A day out with Mark Barrett.

Today was a day I was looking forward to for a long long time, a day out guided with Mark Barrett Pike fishing on the Fenland drains.

I was up at 5am to do the 130 mile, 2.5hr trip to the Fens which flew by and I arrived at a café 10 minutes from where we was fishing to meet Mark. After putting my bits in his truck we set off for a drain known as the 16 footer.

Mark was a brilliant guide and talked me through all the aspects of the set up, baiting and indication, don't get me wrong, I've done some Pike fishing in the past and had a few but wanted to know more on the species and how to catch them more effectively.

The drains seem to fish better past 11am so Mark was saying and just past 11 I had my first run, but I missed it, first lesson I learnt was that I was striking them far to light, “you're not Roach fishing” said Mark, luckily not long after I had another run and this time I hit it harder and it stayed on, this was also the first time I had used braid and really enjoyed it. At 6lb was not my biggest Pike but good fun. Not long after that another was on and once in weighed about the same.

After those fish all went quiet so a move was in order, only a few hundred yards up where there was an inlet.

The great thing about fishing these drains is you drive up the bank, set-up and you can literally fish out of your car/truck, but its best in a 4x4 as my car would have been far to low.

Whilst waiting for bite fenland legend and co-author with Mark of the Fenland Pike book Dennis Moules stopped for a chat, he had one pike earlier but apart from that all seemed quiet.

The day was coming to an end and although the fishing has been a bit slow Mark was a great host, I learnt a shed load about Pike fishing amongst other stuff and the sunset over the Fens was pure quality.

I look forward to another a trip later in the year hopefully for some Zander.

Itchen for Grayling.

With maggots left over from yesterdays fishing at Ashmoor and with the Wife working for a few hours in Winchester it was only right I took the kids onto the river Itchen for a few hours as my son was really hoping to catch his first Grayling.

We arrived in Winchester at about 8:30am, dropped off the Wife and headed for the city stretch of the river.

After strolling up and down a couple of times we decided to try a different stretch as not much was happening here and was very busy with dog walkers.

Next we tried the Shawford stretch as it seems to be a more prolific part of the river.

After wading through some very flooded parts of the tow path we got to the free stretch and started to bait the swim. After a few trots down I had a nice little brown Trout which I slipped back quickly. It was very hard to get the presentation right as it was flowing so fast, I was running the maggots about half a foot of the bottom but wasn’t having much luck, I saw a small fish right in the margin so shallowed up and dropped it in, after a few little plucks I soon had a Salmon par on. I dropped it in the edge again this time a nice Grayling of 1lb 1oz.

As I had promised my son I would try and get him a Grayling I handed the rod over, this was also his first time using a centre pin reel, which he picked up really well and soon had his first Grayling on the bank.

With that we headed for back and it was mission completed, and a cracking way to spend a few hours.

At long last.

Due to awful weather conditions recently this was to be our first fish of the year and I couldn’t wait, and as we was unsure if the weather would hold we decided on Ashmoor lakes for the venue as its nice and close and we were guaranteed a fish.

I picked Steve up at a very late (for us) 7:30am and we headed for Ashmoor, I was wearing a LOT of clothing as it said it could be -3 real feel, so I had under crackers, thermal layer top and bottom, fleece lined trousers with wind proof over trousers, t-shirt, polo. Fleece and wind proof jacket, I looked huge.

Walking around to the swims was a little treacherous as it was quite flooded near the car park, but with a group effort we got to the swims. I had decided to bring a couple of methods to try but my main attack was going to be the flat bed feeder cast tight to the island using groundbait and a single Betalin soaked plastic maggot, the other method was to use a float set up in the margins

The weather was looking great for a few bites and I wasn’t sure if it was all the layers I was wearing but it didn’t seem that cold.

I put a little bait in the margins and a small ball of groundbait to the island and some specially trained stunt maggots too.

After casting in it didn’t take long to start getting bites, Roach and Bream mainly which was nice.

After a couple of hours the wind started to get up and was really biting and making it very hard to see the bites on the quiver so I reeled in and started float fishing.

The Bream had really got on the bait I had been trickling in the margins and were gong frantic, even for the time of year and how cold it was getting I couldn’t give them enough bait it was mad.

After a while longer we decided to call it a day as it was getting hard to hold the rod in the wind and with heavy rain on the horizon we retreated before getting a drenching.

As usual Ashmoor had come up trumps for us, as we always say its impossible to blank here which is why its our number 1 fishery.