Plop. Greedy eyes swivelled towards the commotion. As they focussed, I swear she licked her fat rubber lips at the fry pattern hovering 1.5m away. She stroked her whiskers, cruised over and slurped it down. A plan was coming together and this was a welcome change. No hesitation or suspicion. Since moving to the Netherlands [...]
Mullet are suckers for a floating sand flea imitation. This is especially true along beaches where masses of sand fleas are writhing under every frond of decaying kelp. This was not one of those beaches. On numerous occasions when action was slow, schools of mullet had me wishing that I had a few mullet flies [...]
Tails slapped and splashed ahead. Excitedly, we crunched our way forward through shells and the West Coast mist that enveloped everything in white. This was it - white steenbras tailing on the flats. "Anticipation gave way to surprise as they morphed into a school of marauding guitarfish" Guitarfish come alive with the tides [...]
I have never had a rod eye break, but last weekend I had not one, but two fail. The first, not surprisingly, was on my old Sage TCR while tussling a 7lb brown from the depths. Then a leg of the titanium recoil guide broke on my Hardy Zenith. I still cannot work out why [...]
A shadow cruised just under the turquoise surface. Could it be? The shape suggested a small Mangar. It accelerated towards the small white zonker that landed ahead of it... This trip to Iran showed the effectiveness of a simple white zonker over pearl body. Even carp ate it. Since then, this version of zonker has [...]
Trout catch reports in August are always low for the big UK reservoirs. In the cooler depths, even with a DI8, they are hard to find. Especially when the reservoirs are 30m deep. But we had some toys. We aimed to enjoy a sunny day drifting across the lake, talking rubbish and theorising why we [...]
Gold flashed and I ducked behind the shrubbery. In the pale morning light, a spectacle emerged. A thick black cloud of fry penned in by chub, barbel and bream. There was no urgency. The fish seemed to take turns at the soup kitchen. Fresh fish soup was on the menu. They would slowly cruise into [...]
Sploosh. Another huge rat jumped off the shore into the river. Their swimming prowess underwater is unreal. The speed, agility and comfort in water was surprising. I am sure that pike are all too happy to snack on them. Anyone who watches Fly vs Jerk will have seen the huge success of the [...]
A golden olive back porpoised in the wind rippled surface. Then another, and another. The surface was alive with barbel tucking into dinner. We had found them. Finally. The small balbyter ant plopped near the action. Within seconds pale lips loomed through the surface film to sip it down. A light lift of the rod [...]
"You won't land that fish", said Piet. A sense of finality from the first glimpse of the huge shape passing under his canoe. The most bitter sweet fishing event I have experienced. A family trip floating down the Orange river is magical. Relaxed, social, happy. The fishing pretty good too. The water was ultra [...]
