the newts.net

Both Bob and Tim have opened their Fish n Trips accounts this week with some nice fish.

Bob sent this report:

I fished at butterswood, goxhill - right near the train
tracks.  I got 2 Carp both about two and a half pound, two Tench about a pound and
a half and two Rudd 4-8 oz.  All on a garbalino flatbed method feeder, micro
pellets and corn hook bait on a hair, with maybe an additive or two, think next
time will be better now i have a feel for where to fish it.  Might try bradley
again soon.  Sounds like it has picked up, went in early september and not much
good.

Thanks to Bob for his pics and report.  You can click on any pics to enlarge them.  I particularly liked the blood red colouring on his Rudd’s fins.  Gorgeous colour.

Tim sent this report:

Had a trip to Snitterby today and what a day it was! Got there at 6am got 3 rods out for half past, first fish 5 to 7 - 15 and half caught on legered Polan.  Then went quiet for a bit then had something sniffing on my paternoster float with small trout on, 15lb nicely marked fish, then it did go quiet for awhile about 11am I moved my other float up a bit flicked it out only to see it scream off down river bang 19lb beautiful fish caught on eel section.  Then nothing for awhile then float went again hit it but it pulled out felt like a nice fish packed up at 12:30 so all in all a good mornings fishing when you no were to go ;)

So thanks to Tim for his pics and report - which has given me an idea for a new feature on the Fish n Trips page.  I’m going to add a % of the record feature for our biggest fish.

In simple terms if you catch a 10lb fish of a certain species  whose British Record is 20lb you’ll score  50% of the record.  If you catch a 15lb fish of the same species you’d score 75% of the record.  I’ll do this for all of our best specimen fish caught during the Fish n Trips Challenge.

So to start the ball rolling Tim will hold the Pike top spot for now with a 19lb fish.  The Brirish Record Pike is 46lb 13oz.  This gives Tim a Pike Record Rating of 40.58%

Another reason I thought it would be nice to add is because Garry Ornsby caught a monster Carp this week also.  The story and pictures will follow, but his Carp was independently weighed and verified at 17lb 4oz.  This gives Garry the Carp top spot with a Carp Record Rating of 26.19%

These fish and the new % Record Ratings have been added to the Fish n Trips page above.

After a long break from the coarse fishing (nearly 20 years!) I’m pleased to say I had a pleasant debut comeback at a beautiful little private local water.

After a spell of dreadful January & February weather it turned out to quite a mild and pleasant day at this lovely pond owned by our friends Trev & Ian Oliver.

Tony was first off the mark with a little roach, with me close behind with a small perch.  Garry quickly got in to his stride after that though and netted an almost constant stream of small roach and perch.  Tony was still getting the odd small fish while I was just getting the odd finicky bite but no action.

Later in the afternoon the slightly larger fish started to show with Tony starting to catch mirror carp around the 1 - 2lb mark.  Tony then started to diversify and managed to tick a few boxes on his Fish n Trips species list after netting a small barbel, mirror and common carp, roach, perch, tench, a rudd and a little gudgeon.

Garry continued with a regular stream of small roach interspersed with the odd perch and finally I hit in to a decent fish.  It took a while to land ( so Gaz & Tone will tell you), but a 6lb mirror on 2lb line and a size 20 hook can’t be bullied in.  It has to be played with sheer mastery; It’s nice to see I haven’t lost my touch :O)

It was the biggest fish of the day, but specimen of the day had to go to Tony with a gorgeous perch approaching 2lb.  Infact it was that BIG he daren’t pick it up!!

So in a nutshell:  The 3 of us bagged an approximate total of 40lb of fish.  First fish to Tony Martin, top weight was Tony Martin as well (though Garry started to catch up with a flurry of small mirrors towards the end of the day), Best specimen was Tony’s too, most fish definitely belonged to gaz with a netfull of roach, and I sneaked on to the board in the latter stages with biggest fish.

More pictures are available on the Fish n Trips scoreboard here.

Great afternoon of fishing - thanks to Trev & Bov for the pleasure.

What with the freezing cold weather over the past few weeks It’s unfortunate that I haven’t been able to spend a little more of my extended Christmas holiday fishing.  However the last couple of weeks haven’t gone completely to waste in fishing terms as me and a couple of others have put in a bit of time checking out some potential future fishing venues.

Our 1st outing was to Doncaster and the river Don.  I have it on good authority from a fishing friend that this previously desolate river, choked by the pollution of a once thriving industrial landscape of steelworks and coal mines, has made a miraculous recovery and is now producing some fantastic Barbel & Chub as well as good bags of silverfish.

With this in mind, and after doing further research and finding articles like this one by Bob Roberts, I had to take a closer look.

We started at what was probably the most scenic and inviting of all the spots we looked at - Sprotbrough Weir.

[Click pictures to enlarge]

In the aerial photograph (1) you can see the weir and pool, above it is the canal navigation.  You can also see the road bridge from which photos (2) & (5) were taken.  Talking to the locals this is a bit of a Barbel hot spot.  Not that they are easy to catch - but they are there in numbers.  Picture (4) shows the bank access and this is where there was a single fisherman on the day we went.  Picture (6) shows the canal downstream of the aerial photo, the canal rejoins the main river Don (6) just past the lock system.

