling now onto the shallows for my bites i was getting a bite every run down.  The final net of 15lb showed how it had been a day of many bites and also that i had not really attracted caster stamp sized fish into my swim.

I left the banks happy with a days fishing that saw me only use the one hook link all day and have an bite packed session on the bank.

Till next time i wish you all a very merry Xmas and a safe and prosperous new year

Tight Lines 

Danny

Do Seasons Still Exist? And A Stolen Few Hours For Silvers...

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Life is slowly getting back to some type of normality with me getting back in work and although there a huge loose ends to tie up there the schedule of 9 to 5 working life is setting back in.  The fishing blog side of things has never been as time consuming as it is now with the written main weekly blog, pike written diary and also the youtube videos arm of the blog now gaining momentum, its great fun to put it all together and really enjoying the video logs but i think next season the piking may have to reside in youtube only format or as part of the weekly written blogs with maybe the videos i do put together linked into the weekly main updates.

We will have to assess that come next year but for now lets get into the update.....

Do Seasons Still Exists..

Now i am nto for one second suggesting here that the 4 seasons we know and love are not there as we quite clearly have summer, autumn, winter and spring, what i am questioning is if those seasons still hold the same identity we assosiate with them.  For example we always link summer with hot temperatures and clear blue skies and for the past few years we have had what seems abut a 2 week period of what we would call a summer period of hot weather but we have also had deluges of rain.

Rivers in summer have been in full blown flood the last two summers as a result of pure heavy downfall.  Last week i recorded my first silver fishing video for the blogs youtube channel and it was done so in minus 2 degree temperatures, we forward to this weeks session and yesterday myself and my uncle where say with no thermals on at all in barmy 12 degree heat.....in DECEMBER!

Even today while i was doing a spot of piking in 11 degree heat all around be i noticed buds appearing on the trees, of course nature knows nothing of our calendar seasons so naturally they think its coming into spring.  I really do think the defining weather within our seasons is changing and long gone are the days of winter being a prolonged period of cold weather as we will now be looking at mixed weather seasons with severe fluctuations in temperature.

From my fishing point of view i just wish it would settle into a steady 1 or 2 degrees, odd frost here and there and then the fish will move into their winter haunts like they have now but will stay there.

Blog Media Pack...

Safe to say this week the blog took a step and dipped its toes into a serious world of companies.  Over the years i have always been contacted by companies with regard product reviews and other affiliate items.  Normally a few emails and all i sorted and ironed out with regards expectations.  This week a company asked for my "media pack", i was like "A whats??".  Long story short its a A4 piece of paper all about me and the blog.

So we are not very official and have our own "media pack".....it all sounds too much like blue peter to me when the presenters harped on about press packer packs....never got one of them either, not even a blue peter badge!

Youtube Blog Update...

So this week the first ever silver fishing video went live on the channel, to this point it had just been pike fishing, i have to say i was a little apprehensive as i didn't think the silver fishing would be a popular choice to do over the pike fishing but i was in for a surprise.  The silver video is well on its way to being the channels most popular video and im over the moon as it means i can cover all aspects of my fishing with confidence.

Check out the silver fishing here:

With regards the channel itself it is really doing well and well beyond my expectations.  As of writing the blog it is on 89 subscribers so only a few to go till we reach 100 subs.  As with all aspects of the blog i have no problem in letting the page grow slowly preferring a 100 people to like it because they like the content rather than 300 liking it to win a beanie!

Check out the video and if you like please subscribe..

On to the fishing..

A few Stolen Hours For Silvers...

Writing this i feel i should change the title to be more festive and call it a few Stollen hours but i fear some would not get it and the spelling police would be all over me.  I do digress, this session was around a week before the silvers video above.  Coming out of a period of heavy rain we had blanked big time on the weekend session and it really was not a surprise with the rivers all over in full flood which saw us trying our luck and failing on the upper reaches of the river.  We had hoped this would be the first place the colour would drop but in reality we where on there right on the rise and beginning of the fall.

A few days later and the river was still carrying colour but she had lost her pace and a few feet in depth and looked bang on for some bites.  A simple 6 number 4 stick float down to a hook length of  2lb kamasan perlon line and a size 18 hook.  Bait for the day as always red maggot and hemp.

