Lid lifted on top silverfish stillwater

Angling Times this week lifts the lid on the greatest ‘silverfish only’ stillwater in the land.

The lake is located within the walls of one of the country’s best carp bagging complexes but the management have left one pool free of mirrors and commons and it has turned into a popular haven with match and pleasure rods alike.

Huge hauls of barbel, chub, tench and bream have been recorded in recent weeks, with countless triple figure nets being taken.

What’s even more impressive is that virtually any tactic is capable of scoring heavily, with long pole, margin fishing and feeder approaches all in deadly form.

To find out more about this top silverfish haven, pick up a copy of this week’s Angling Times, on the shelves from Tuesday August 9.

Stagg scores first time big bream

It can sometimes take specimen anglers a while to get to grips with new waters, especially large venues. Not so for big fish ace Alan Stagg, as this 12lb 10oz bream shows.

The specimen was landed by the Gardner Tackle-backed rod during his first session on a 90 acre Berkshire gravel pit, falling to a hook bait of two pieces of plastic corn hair rigged on a size 8 Talon Tip hook.

During the 40hour stint, Alan feed 5kg of Sonubaits F1 groundbait mixed half-and-half with Supercrush marine halibut groundbait laced with pellets, corn and dead maggots to create a carpet and get the bream on the feed. This was spodded onto a bar at 40 yards range.

At the business end, Alan used a 6inch hooklength of 15lb Trickster braid with a 2oz inline lead to 10lb Hydro Tuff mainline.

Location key to big bream

Catching big bream is all about location, a fact specimen angler Ken Hellewell used to strike gold during a recent session targeting the species.

Spotting a few big fish rolling rolling over a deep channel in a Berkshire gravel pit the Farnborough-based rod was soon holding this impressive 13lb 8oz specimen for the camera.

Ken cast inline maggot feeders over the top of a bed of strawberry-flavoured groundbait and dead red maggots to tempt the bite from the bream.

Immitation maggots tipped with a piece of foam was the winning hookbait and his rig was constructed from a braid hooklength and a size 8 Drennan hook.

Trio of massive bream landed

An angler has taken a trio of huge bream to a top weight of 18lb 5oz on simple maggot feeder tactics.

Ray Miles from north London used just a couple of pints of bait to take the fish, which together weighed a fraction under 50lb.

He also slipped the net under 14 big perch during his amazing session, including seven over 3lb.

To read the full details of Ray's incredible exploits, get next week's Angling Times, on sale Tuesday 19th July.

Big bream bag for eel expert

Specimen eel angler Steve Ricketts proved once again he knows how to charm more than 'snakes' out of the water, after landing a glut of over 30 big bream to 13lb 15oz.

Landed over a two night session from a Hertfordshire gravel pit, all of Steve’s fish were landed on legered 10mm strawberry boillie, apart from this brace of doubles which he caught on float fished sweetcorn.

“I just wanted to see if I could catch a few of the bream on the waggler and ended up with this pair of 10 pounders,” Steve told Angling Times. “It just shows what the reward can be on some of these carp waters when you fish with scaled down gear.”

Old school tactics work best for barbel

“Forget pellets on the River Trent if you want to catch big nets of barbel.”

That’s the advice from a group of match anglers who have been getting stunning results after breaking out the worms and casters.

Fishing on the tidal stretches of the waterway around North Clifton and Laughterton, Lincoln lads Dean Smith and Alan Henry have caught 50lb-plus bags of species with individual fish into double figures, by using an approach normally reserved for the bream of the famous river.

Dean in particular has enjoyed a great start to the season with several match wins thanks to reverting back to the old school approach.

“In a way we stumbled on using worms because as a match angler you’re always after catching everything rather than picking out a single species,” SPRO and Dynamite Baits-backed Alan said. “We noticed that fishing worm and caster still caught barbel whereas the lads fishing pellet weren’t getting them. I think the fish have become very wary of pellet, they see so much of it as there are lots of barbel anglers on the river putting in lots of bait.”

See tomorrow’s Angling Times for a full lowdown on the tips, tactics and tricks that the lads have been using to get the very best out of their forward-thinking approach.

Can you identify the mystery fish?

When Pete McKay landed this impressive fish during a pleasure angling session on a tidal stretch of the River Trent, at first he thought that he had caught a huge chub.

Upon closer inspection of the impressive 6lb 2oz specimen, however, he realised that something wasn’t right and so asked the opinion of his fellow anglers along the stretch.

Most thought it was an ide, some were sure it was a chub, while a few considered it to be a hybrid of some sort.

“A couple of the lads were adamant that it was an ide, and I’m minded to believe them, but ideally I would like the views of an expert just to be sure,” Pete told Angling Times.

Four separate pictures of the fish have now been sent to fish identification experts at the Environment Agency, and the results will be posted on this website as soon as we receive them.

