David had planned to come to the UK from Boston for a family holiday and had asked me to guide his lad Jordan on catching a few fish. Now as you may know most of the angling in the USA is for large and small mouth bass. So when I asked David if he wanted to fish for coarse fish he was slightly puzzled and had to go away and look up what it meant.

Sure enough coarse fishing was fine, so with the rivers being closed I opted to fish for tench at Great Somerford. I had caught 9 the previous week when guiding Tyler so why not try again.

So I picked them up from the hotel in Bath and headed for the fishery. The day had promised to be mixed in terms of weather and they promised some heavy showers. So I had bought along a fox stalking shelter which in the end proved a wise choice.

The first thing was to show them some of the tackle and gear we used. Jordan had a go with the feature finding float and lead, and really enjoyed casting out the spomb. I showed them the reason for clipping up to ensure that the feeder lands at the same distance each cast. So after putting out some hemp we walked around the other 2 lakes to let things settle down.

On returning two casts were made and I guess within 20 minutes a tench had taken the bait. The method being used was a swim feeder and the helicopter rig, 5lb hooklink and size 16 hook with 2 or 3 red maggots.

The car was packed on Sunday morning and a good lunch inside me saw me heading off to fish Horseshoe. The weather forecast was not very good frost on the night followed by a cool northerly wind. Then the wind was turning to the south west on Monday, then heading for rain early Tuesday morning. […]

Having gone 4 days of not so good tench fishing at Horseshoe I decided to try one of my easier waters. Primarily to see how things were because I was taking Tyler fishing the following day. What I didn’t want to do was to blank. This is not good for a 10 year old guy. My […]

Well here I was one week later on Horseshoe. The temperatures were up and down all week and as I arrived I didn’t feel too confident. I fished a good swim where I’ve caught before. Now as I set up I had a friend Graham call me on the phone from across the lake he […]

Andy phoned me to ask if I wanted to fish for perch close to him on a commercial fishery. I’m unsure why they are called commercial, as all fisheries are commercial in that they are run for profit and at a cost. So with a spare Friday we headed off to fish there. There are […]

As most of you know I prefer to spend my tench fishing on Horseshoe lake at Leachlade. I will be spending sometime there again this year. Now for those of you who don’t know last year they had a terrible fish kill (carp) on the water. All sorts of experts were call in to find […]

I first met Vince and his lad Dan when fishing at Newlands lake near Oxford for tench about 3 years ago. Both are very good anglers and have caught some good fish. Well Vince has just had a very good weeks fishing. First I was with him on Monday last week when he caught a […]

The pool had been fishing very well over the previous few days with a few of those big roach showing. Still not in the numbers of last year. Rob, Mike, Vince and myself had been keeping each other informed on catches, times and swims etc. It still wasn’t easy fishing. On getting up at 4.30am […]

There are 3 days left to fish running water before the season ends. I’ve looked back through my last two diaries and noticed that on each occasion I’ve tried to fish Throop and found it very difficult. It’s no the conditions but the number of people who descend on the fishery. People are queuing to […]

Well after the rain on Sunday I decided to fish the Stour and H.Avon on Weds and Thursday hoping that the water level would lower plus the colour drop out. A call to Brian the bailiff the day before concluded that there was still plenty of colour on the river and not much being caught. I […]