I literally only had around 3 or 4 hours for this session and setting up i did not really know if the river was right for the fish to feed.  This section always does well with colour but i knew a few days earlier we did not get a bit in 8 hours fishing.  All set up it was time make the first cast and down the swim my float trundled.  Half way down i clipped bottom so a slight adjustment to the float was needed and back to it.  It took a while for the first bite and i did get a little worried but right at the end of the swim i struck into a tiny roach.

I kept the bait going in and this one tiny roach told me i could catch well.  Most would say how do you know from one tiny roach but? In my thinking if one small roach can see my bait then others can and these fish are never alone so i knew it was only time till the next fish.

With this better stamp or roach coming i knew it was going to be a decent session on the bank.  I steadily fed hemp and maggot into the swim and bites where soon coming regular and the bites that where right at the end of the run where soon mid way up on my hemp, where i wanted them.

The swim then died and the fish moved instantly right back to the bottom of the swim, i knew it was not pike as it would have nailed one of the small roach coming through the swim.  A hard hold back on the hemp revealed the culprit, a nice chub had muscled in the swim.

As the session went on this would repeat its self a few times,  Small roach and then it would die and a better roach or chublet would come, all a dream to catch on my drennan acolyte plus rod, i love this rod to bits what a piece of kit and a joy to use.

The final net was one that recharged my batteries for the week ahead and took away the blues form that hard blank earlier on in the week.

well thats another update to the blog rounded off,

till next time i wish you all

tight lines

Danny.

Where I Fish? and Top 30 Fishing Blog Award....

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Last week i mentioned i had been off work the past month and although i wont be going into any detail about the reasons its again fishing that shows its worth for proving that there is so much more to getting out on the bank than catching fish.  That's not to say i have been out every day fishing, parental duties still have to be completed, but when i have managed to get out to wet a line i have to say those few hours alone with my thoughts have really helped me these past weeks and of course the company and support of good family and friends.

I generally keep family off this blog to keep the fishing and that separate but the good friends side is easy to share, this session for pike took my mind off all my problems, just for that day, thank you.

On to the blog.....

Top 30 Fishing Blogs on the Web Recognition...

It was great this week to get an email from Feedspot in which they congratulated me for the blog making the top 30 on their best fishing blogs on the web.  Starting the blog all those years ago for a bit of fun its amazing to see where it is today and how its developed and almost taken on its own identity as time has gone on.

The blog has been mentioned before in such lists but when i had a good look at the list it was blogs from all over the world and the majority of the top ones where all american, not a bad thing, but showed it was a list compiled form blogs all over the world.  Dannys angling Blog come in at a respectable number 28 on the list and i was proud to have even made the list never mind the top 30.

I would like to thank the organisers for not only putting the list together but also show casing angling blogs as i do think as we move into an age where anyone can write a blog or create videos of their fishing experiences that bloggers and video loggers will be the face of angling in the future.  As paper sales of the weekly magazines decline we will see them unable to pay such high salaries to their stars and as such we will see a decline in variety in the papers and thats when we will see these companies go full out paperless and online and part of that will be embracing bloggers and video loggers int he angling world.

You only have to look at the quality of videos out there and i even my little bit of the world is regularly getting 10k a month views,  in short its great that finally the people putting their heart and souls into their blogs and videos are getting some recognition and long may it continue.

Where do You Fish Danny??

If there was one question i get asked more than any other it is this one.  Dont get me wrong you put your fishing out there for all to see, you should expect it, right?  As much as i disagree with this there is a bit that is right i do put my fishing out there for all too see and if you go back to my very first blogs i cover the main reason i started this blog, the lack of information out there on fishing and i hoped tis blog would inspire people to get out there and find fishing based of what i share that proves the rewards are there.   Of course the internet is now approaching saturation point with information to the point you can get the low down on any venue out there before you even see the place and if we look at the carp word on some venues you can read how many doubles, 20's, how many 30's and then a roll call of their names, such is the world we live in.  To first know where i fish you need to get into my frame of mind, simply put its as far away from these places as i can get.

My fishing involves hours of looking on google earth for places to fish and although we do from time to time fish match lengths or popular haunts i would say the huge majority of my fishing is done on places that have no queue in the car park, no rush to get a peg and certainly places where the fish have no names.  When i do visit the busier places i almost leave with a headache from the constant reams and reams of absolute drivel some anglers find it necessary to shout to each other on the bank, some anglers i am sure don't know how to be quiet.

