Six 3lb roach in a single session for Alan Stagg

April 1, 2011 Bauer Xcel

A senastional haul of huge specimen roach featuring six fish over 3lb and topped by a 3lb 8oz giant has been taken by bang in-form big fish angler Alan Stagg.

The Drennan Cup contender increased his chances of challenging for the most prestigious award in specimen fishing when he took the amazing catch from an Oxfordshire stillwater.

A maggot feeder cast to a spot around 50yds from the bank proved to be the winning method for the angler, from Basingstoke, Hants, who landed fish weighing 3lb 8oz, 3lb 6oz, 3lb 4oz, two at 3lb 3oz and another of 3lb 1oz, with the biggest fish of his three-day session equalling his personal best for the species.

His rig, which featured a double maggot hookbait mounted on a size 18 hook, was built from 8lb mainline and a 4lb hooklength.

“I didn’t have a bite for 24 hours and then I had two three pounders on the bank at the same time,” Alan explained to Angling Times.

“When I bought my white maggots for the session I riddled them and then added a few handfuls of Sonu Baits Supercrush Green groundbait, which I then left them in for a few days.

“This is made from crushed koi pellets and big roach seem to really love this. I’m convinced it gives me an edge.”

Incredible haul of roach taken from Oxfordshire gravel pit

March 4, 2011 Bauer Xcel

A huge haul of massive roach has been taken - made up of six fish averaging more than 3lb apiece and topped by a true giant weighing 3lb 13oz.

The historic catch was put together by bang-in-form specimen hunter Jamie Cartwright, who used a maggot feeder approach to bank fish of 2lb 13oz, 2lb 13oz 8dr, 3lb 0oz 8dr, 3lb 1oz and 3lb 2oz, as well as the big one, for a total weight of 18lb 11oz!

It capped an amazing week for the 33-year-old, who took a brace of 30lb-plus pike from Chew Valley Lake just seven days earlier.

Jamie told AT how his dream session at the Oxfordshire gravel pit unfolded.

“I got the rods out before dawn, and set about recasting them every couple of hours, with just 20 or 30 maggots in the feeders and no loosefeed at all,” he said.

Jamie had to wait until 1.45pm for the first bite of his session, resulting in a superb fish of 3lb 1oz, which beat his old roach pb by a pound, and it was then a full five hours later he received a second bite, which would result in the biggest of his haul.

Like the rest, it fell for a maggot hookbait flavoured with Geranium oil.

Jamie told AT: “I’d missed a drop back 10 minutes earlier, so recast to the spot, and the same rod went again. It’s hard to tell how big the fish are right up until you land them and shine the headtorch on the net.

“When I did, I could see that it was noticeably bigger than the other ‘three’ I’d caught. It went 3lb 13oz, and measured 17in long with a girth of 14ins. After all those blanks without a single roach at the water this winter, my first two fish added up to nearly 7lb. I was stunned, and called my mate Dougie, who drove all the way from Northampton to take the pics. By the time he got there I had two more roach scaling 2lb 13oz and just over 3lb in the net!” After winding in the rods for the night, Jamie took several more fish to an impressive 3lb 2oz the following afternoon before bringing his remarkable session to an end.

The magnitude of Jamie’s achievements were not lost on species expert Mark Wintle, who is currently putting the finishing touches to a new book called ‘Big Roach’.

He said: “It’s a remarkable hit of big fish and ranks right up there as one of the best ever taken from a stillwater.” Jamie caught all of his fish on helicopter feeder rigs made from 5.5lb Gardner Mirage flourocarbon mainline, Korum Quick Change heli-kits, 0.13mm Reflo Powerline hooklinks, size 16 Kamasan B983 hooks and customised mini Drennan Vari-weight feeders.

ANGLING ART GALLERY – NOW IN THE GO FISHING SHOP!

