The lost files !

Its amazing in this digital age how easy it is to mislay old images, if it was in the "olden days" we would have a album tucked away in a box, now we can easily loose a old favourite image on a corrupted drive ect, whilst this weekend had been a washout, I have tried to mend a old laptop and come across a few great pics that bought back some happy memories, so I thought I would pop them on here and share!!

This pic was taken by Gareth Purnell from total coarse fishing, as you can see by the headtorch, I had been on a very low river all night and caught nowt, not that unusual on opening day of the season, so I decided to trot a big worm on the pin and was rewarded with a small chub, not a biggie but very enjoyable when you have had a few biteless hours.

This carp was very special carp for me, my first river Severn biggie !! I had heard about big fish coming from this particular area but having never seen one or seen a picture of one, the only way to find out was to fish it, and fish it, and fish it, in fact I spent 12 sessions on the river before catching my first fish, I had everything else, salmon on pop ups, barbel, chub, bream even pike, but the huge carp that people had talked about had eluded me, I also began to wonder whether I was in the right place, the talk was of 20 pounders coming out every week you would have thought this place would be full of bivvies, but in 12 weeks I did not see another carp angler ??? strange, had I been thrown a curve ball, well yes I had I was fishing the wrong part of the river, but it didn't matter because I had caught a few and decided that I did all the groundwork and I was going to keep this spot to myself, hence the photo shopped background.

I have no idea what this fish is, I have had it confirmed that it is definitely not a trout and its very similar to a char, the fins were absolutely massive and it was like nothing I have seen before ??? It was from a English river and caught on the fly whilst after grayling in January its still a mystery to this day, but most experts that have seen the pic say its a char.

Carrot dangling !!! this was my first and last go at fishing for golden orfe !! a day blasting maggots at a waggler fishing resulted in loads of fish that day but not many orfe, so a change of tactics and baits (caster) saw me catching this beauty, and at the time a 5lb fish was unheard of especially in the midlands, a great day and superb weather, seems like this autumns gone on for ever and its only November !!!

During the summer months I tend to spend a lot of the time match fishing, and this picture was taken during a feature for a match fishing magazine, on the very beautiful patshull park, the lady barbra to be precise, and what a wonderful venue it is, but amazingly hardly anyone fishes it !! the day in question saw us have the whole lake to our self, no special treatment, its just that I don't think these "harder" venues appeal to a new F1 generation, I dont mind these venues at all, I just wonder sometimes whether or not it is creating a generation of commercial anglers that may well struggle on "natural" venues such a this, where there is not a piece on black hydro in sight !! anyhow me and my pal Ian chapman had a fantastic day taking over 50lb of bream and tench on a gorgeous place.

This Barbel was taken on a rising lower Severn in 16foot of water but the surprising thing is it was caught in the upper layers in fact around 10ft deep, I was fishing a heavy lead and 4oz kamasan black cap all day steadily firing pellets out into my swim and noticed on a recast the tip bounced, at first I though it must have been debris in the water, but after another biteless hour, I wondered if the fish had actually come up in the water feeding on my steady stream of pellets, so I changed to a very light 10gram black cap and threw it a few times filling it up with 3mm pellets each time. About 10 casts later I counted the black cap down feeling the line, counted to 10 and wallop this superb barbel was the result, I am now convinced that these fish don't necessarily feed exclusively on the bottom, I have seen it in the summer months on the Severn and the Teme.