Have you ever drove down the road in the car or looked out the window of a bus and caught a glimpse of a spit of a pond or gone over a bridge and thought that "i wonder if there is fish in there?".  Well this is where you will find me fishing, i looked out the window and didnt just think i went out and found out.  It baffles me how people actually pay commercial prices in winter to catch silvers when most to get to the gates in time to get "the peg" they must drive past hundreds and thousands of silvers in their local canal.

Fishing the local cut or river you are not going to leave the superstar angler you will after catching a tonne from the commercial but what you will leave the canal or river with is a sense of achievement.  How many times do we hear in matches, "well hes won hes on the peg" or "billys on the flier"  we hear this all the time dont we? Well believe me once you have saw a water, got on their first light to look for fishing topping and then fished the area, you will have found your own flier! And you know what? Its all yours to enjoy, no queuing up at gates, no paying a land owner to fish.  I would say over 50% of my fishing is done for free.

So in short, where do i fish?  I fish all those crap places that people see day in and day out but turn either  their nose up at or pass wondering what if......Dont thin what if get out there and wet a line trust me its the best feeling in the world.

On the to the fishing...

Long Rod And The Bolo...

The rain had been falling hard all through Friday and it continued to tap against my bedroom window as i tried to get off to sleep, a hard enough task the night before a fishing trip as it is, waking up at silly o'clock in the morning i quickly went about my pre fishing routine part of which involves opening the back door the check what mother natures mood is.  In short she was in the same stubborn sour mood she left me in the night before with steady rain falling still.

A quick check on the EA levels page revealed them all to be on a steady rise and carrying water.  We decided on the river we where going to fish, a good depth and the fact it normally has a slow pace at best we knew with the extra water in it might have a decent flow and there was a good chance of a fish or two.

Arriving on the banks there was a few fish topping and we took the lazy option of the first two pegs we come too.

My plan for the session was to fish rod tip on the bolo float and the picture above shows just how simple the components are for river fishing.  My rod of choice was my 17ft Preston Carbon active rod teamed with my shimano reel loaded with 4lb line down to a 2ft long bayer perlon hook length.  The bait on the day was 2 pints of red maggot and about the same of hemp seed.

My plan was to fish rod tip and finding around 8ft under my feet i did think about putting a stick float on.  I fished this line from the off and started to pick up the odd small roach but i soon began to notice a snag or some sort of weed on the bottom i kept hitting.  Time and time again i would go down and right where i wanted to get my bites i would clip a snag.  Some of the time it was a fish and the bites

The times is was bites i was rewarded with a roach.

With silver fishing the basic tackle is simple, for this session it was a simple as putting on a float and adding a hook length with most of the shot in a bulk using a 2.5 gram olivette, skill in this form of fishing comes from repetition and learning the method and the art of bolo or stick float fishing.  As you trot the peg you begin to map out the line you want to fish, parts of the peg where you need to hold back to get over a depth change or a rock.

In this peg on the line i was fishing the bite dropped back below the snag on the bottom and despite me trying the feed further upstream to draw them back up the peg it was to no avail and the snag on the bottom was becoming the end point of the swim as it became a case of get a bite before the snag or no bite at all.

I eventually hit the snag solid and there was no moving it so it was game over with the hook length.  At this stage i was a tad frustrated by striking at, and missing, bites so i decided to abandon the line completely and go just this side of the middle.  It was a case of my regretting not doing it sooner as i was quickly into roach on the bolo.

This is where the beauty of owning a long rod comes to its own.  At 17 feet long i had amazing control on the inside line as i was right behind the line of the float but when it come to then going down the middle the extra length of the rod meant it was as easy fishing as it was under my feet.

Settling into a rhythm of under arm casting out, feeding maggot and then feeding hemp.....run it through, hold it back and strike.  I was quickly putting a few better roach in the net.

I got chatting to a guy and as i did i managed a run of skimmers to around a pound and a half which really boosted the final net.  No pictures unfortunately as i was too busy nattering to take one of the skimmer.  We ended the session with two nice upper single figure nets of fish on a day where most rivers in the country where in flood.  Location and knowing your rivers and picking the right one from your armory is the key.

till next time i wish you all tight lines

danny

Catch Up and Red Letter Pike Day....