February 25, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Go Fishing is offering anglers the chance to own a limited edition print from legendary angling artist John Searl this week.
We’ve just secured the final, limited stocks of six incredible pieces of artwork, plus his latest book, for Go Fishing users in what could be the best investment deal of 2011.
John Searl is our finest angling and wildlife artist and these magnificent prints from his own watercolour paintings are a much sought after, especially as most are limited to just 50 prints.
Each print is hand signed and hand numbered by the artist himself, and reflect a whole host of classic angling moments captured forever.
“Some of John’s original prints have sold for thousands of pounds in auctions and galleries over the years so they make a sound investment,” said Steve Fitzpatrick of Angling Times.

What’s in store?

John Searl Pin Perfect print – LIMITED EDITION 100 PRINTS
Price £95 + £5 p&p
Exclusively commissioned for Angling Times and Shimano to celebrate their 90th Anniversary, this is John Searl’s latest artwork and feature’s Britain’s favourite species – the roach.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl Under the Bridge print – LIMITED EDITION 50 PRINTS
Price £95 + £5 p&p
‘Under the Bridge’ is a celebration of Britain’s favourite species of fish – the roach – and depicts two specimen-sized river redfins leaving the sanctuary of their weedbed to feed on anglers baits – hemp and sweetcorn - trickled in from a bridge overhead.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl On the Float print – LIMITED EDITION 50 PRINTS
Price £95 + £5 p&p
Just 25 remain of this Limited Edition print and each one has been hand signed and numbered by the legendary angling artist John Searl. On the Float is a celebration of winter river fishing and depicts a brace of huge chub taken from on the Hampshire Avon.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl Lady of the Stream print – LIMITED EDITION 50 PRINTS
Price £95 + £5 p&p
This is a sneak peek at a rarely seen underwater environment and its inhabitants and takes the angler into the realm of the grayling, one of Britain’s most enigmatic species of fish. Only 20 of the 50 prints remain.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl Winter Magic print – LIMITED EDITION 100 PRINTS
Price £95 + £5 p&p WAS £125!
Possibly John Searl’s most famous watercolour ‘Winter Magic’ depicts a catch any angler would be proud of with a brace of chub of 6lb 3oz and 6lb 1oz joined by an equally impressive trio of roach weighing 2lb 12oz, 2lb 6oz and 2lb 2oz, all caught by the angler himself. Just 40 prints remaining.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl Hampshire Avon Map print
Price £35 + £5 p&p
Any angler who has fished the famous Hampshire Avon will love this watercolour artwork from legendary angling artist John Searl. This unique angling map immortalises the famous river and it’s wildlife.

CLICK TO BUY

John Searl Chalkstream Roach book – LIMITED STOCKS
Price £35 + £5 p&p
‘Chalkstream Roach – the Ultimate Challenge’ by John Searl is the definitive book that all roach and river anglers will love to own.
Every aspect and style of roach fishing has been covered, from trotting and stalking in Summer and Autumn, to traditional bread-fishing in Winter.

CLICK TO BUY

Two huge pike and two huge roach caught in four days

February 18, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Fenland all-rounder Chris Hammond showed the winter potential of his local waters with a stunning haul of specimen fish, including a brace of roach at 2lb 6oz and 1lb 14oz, along with two 20lb pike - all landed in just five days.

Amazingly, the impressive roach came during the 47-year-old’s first attempt for the species, while targeting the fish in a large Norfolk gravel pit. The pike - weighing 21lb 10oz and 21lb 12oz - were landed on a stretch of a nearby drain.

“I’ve had roach up to 1lb from a local river while pleasure fishing but, because of my fixation with winter piking over the years, I’ve just never got around to having a proper crack at them,” explained the builder, who also featured in AT recently with a zander of 11lb 2oz.

“I hadn’t been fishing long when I had my new pb for the species at 1lb 14oz,” said Chris. “As if that wasn’t enough, I had another at 2lb 6oz soon after, along with a good bag of quality roach around the 6oz mark.