River Nene hits top bream form with near 150lb bags!

"The River Nene in Cambridgeshire is fishing as well as at any time in recent memory." Those are the words of local match organiser Ken Wade, whose friend John Hazleden amassed an astonishing 147lb bag of bream from the waterway last weekend.

Fishing the famous North Bank section of the river around Peterborough, Hazleden started the match by bagging an eel and feared the worst for the next five hours, but by 2pm had taken a massive haul of bream and skimmers.

Other sections of the Nene are also coming back into form, with the section above the town around Wharfe Road producing good nets of bream, while the Railworld stretch is also said to be throwing up decent bags of mixed species as well.

East Anglian anglers on the bream!

Big pleasure bags of bream have been the order of the day for anglers in East Anglia, with numerous ‘ton-up’ hauls recorded from a host of well-known venues such as the Middle Level, Ten Mile Bank and Relief Channel.

Of the three, the Middle Level - especially the stretch between Marys and Neepes - has been providing the biggest bags, with catches to 140lb taken.

These have been made up of mostly bream to 7lb, along with numbers of roach, tench, rudd and even the odd carp.

Along the Ten Mile Bank, plenty of bream have been showing between the Railway Bridge and Browns Farm, backed up by decent shoals of roach.

For information about fishing in the area, log on to www.klaa.co.uk

Trio share 1,000lb in Ireland

Anglers that have written off Ireland’s ‘glory days’ as a thing of the past may have to rethink their view after three anglers shared over 1,000lb between them in two days on the bank.

After hearing rumours of good catches at one of the country’s most famed waters, the lads decided to make the long trip from their South West base and were richly rewarded with fish averaging around 3lb coming virtually every drop for the duration of the fishing sessions.

“It was the most astonishing action we have ever experienced. Ireland has been criticised for its deteriorating sport but this is proof if it was ever needed that you can land the catch of a lifetime there,” explained group leader Malc Elstone.

For more details on one of the biggest catches to come from Ireland in the over a year and the rig that did the damage, see next week’s Angling Times, on sale Tuesday 5th July.

Trent 'on fire' as 722lb of silverfish banked

The River Trent has enjoyed some of the best matches ever seen on the water – with the stand-out contest producing 722lb of silverfish between 23 anglers.

Held at Laugherton, it saw each man average 33lb – weights that bear comparison with the venue’s glory years of the 1970s and 80s.

But that wasn’t the only Trent success story in the opening weeks of the season.

Another match, this time at the famous Collingham stretch, saw the winner net 151lb of barbel.

*For the full story, see tomorrow’s Angling Times, on sale Tuesday 28th June.

'The Trent is fishing better than ever' claims matchman

The River Trent has enjoyed some of the best matches ever seen on the water, with two ton up barbel catches to 151lb and 40lb nets of skimmer bream galore during opening week.

Heading up the match catches was Darren Harston with 151lb from the Collingham AA water, closely followed by 109lb to Ian Donaldson.

But in an incredible contest at Laugherton, 23 anglers bagged 722lb of skimmers between them, an average river catch of 33lb per man.

Spro Lincoln Whisby Rod Dean Smith, who topped the G. Thompson Memorial match with 72lb 2oz, said of the river’s excellent form: “I’m only 30 years old but this is the best I’ve ever seen it fish in my lifetime.”

UK Champs venue changed

The venue for the second round of the UK Angling Championships has been changed after host fishery Coleman’s Cottage pulled out.

Scheduled for Wednesday July 13, the match will now take place at Barston Lakes, a fact that hasn’t pleased event organiser Nigel Harrhy.

“The owners (of Coleman’s Cottage) told me that it was too much work for them to have the match and that’s annoying, “ he said.

Full story in next week’s Angling Times, on sale 21st June 2011.

FREE spool of Ultima line worth £3.95 with your new issue of Improve Your Coarse Fishing – in the shops from June 15th

BREAM that think they’re carp, the ultimate barbel rig, a celebration of the start of the river season and a FREE spool of Ultima line worth £3.95 are highlights of the new Improve Your Coarse Fishing.

Out on June 15 it’s packed with expert advice to help you catch more fish right now, here is a taster of what’s in the latest issue of Britain’s best-selling fishing magazine…

• The days of cereal groundbaits for bream are over according to one expert. We discover the power of fishmeal groundbait and pellets for slabs.

• We reveal Sonubaits new pellet binding powder that makes it easy to pack pellets on a flat feeder to catch carp and bream.

• June 16 marks the start of the river season so we’ve got three features to celebrate. Whether you’re after chub, barbel or carp our river special has the answers.

• Crucian carp only eat tiny baits on fine hooks, right? Wrong actually. Darran Goulder reveals how a soft paste could bring you a fish of a lifetime.

• England international Steve Hemingray delves into ‘Rat Holes’. No he’s not a rodent catcher, he’s but he is catching carp in small gaps in island vegetation.