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  The written blog and fishing in general at the moment has taken a bit of a back seat with me taking some time off work.  This is of course the wrong format to be going into any detail on but its safe to say that the motivation just has not been there to sit in front of the screen and put a written blog together.  The main reason is to be honest content, to the point of going off work i had done quite a bit of pike fishing and i had accumulated quite a bit of video content to keep the pike blog and the youtube side of things ticking over with a weekly video.

The main blog did suffer a little as the last session before i went off work was a session on the river where i went all out for pike but the silver fishing of side was really poor so it really did mean the fat reserves for a fishing blog just was not there.  With blogging it is always good to keep things ticking over so in this update i will be doing a bit of a recap on the piking and where i am up to.  Luckily i also had a good session for pike before i went off where i had a real red letter day for them.  The pike diary is good but it does make blogging red letter sessions in detail really hard as the real estate on the page is not great.

With that all said lets get into the update:

Pike Fishing Progress

Well its safe to say the pike season hit the ground running and it has seen me have some good success chasing the old esox.  As it stands now i have caught 48 pike with 7 of my target of 10 doubles on the bank.  It has been a solid start to the campaign but with November being a but of write off with me being off work then progress will slow and right at the wrong time really with November being a great dead baiting month.  Such is live and i am sure i will be making up for lost time when i get back into work with my new leave year starting next month.

So the piking vlog is coming along well I'm comfortable speaking to the camera and its getting to a point where my editing is becoming easier as i learn the package.  I can also see this video logging being part of the angling year now out side pike fishing with sessions on the canal and river being a real possibility.

There is already plenty of content on the youtube page with some dedicated tutorials and actual sessions on the bank.  For anyone looking to save money with their fishing then piking is a great way to save money and a huge part of that can be making your own pike traces.

There is plenty of content coming on the pike blog as we are a few weeks behind but there have been some lovely pike caught so far, not least this lovely 14lb pike.

Red Letter Pike Session

A early start on the river and driving through the lanes in the dark i was optimistic of catching some pike as the forecast was for plenty of cloud cover and there was a nice nip in the air.  I of course got stuck behind the slowest of slow tractors heading there so it was already light when i arrived on the bank.

My tactic for the session was my trust paternoster live bait rig and setting up in a swim i had caught some pike in recently i was confident of a bite or two.  The sun rising over the river revealed the river to be in fine fettle with plenty of clarity for presenting a bait.  A good two hours in the swim and the rods remained motionless, i say motionless they or course dances to the live baits erratic tune.

A change was in order as it was clear the recent drops in temp had pushed the fish from the area.  The beauty of pike fishing is how simple and quickly you can pack in a move.  A ruck sack, two rods, two bank sticks and a landing net meant i was soon on the road to a new location.

One rod in i set about plumbing up the depth for the next one and i was soon presenting two baits in a new spot, a quick turn round and my first rod had gone and line was peeling off the open bail arm.  A strong strike and the rod hooped over straight away, a sure sign of a ok fish.  To this point i had caught two doubles and quite a few jack pike so i was pleased of the hard fight from the first fish.  A hard fight later i was pleased to slip the net under a 10lb 7ox pike, a great start.

The pike returned it was a great start to the new spot.  Of course the fish was rested in the net before releasing her back to her home and it did seem like it was only seconds after releasing the pike that the rod went again.  This time a jack just under the 6lb mark.

This pike was caught at 12.19am and showing how much the pike where on the feed the 3rd pike was caught and banked at 12.41 showing how hard they where on the feed.  Nothing in 2 hours in one spot yet 3 pike in no time at all in the other.

A nice break in the action allowed time for me to grab a warming brew and i was visited by a friend i have not seen in a while and it was great to catch up on our angling adventures since our paths crossed last time.  A good angler and it was great to see some of his angling pictures form recent silver fishing ventures.  Of course being the good man he is he also gave me a few pointers about potential other hot spots to try and the river in general, all of which i was grateful for.

1.30pm till 2pm brought on another flurry of activity with two lost fish and two more small jacks on the bank with a 5lb14oz fish followed up with a 5lb on the nose barrel of a jack pike.