“I had to deal with gale-force winds, but I caught steadily and just left both rods in until I got a bite. The fish, I believe, were moving between the gravel bars in front of me and I relied on just the maggots in the feeder to attract them,” added the Newmarket, Cambs-based angler.

The roach fell to turmeric-flavoured maggots fished on a helicopter rig set-up, while the pike took floatfished deadbaits on size four trebles and 50lb braid.

FREE glossy fish poster worth £30 in this week’s Angling Times!

February 10, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Renowned angling artist John Searl has produced an exclusive, limited edition Roach print for all Angling Times readers! The glossy poster, worth £30, is wrapped around this week’s paper and is the first in a three part series of new prints FREE with Britain’s biggest selling fishing weekly.

In addition to the poster, John has a very limited number of the original prints available on his website - just 100 in total - all signed, numbered and exclusively available to Angling Times readers. To get your hands on one visit www.johnsearl.co.uk for more info.

About the artist:

John Searl came to prominence as an illustrator in the world of angling in the early 1990's for his work in the classic angling book (which he helped to produce with Peter Rogers), Red Letter Days; a tribute to their angling hero, Bernard Venables. He has also illustrated books for many other ‘angling greats' including Peter Stone and Fred J Taylor. His work has appeared in several angling magazines over the years and to date, over 50 limited edition prints of his work have been published and have sold extensively throughout the world.

John's currently busy working on the second piece of angling art, free with Angling Times, available in April - make sure you look out for the exclusive collector’s set

Change of venue leads to first-ever 2lb roach

January 28, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Being flooded off of a virtually unfishable Hampshire Avon turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Courtmoor angler Ross Lawson after he caught his first-ever 2lb roach.

Switching to a Hampshire stillwater, the 51-year-old air traffic controller used feeder tactics to present a tiny piece of breadflake on a fine-wire size 16 hook.

He used 0.11mm hooklength to take the 2lb 3oz fish.

Dr Mark Everard catches eight 2lb-plus roach in a day

January 21, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Roach expert Dr Mark Everard made a haul of eight 2lb roach this week to take his tally to a staggering 786 fish over that weight.

The Wiltshire all-rounder used floatfished breadflake, and here he explains how the bumper winter session unfolded…

“The river has always been my first port of call for roach – not surprising when you consider that I live just a 30-second walk from the Bristol Avon in Great Somerford, North Wiltshire.

“The backend of the season is normally when the roach are feeding hard ready for spawning, but two successive bad winters have ‘knocked’ the fish out of their normal habits.

“A quick check on the river last week saw it running coloured but more of an issue was the fact that we had experienced a deluge of freezing rain, dropping the water temperature to 2.3ºC. The few fish I had caught from it recently were like lumps of ice in the hands, so no wonder bites had been few and far between.

“Reassessing my options, I headed for a very large lake on the Gloucestershire/Wiltshire border for a quickfire dusk session – it had to be better than staying at home, again! Pulling into the car park, my spirits dipped when I saw that most of the lake was still frozen, but I headed to a downwind corner where I could see that the ice shelf was slowly retreating. From experience, I knew that the fish tend to feel secure under the edge of an ice shelf as it begins to melt, and I also knew, or rather hoped, that they would be hungry.

“I decided to keep it as simple as possible, opting for a pinch of slow-sinking breadflake under a waggler a couple of rodlengths out against the edge of the ice sheet, trickling in a loosefeed of liquidised bread to cloud the water column. I also knew that there was a drop-off in exactly the same spot, plus an influx of warm groundwater which the roach often liked to patrol.

“For the first half-hour my neon float tip remained motionless as the light began to drain from the winter sky. Thirty minutes later my luck changed, the float slid under and the first of a procession of plump silver roach was played gingerly towards the net.

“As darkness began to fall I switched to a black-tipped float, giving me a decent silhouette on which to focus.