• Learn how you tie a super short hooklink with your FREE gift. It’s a top quality Ultima line and we show you how to get the best from it.

• The new Improve is out on June 15th – perfect timing for the start of the river season!

20lb 2oz bream sets new British record for the species

The official British bream record has been broken by a gigantic specimen weighing 20lb 2oz.

Caught from a well-known 50-acre southern gravel pit, the immense fish was landed by specimen angler Simon Lavin during a week-long session targeting the species.

The fish breaks the current official best for the species by 8oz, with Simon, who also once held the grass carp record with a fish of 33lb 12oz caught from Horton Church Lake in 1999, confirming to AT that he will definitely be submitting the capture to the British Record Fish Committee.

Believed to be only the second bream ever caught over 20lb, the landmark fish should also end the furore that has existed since the capture of a 22lb 9oz specimen in 2009 that went unclaimed.

The new record fish is no stranger to Simon, who landed it two years ago at 17lb 10oz – the 50-year-old’s previous personal best and a capture that first alerted the civil engineer to the potential of the small head of bream in the water.

“After I caught it in March 2009, it came out again to another angler that April at 19lb 6oz. I knew then that this water could produce a record if this fish was caught at the right time of the year,” Simon told AT. “The bream here spawn around the third week of May so this year I fished solidly for that week with the intention of catching this one fish. I knew if I could hook it there was a chance it would be very big indeed.”

Fishing a swim with a reputation for producing specimens, Simon baited up a small gravel hump 60yds out towards an island in 8ft of water.

Using a boat for accurate feeding, the Sunbury-on-Thames angler fed 7kg of hemp, mixed pellets, parti-blend and sweetcorn over a bivvy-sized area every evening of the session, then presented hair-rigged maggots on a feeder rig over the top.

“The bite I’d been after came at first light four days into the session,” continued Simon. “For a bream it put up a fair fight, rolling by the net a few times, but it wasn’t until I saw it in the mesh that I knew it as the fish I was after.

“My scales showed it at between 20lb 2oz and 20lb 3oz. I sacked it up in the margins and got two other anglers to witness the fish. We weighed it again on another set of scales which showed 20lb 2oz, so that’s what I settled on.

“It was an amazing fish, and I’m over the moon my plans to catch it paid off. That’s the bream box well and truly ticked,” he added.

Biggest bream of the year banked only 5oz off the record weight

The biggest bream of the year and one of the largest specimens of all time has been landed, tipping the scales at 19lb 5oz.

Chris Ladds targeted an ultra-tough stillwater in Oxfordshire and was rewarded for his efforts by banking the huge fish, that falls just 5oz short of the official British record.

Not only does it set a new personal best for the 50-year-old, it’s also a new venue record, and was taken during a 48-hour session that also produced two other big bream weighing 15lb 3oz and 14lb 13oz, as well as six tench.

The angler, from Finchamp-stead, Berkshire, kicked off his session by introducing 4kg of groundbait, particles and pellets over a gravel patch at 75yds range, before presenting two grains of hair-rigged imitation corn over the top.

Chris, who took the giant bream on his only bite on the last day of his session, told Angling Times:

“The amount of weed and a sparse bream stock that’s believed to number 30 fish makes locating and targeting them difficult.

“Once I’d found a clear gravel spot amid the weed I knew I’d be in with a chance because the conditions were right. It was one of those rare sessions where everything just comes together.”

Chris used a simple straight lead set-up with a coated braid hooklink and a size 10 Korda hook carrying one piece of buoyant and one piece of sinking fake corn.

Two anglers share 17 double-figure bream in phenomenal haul

A massive haul of no fewer than 17 double-figure bream to a best of just under 16lb has been landed by two of the country’s top specimen anglers.

The fish, including individual specimens of 15lb 15oz and 15lb 8oz, were taken by well-known big-fish experts Adrian Eves and Ted Bryan, who were fishing two separate venues in Berkshire and Kent.

Accounting for 11 of the fish – all between 15lb 15oz and 12lb 12oz – Nash Peg One-backed angler Ted was targeting the same venue that just a fortnight ago gave him a 16lb 2oz bream, landing the staggering bag of specimens from the water in just a single 48-hour session.

“I was up all of both nights when the fish were really feeding,” Ted told Angling Times. “But you don’t mind when you’re catching fish like that. It was just a brilliant session.”

To take the haul, the former Drennan Cup winner first baited up a swim at 50 yards with around 50 balls of Monster Squid flavoured groundbait laced with Fish Frenzy halibut pellets before casting 10mm Nash Rainbow pop-up boilies over the top.

Fishing three rods, his rigs consisted of size 10 Nash Fang X hooks with 2oz inline leads and 10lb Nash Bullet line to 10lb hooklinks carrying Nash Monster Squid flavour Chain Reaction tablets for added attraction.