Moving into the last hour the light levels really began to drop rapidly and with it so did the temperature.  Stood watching the floats i knew it was only a matter of time before the float went.  The odds so stacked i the favour of the predators they just had to be on the feed.  You could feel the tension building and hard flurry's by the baits gave a sign that something was about down deep.

My feeling was right as the right hand rod slid slowly away, a slow take that was so different to the other jack takes and i let the run develop before setting the hooks.  The reward a nice conditioned 9lb pike

The fish back the last half hour of the session was upon me and it was a session that passed in the blink of an eye.  I know there was 40 mins between takes but it did not feel like that to experience it, it felt like it was manic.  The time for the slow pack away had come and i was fresh out of baits baring one roach.  I decided to slowly pack all the other gear away and spent 15 minutes with just the one rod out.

Reaching for the rod it was time to call it a day and as i reached down i caught the float disappearing out of the corner of my eye.  Another slow take and striking i knew i was into another nice pike.  A hard fighting pike had me on all types of runs as line oozed from the spool.  The fight was a good one and up from the depths came a dark green shape of a lovely pike.  A double for sure and i thought around the 13-15lb mark.

On the bank she went 11lb and i mist admit i weighed her again and low and behold she was 11lb she just looked a lot bigger.

A cracking way to end a nice session with two doubles and 7 pike on the bank i left a happy angler.  At least the fishing was going ok and providing a space for solace away form the troubles developing in work.

Till next time

tight lins

Danny

New Blog Supporter....Welcome Fishing.TV

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  We will get straight into the blog update this week as there is quite a bit i want to cover.  There is some fishing at the end of this update but it is more of an update about a blog supporter and myself than the fishing this week. 

On to the Update...

Welcome Fishing.TV

Some of you may have noticed new advertisements on the side panel of the blog and i am really pleased to announce that as of a week or two ago Fishing.Tv is now officially a supporter of Dannys Angling Blog.

Fishing.TV offers a wide selection of fishing based programmes that can be rented out for a set period of time.  You purchase coins from the site and each programme costs you a certain amount of coins to rent.  I have been playing around with this over the past few weeks and i have found it to be really enjoyable.

The best feature for me has been the fact that the company not only has a website but also has backed this up with Apps on your phone.  This meant that if i was on the laptop i could watch content on there but also if i had a spare bit of time of an evening or even on my dinner break in work i could quickly get my angling fix at the touch of a button.

The content they offer is amazing quality, being available in HD, and the content on offer i found very varied covering Match, Fly, Carp and Predator fishing, with match and predator obviously grabbing my attention. The content available on there looks to be very varied within the Genre and the programmes i rented where both as informative as they where action based.

Check out their website for yourself using any of the links on the blogs side bars.

Hows the Vlogging???

I have to say i was very very apprehensive when i set up the blogs Youtube channel.  In general i am quite a shy person and although come out of my shell when i know people well it does take me time and as such was very unsure about even doing this venture at all.

So there are around four or five videos on the blogs youtube channel now and i have to say i have loved every minute of it so far.  All things start of small,  i love that,  as you can see the development of yourself and your content over time.  Even early on now the videos have gone from around 3 minutes long to one of the upcoming ones touching 10 minutes.

The actual recording of the blogs is quite addictive if i Am honest and i am slowly learning little tricks to speed up the editing of the blog as well.  There has also been plenty of positive feedback in the comments section and on websites around areas i can improve them and slowly and surely they have been Incorporated into the blogs.  The main additions being the addition of music, less talking on the intro and more information on how i catch the fish.

The content so far has all been pike based buit i can see next spring and summer carp trips and trips to the river and canal also getting a look in.

Please take a second to subscribe to the channel here:

Dannys Angling Blog Social Media......

The social media side of the blog has really grown over the past year and depending on what format you are on you can keep up with the blog on all formats on line now.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube are all formats now where content is posted on a regular basis.

All can be found on the following links:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogqlnE3gK_Re7vdU5bv8sw
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/DannysAnglingBlog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/satonmyperch


On to the Fishing...

Cold Snaps Produce Mixed Results...

When a venue gets under your skin it can be very hard to motivate yourself to go other haunts you have been and fished before.  We again headed for the venue we have fished the passed few weeks and the hope was that the cold snaps would condense the shoals and also bring them hard on the feed.