“The bites continued thick and fast, and by the time it came to pack away my keepnet held a dozen sparkling roach, all of them over 1lb 14oz, with eight being 2lb-plus to a best of 2lb 3oz – not bad for an evening on a largely-iced stillwater!

“Why does nobody else bother to fish these prolific lakes for silverfish in winter?”

Britain's best river fishery is free for all

January 21, 2011 Bauer Xcel

Angling Times this week lifts the lid on the best river fishing in England – and it’s absolutely free!

For five months of the year, the lucky residents of Norwich, the capital of Norfolk, have the UK’s finest running water sport right on their doorstep.

The Wensum here offers huge catches of roach or skimmer bream for those prepared to put up with the hustle and bustle of a vibrant city centre and this winter it has been on fire.

Winning match weights have scarcely strayed below 20lb and have run to nearly 40lb, and match organiser Tony Gibbons said that in one magic spell of six matches over Christmas, the average weight per angler was over 15lb.

The Norwich and District Anglers Association chairman is no slouch himself and has taken near 30lb roach nets in recent weeks on his favourite stick float.

Together with friend Pete Swan, he was hoping to recreate sport like this for the AT cameras on a miserable Wednesday morning in East Anglia. But Mother Nature had other ideas.

Relentless rain the previous day had seen the river rise and it was pushing through between its concrete banks, but the anglers weren’t too worried. They’d set up on the Coal Yard stretch, next to the footbridge upstream of the main road bridge by the football stadium. Modern apartments loom over the river here, which is tidal, joining the Yare just below Norwich where it flows into the sea at Great Yarmouth. Anglers like to check the tide timetables before planning their fishing.

“The best tide for roach is an hour into the tide, for the next three hours, and the best for bream is an hour before high water and the first two hours as it drops. It drops for 6.5 hours and rises for 5.5 hours so you get a 12 hour tide.

“Fishing here is completely free but anglers have to respect the surroundings – we don’t have matches every week because the residents in the flats haven’t paid good money to look at a bunch of us scruffy anglers every week! There’s a white line painted on the towpath which we don’t obstruct with any tackle,” said Tony.

By his own admission Tony is old school and likes nothing more than to come down here with a match rod, centrepin and set of stickfloats, a set up which would unfortunately prove of little use today. Instead a sticky groundbait mix was balled in and he set about running a pole rig through.

“To catch fish here you need to fish a method that you’re comfortable with – the pole, the whip, the stickfloat, the feeder or the pole feeder, they all work well. I still believe the running line is the most successful on a roach river because it catches the better stamp fish. But today we’ll have to fish for the bream and skimmers.

“You can come down here when it’s at normal level and not even see a bream, but get some colour and flow in and they feed en masse!” he said.

Pete made the change first, to an unusual set up entailing a feeder rig on his pole. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is but he’d tied a paternoster rig with a groundbait feeder onto a long length of line.

This was freelined to the bottom, with the top of his line tied to a 12ins length of number six pole elastic, which hangs just out of the water. A further 12ins of line connected this to the pole elastic connection. Bites are signalled by the elastic rattling or stretching.

Braced with his 8m margin pole on a rest, it only took a couple of casts before his special elastic indicator was dragged into the river as a fish hooked itself. A fit 2lb 8oz river bream put up a good account of itself in the flow and it was soon netted.

Holding his double maggot bait perfectly still, Pete went on to bank another 15 in two hectic hours, with Tony chipping in with four on a rig just tripping through.

“That’s how it works on this river,” explained Pete. “You can get 10 bream in as many casts then it might go quiet for a bit.

“Great fishing isn’t just limited to a few pegs either, it’s all the way along our 50 peg match length from Carrow Bridge to Bishops Bridge. And the best part?,” he added, “It’s all completely free!”

WATCH A VIDEO OF PETE SWAN IN ACTION ON THIS STRETCH HERE