Also getting among the big bream this week was Fox and Dynamite Baits-sponsored specimen ace Adrian Eves, who netted a total of six double-figure fish from a Berkshire gravel pit, including a new pb of 15lb 8oz.

Taking a ‘scientific’ approach to his swim choice, the 46-year-old presented his three hookbaits over three different types of bottom – silt, gravel and ‘chod’ – to see which the fish preferred. The result was conclusive, with all but one of his fish coming from the silt patch.

Fishing over a bed of Dynamite Baits mixed particles and pellets (a mix of 4mm, 6mm and 8mm Halibut, Swim Stim and Carp types) soaked in liquid halibut attractant on each spot, Adrian tempted his fish with either maggot or strawberry corn hookbaits on a size 10 SSBP hook to running lead rigs.

“The smallest fish I had was 10lb 12oz, so it was great fishing,” said Adrian. “I think the key to keeping the fish coming was having a mix of pellet sizes and types and reducing the feed once I found the fish so they located the hookbaits more easily.”

Huge bream captured on new Nash Chain Reaction baits

Former Drennan Cup winner Ted Bryan has got his spring bream campaign off to a flying start, taking just three hours to land a trio of double-figure specimens from a Kent lake for one of the best slab hauls of the year so far.

The 54-year-old Nash Peg One consultant took the fish in quick succession from a clear area 40yds out, saving the biggest – weighing 16lb 2oz – until last during a hectic short burst of sport. The smaller pair registered 15lb 10oz and 14lb 4oz.

“At 10.30pm and 11.30pm I had the first two bream, then at 12.30am I had the big one. At first I thought it was a carp – for a bream it put up a good fight. On the scales it went 16lb 2oz and I was very happy with that,” said Ted, who lives in Sydenham, South London.

The successful bait was 10mm Nash Rainbow pop-up boilies over a bed of Frenzy Halibut pellets and groundbait along with Monster Squid flavour Nash Chain Reaction tablets threaded down the hooklink.

“I’ve only been using the Chain Reaction tablets for a week but they’re fantastic and I’ve got so much confidence in them. They’re brilliant for making any rig anti-tangle as they keep the rig away from the lead and mainline. More importantly, you get a concentrated pile of food and attractants right next to the hookbait.They’re so much easier to use than PVA in my opinion,” explained Ted.

“Bream also love the oils in the groundbait!” he continued. “I tend to use more fish-based baits like halibut pellet-based products for bream and then, when the tench fishing starts  as it will soon, I’ll switch to fruitier flavours. This approach has served me really well down the years.”

Ted – who celebrates his 50th year of fishing this summer – used Nash Hooligan rods, Pro-Logic reels, 10lb Bullet mainline, size 10 Nash Fang X hooks and small inline leads combined with short mono hooklinks.

Two bream for 36lb - massive brace caught from Kent pit

Malcolm Harmer has netted one of the biggest bream braces in angling history.

The specimen hunter took fish of 18lb 9oz and 17lb 8oz from the coarse pit at Wingham Lakes in Kent, before adding another smaller fish of of 14lb 12oz later in the same 24-hour trip.

Only 40 bream are believed to live in the 40-acre venue, with just a handful captured every year.

“I joined the syndicate on Wingham’s coarse lake this year just to fish for the bream and tench. I knew there were only a small number of bream in there but that they were also very big, so I decided to target them,” the Romney Marsh-based angler told AT.

“I was there for just 24 hours and conditions were right against me – high pressure and a cold north easterly. But, by the end of the end of the trip, I’d had two of the biggest bream I’ve ever seen. When I caught a third fish of 14lb 12oz it was a bit of a disappointment, which is crazy.”

Malcolm targeted the bream at 80yds, spodding hemp and corn between two parallel gravel bars in 6ft of water, after using a lead to find out where the soft and hard silt met – a feature known to attract the bream at Wingham.

The 38-year-old then used three rods to present buoyant fake ESP creamy sweetcorn, hair-rigged to a size 9 Fox Arma hook and critically balanced on a 10ins, 10lb fluorocarbon hooklength. This ran into a 3ft, 25lb fluorocarbon leader holding a running 2.75oz lead and attached to 12lb Hydro Tuff mainline.

“The first bite came at 9am on the first day and I could tell it was a bream. I like to use a minimum resistance, running lead set-up with slack line for bream – the bite was so cautious that if I’d used a fixed lead I wouldn’t have seen it.

“My previous best bream was 12lb and this just blew it away. The seventeen came 11 hours later at 8pm and gave a similar bite, and then I had the fourteen at 2am. I’m still waiting for it all to sink in.”

*The biggest brace of bream ever taken scaled 19lb and 18lb 10oz, caught by Neil Wallis in 2008.

Britain's best river fishery is free for all

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