A change of venue or scenery was needed but also was the urge to suss this new venue out remembering once it was sussed it would form part of our venue choices from season to season.  This blog is a living document for anyone in the world to see but it also acts as a detailed diary for myself to look back on and look where we did well and where we did bad in years gone by.

The leaves all around now are a array of coppers, browns, dark greens and amber's as the trees all begin to shed their summer blankets.  We are well into the change now form summer into winter and for me this is the time i get excited and as the days get colder i wake up happy at that nip on my feet as i walk on the kitchen floor.  All around people wrapped up in thick coats and the odd scarf, all add that little bit of cheer to the ordinary commute to work for me.  My wait now is for that first morning when that first hard frost of the year nips hard at my nose as i open the front door.

Arriving at the venue it was bitterly cold and from the look all around it was not getting much warmer.  The sun rising over our shoulders did little to warm the air where we sat beneath a thick blanket of trees.  The skee tex thermal boots where a necessity on this session and come the end i was glad of their warm company.

Its safe to say that you look back on sessions and sometimes you can pin point your error and i think on this one i made it very very early on.  Having fished the area heavily over the passed few weeks i again mixed up a good amount of ground bait with the usual addition of mole hill soil.  In went 5 balls on the line and i have to admit at the time i expected to go straight over the bait and catch.

I did this quite well and in no time i was getting steady bites from roach that occasionally where of a nice stamp.

As normal i continued to feed with the swim with maggot and back this up with a ball of ground bait every 15 minutes.  The bites continued and i continued to feed for that first hour and then the swim died and i could not get a bite.  We had seen no activity in all the trips from pike on here so i ruled this on out quickly but thinking better fish had moved in i continued to feed the swim.

The swim declined then and for a good few hours it was a case of a odd fish here and a odd fish there but there was no consistency to it.  I stopped feeding the ground bait and going to a completely opposite stance i started up a new swim and fed it lightly with just pinkies.

This change to a completely negative approach worked a treat and i began picking up some nice fish on double pinkies.

I dont think i would have got away with this as i did had i not been fishing in such a depth of water.  The last two hours of the session till 3pm we both picked up some fish and it seemed as the day went on the bites came on better.  It got us thinking that maybe this place is worth trying into dark on an afternoon session.

The final net showed how sport had been hard to come by on the day with our joint net going around the 20lb mark when on previous weeks the individual nets had been around that mark.

till next week i wish you all

tight lines

danny

Roach Pole Fishing and Autumnal Carp Hunt..

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Writing this angling blog over the last few years has been such an enjoyable experience, going fishing then sharing my adventures on this format.  Finding the words to say without sounding repetitive is a constant challenge but i think over the years i have managed to keep it all both interesting and varied.  I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all the people who have ever taken the time to read the blog and a special thank you to the ones who religiously come back to keep up with the adventures.

This weeks blog see's the pike blog go live and with it a few videos to kick start the Youtube channel and i will cover a little bit on why i write the blog the way i do as it has been a subject that comes up quite a bit in the comments and on websites.  The fishing is a session for roach, cant have too much of a good thing right? And then a chase for an autumnal carp to end the season on.

Lets get into the update....

Pike Blog 2016/17 Goes Live....

As you can see form the top bar of the blog the Pike Diary 2016/17 is now live to view.  It will again run in a rolling format reading top to bottom with new trips added as it goes down.  Its a format i have found works well in previous years and with the odd video log added in it will also act as a kind of archive and play list location for these videos.

link to Pike Diary: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/p/pike-diary-201617.html

I know the writing is not for everybody so i have set up a Playlist on the Youtube page so if you just want to follow the VLogs then you can watch them all on the play list or subscribe and they will fall into your subscription box as and when each goes live.

I have set up a spreadsheet for this years piking so i know exactly what trips i have done on, what i have caught and what trips i have video logged and uploaded.  This should mean the pike diary this year will certainly be a lot more structured in the updates.  I am thinking of weekly updates on a Friday night and trying to include a video every 2 weeks.

There is currently 3 sessions live now on the youtube page and i have done this to kick start the channel, get a bit of content on there and then settle into a structured format.  Lets just see where this new part of the blog takes us and if it is feasible to continue both given amount of time and effort it takes, especially if vlog lengths increase.

For those looking to subscribe a link to the Channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

Lets Talk Locations and Secret Squirrel Blogs....

So this week i have again been defending my stance on not sharing my locations i am fishing and again been met with accusations that i just write my blog to show off and believe it or not "make money".  I can assure you there is no money to be made in blogspot for writing an angling blog so we can clear that one up right away.

Locations i fish, i do not share them for a number of reasons and i will cover them now.  The first reason i dont share exact locations on my coarse and pike fishing is fish safety, i believe the Internet is the prime area for people poaching our waters to find the good places to go and catch fish for the pot.  I have no problem in people sharing the locations of when they have fished a commercial or a syndicate water as these waters are well protected and it is in the interest of the owners to keep it that way, its their lively hood.

As you will see looking back over the last few years of blogs i am an angler that tends to avoid the popular spots and the places where its like a circus of anglers and prefer to fish the canals, lakes and rivers getting right out of the way.  As such i do fish waters where i see evidence of this poaching and fish being taken, a few years back i witnessed the decimation of the pike stocks on the Dee and right there and then i promised myself my blog would never be the source of this disgraceful act.

Sights like this now are rare on the dee:

We then move over to actual time and effort i put in, i put a huge amount of time and effort into my fishing and subscribe to the moto "fail to prepare, prepare to fail".  If you are willing to put the time into you fishing then you will get the results and this blog proves that, how long is it since i wrote a blog on coarse fishing and blanked?

Roach fishing is a common blog of late on both the rivers and a huge canal that's 22ft deep in places, the blogs show the final result, methods used and a recap on the session but what it doesn't show is the week i went without a dinner hour in work looking on google earth for accessible water and places to park the car, the trip then to the bank at 6am on a Sunday morning to see if any fished topped to give the location and in some cases even the presence of fish.  Then comes the risk and sacrifice, do you not go a water you know you can catch this time of year on in favour of possibly walking a few fields with your gear to blank?  The inner angler in me is an explorer and always want to chase that new adventure.

A swim there somewhere

Maybe with these vlogs i might look for a water and vlog the amount of effort i put into it and have that water as just one water that when its location gets out its done and dusted but it will show the amount of effort i put in.  why should i then just from someone putting a comment on facebook saying "where" give all that effort away to someone who can not even be bothered to say nice net, well done just a "where".  They then proceed to call you all the names under the sun when you don't share it.

Rant over ha ha its been a while and i am still waiting for this person to post their net up as they where adamant my help was not needed and they could use their own water craft and match my nets....i feel i may never see the fruits of their Internet fishing labour....

i feel liberated now lets get into the fishing...

Roach On The Pole...Never Too Much of a Good Thing...

This new area certainly has produced the good the passed few weeks with mid teen nets and a 28lb net for me last week.  When you suss a venue like this the challenge for me then comes in trying to get the best i can out of the venue.  The first week i fished castor on the hook and did not really get a better stamp of fish for my efforts than my uncle on maggot,  I fed little ground bait on this session and did feed heavy on the hemp.   Last week i decided to try and get the bream so i went heavy on the ground bait but i packed the ground bait full of maggot, hemp and micro pellets.

This week i toyed with the idea of again taking castor but decided on a different approach.  I decided to mix up a greater amount of ground bait adding a full kilo of Van Den Enyde Roach to the bucket and riddling before ten adding to it around 3 pints of mole hill soil.  It gave me a lovely fine but heavy mix containing the attraction of the smell of the ground bait but with the fact that at least half of the mix in the moil hill soil was neutral, e.g contains no feed content at all but would add colour.

The mix ready it was time to answer the call of nature and what a view i was met with as i walked the bank, a beautiful morning to be on the bank.

Back to the peg i set up the gear while the ground bait settled, i added a small amount of maggot to the mix as i hoped to attract the roach in with smell but them find my bait quickly.  This week we had moved down stream slightly and was in a new swim.  I got to work with the depth plummet and found the same depth as i had last week on a general slope but it was five sections of pole out and not the three i had fished the previous week.

My uncle had come with a altogether different approach as he decided to fish the whip to hand.  Madly enough we fished around 10 yards apart on this session and it took me right back to when i was a kid on the canal watching him fish the little whip snatcher to hand as so many of my early trips with my dad where on such a pole.

The session started off and i fed three balls of ground bait into the swim, it being a new area i didn't want to ruin it before i started.  My uncles fishing closer in was feeding sloppy ground bait with maggot on the hook.  He was soon into fish which was great to see in the new area.  My swim was really quiet though as i waited it out, my float was set a floats depth over depth to hopefully pick up a bream but for the first part it seemed like i would be lucky to get a bite.

I made a slight change and came up a float depth so i was literally dead depth bit the bottom on the venue and straight away i was into razor blade roach. It really is amazing how much a small change like that can make, from no bites all to literally a bite a chuck!

For the first part of the session the fish where quite small in size but every so often a better fish would show its head.  I was soon into a rhythm of catching roach steady and i was keeping to a set routine of feeding three big balls every 30 minutes and i was feeding a little top up ball every 15 minutes in between like the one shown below.

Keeping the feeding accurate on the spot the fish kept coming and form thinking i would be lucky to get a bite i was soon moving into the afternoon thinking i had into double figures in the onion sack.  My uncle catching steady on the whip was madly enough 10 feet away also bagging up, huge amount of fish in the swims.

As the afternoon wore on and the feed built up my average stamp of roach grew in size and i would say most put ins i was coming back with a roach around 4oz and knowing how the weights last week had come around due to average size and numbers of fish i was confident of a ok net.  My uncle was knee deep in fish and was also getting the odd better roach and a lovely bream around 3lb mark, the challenge now is to work out how to get the shoal in to feed.

As the afternoon wore on towards packing in we had both had a cracking days sport and it was noticeable this week that the fish had kept in the swims all session.  Previous weeks i was adding a section of pole here and moving closer in there, feeding two lines etc etc to keep fish coming but today the fish where in the swim and hard on the feed.

I think this was sheerly down to the drop in temperature this past week and the fish have really sensed it and got their heads down on the feed. We have a new venue to try next week but i am sure as the weeks tick on the fishing will go from strength to strength here as the cold kicks in and the fish come hard on the feed.  I am sure the bream will start to show in more numbers and i am sure this venue has a surprise or two in store for us.

We finished up with two fantastic nets both we agreed where over the 20lb mark and we left made up

my net

uncles net

The Hunt For Autumnal Gold.....

So a week or so back i set off on a little adventure to try and catch one more double figure carp to finish of the season. The water in question holds a lot of singles a sprinkling of low and upper doubles and of course the rumored "twenty pounder".  It was one of these mid to upper doubles i was targeting to end my season.

Arriving at the water there was no signs of fish on the top so i went with my trusty micro pellets and corn approach with an added liberal spray of Stinky Stuff Crayfish.  The swim soon was a jacuzzi of bubbles with a number of carp in the swim on the feed and in no time i had a few single figure carp on the bank as the delkims danced a merry carp tune on a regular basis.

As the sun came over the water and finally began its decent leaving only a mottled light through the brown and orange leaves i spotted a few nice fish up on the top, they where all nice fish and all in the target bracket.  The long summer of being caught had took its toll on these fish and they where in the area full of snags with deep undercut banks and tree roots providing ample areas to relieve themselves of my hook.

A crust of bread was my approach and there was no feeding up to be done here i was hoping to catch the group of guard with one morsel of bread cast in their patrol route.  The first fish came up and turned away, a nice common as well, the next two swam ignorantly under the free offering......"mud pigs?" slurping up anything they can find? not exactly fitting that profile here.

At the end of the group appeared a dark shadow and like as if laser guided it came straight up and took the bait.  Instantly my line went tight and the rod hooped over and in seconds all was solid.  The line whistling in the wind and that awful feeling of line grating against a snag.  Braid was great for floating on the water but i knew its abrasion qualities where not as great.

A change of angle and i felt a kick, i was still attached, i let all go slack for a second and used the oldest trick in the book to wait for the fish to think it was away and swim out of the snag.  A good minute i waited before he line headed out into the middle and the fight continued.  I had the advantage now though as lunges for the same snag where prevented and eventually i slipped the net under her golden autumnal flanks.

A perfect end to a perfect summers carp fishing...

Till next time

tight lines

Danny