All in all we thought this was a very promising spot to try out for Whiskers and the old wide mouth Chub.  Scenic and inviting in the dead of winter, this place has to be a real gem in the height of summer.

With the help of Google maps in satellite mode, following the river I identified what looked like another possible spot to try out.

The aerial shot shows the A1 road bridge over the Don.  We parked up in the housing estate you can see to the left of the bridge and walked down to the water.  The banks look easily fishable either side of the bridge but as the track from the housing estate is gated off, parking is a problem as you are literally over someone’s drive in a cul-de-sac.  For this reason we ruled this one out, rolled the dice again, landed on Take a Chance, and got sent straight to jail…

…Doncaster Prison as it happens.

I’m sure any potential escapees will find this aerial map of the prison very handy, but for our purposes it shows the river Don beautifully.  Well actually that’s not quite true.  The river Don can be seen running behind the prison in the bottom of the picture.  The main stretch of water you can see with the weir and salmon run in it is a drain coming off the Don and rejoining it back down stream.  If you look closely at the point of the drain where the fork begins you can see 3 cars parked on the bank and people fishing.  That full stretch of bank is no longer accessible by car, but you can park close by and the whole riverbank is pegged out.  There are obviously matches held there so there are obviously fish there.

The second photo shows a river eye view of the weir you can see in aerial photograph.

The third photo speaks for itself, and unfortunately we found this to be fairly common along the more urban stretches of the Don.  A river is never at its prettiest in the bleak mid winter, but this ugly site just makes things so much worse.
Having said that, things aren’t so bad above the weir and I think it’s a spot definitely worth a day’s outing.

Just a little further down river we rejoin the Don and another hot spot is near the Three Horseshoes Pub (1).
The pub itself has enough parking space for 4 cars, which isn’t surprising as the place looks a dump, but there are a few opportunities to park to the rear.  It’s not the prettiest of swims and the area near the pub suffers from the aforementioned plastic bag litter, but a little further down near the main road bridge (top bridge in picture) there were some nicely accessible banks and obvious signs of recent angler activity.  Not litter you understand - Wellie marks in the mud and bank stick holes.

Again, this is no Hampshire Avon for scenery, but there are definite fishy possibilities.

Heading out of Doncaster (2) we made our way to another tip off, the canal opposite the derelict Thorpe Marsh power station near Arksey. There’s plenty of parking along the road and this navigation off the river Don looks really inviting.  Being more rural it doesn’t suffer from the litter problems further upstream in Doncaster.  I have less info on its Barbel credentials but it does look like a peaceful place for a day’s canal fishing.

My next trip out took me under the expert guidance of my Dad to the river Witham.  My Dad, now resident in the beautiful Lake District, was in the 70’s and early 80’s a top match angler who spent a lot of time fishing rivers all over the country, and some in Europe, with local tackle shop owners George, Roy & Ron - aka the Sparkes brothers.

A favourite spot he took me to was a stretch of the Witham between Tattershall bridge and Kirkstead bridge.  Compared to the river Don the Witham looked so much cleaner and more inviting to fish.  There are several easy access spots along Witham Bank where you can park just a matter of feet away from your swim.  A local blue book is required to fish along this part of the Witham, or you can pay a small fee for a day ticket.

I’m really looking forward to giving this stretch a try.  It looks like trotting a stick float heaven!

And finally our latest find, Bradley Ponds,  is a lot closer to home, just a few miles in fact.
The complex is made up of 2 ponds.  The smaller pond is fairly narrow due to the islands, but has a lot of little twists, turns and bays.  The bigger pond has a few small islands but otherwise is a fairly open water.

The picture below is a series of 3 pictures ’stitched’ together to give you a panoramic view of the pond.

We have been reliably informed by the fishery owner ‘Ade’ that both lakes contain 21 species of fish including Barbel and Chub as well as a number of ornamental species that we are not including in our fishing challenge such as Goldfish, Orfe and Koi.  Both ponds run to 5 - 7′ deep with the larger pond having a deep hole (top right bay of picture) running to about 13-14′.

The ponds look very well kept and cared for.  Ade is on hand most of every day to take your money, offer advice and make the tea (in the caravan).  Prices are reasonable at £5 for 1 rod, £6.50 for 2, £10 to night fish, £70 yearly day membership and £90 yearly night fishing membership.

I went down today to see two of the lads taking part in the Fish n Trips challenge Tony Martin and Garry Ornsby.  They were just having a swift few hours in the evening until dusk.  The weather was nippy to say the least and the fish were shy.

Tony (1) was float fishing close in to a small reed bed (20 and was getting a bite every cast.  The bites seemed almost impossible to convert into a hooked fish, but when he did many of them were tiny Roach.  Both him and Garry had a few decent Gudgeon but were too cold to get the camera out and photograph them for the challenge so no new pictures there!  Tony landed the best fish of the day - a 6 ounce goldfish.  Unfortunately for Tone as it’s an ornamental fish it’s not on our species catch list so it didn’t count towards the Fish n Trips challenge.  Garry (3) had a few hours on the hair rigged leger and tried the feeder on the quiver tip too, but both to no avail.

So not the most productive day, but we are all reserving judgement on this pretty little venue until we have a full days fishing in slightly warmer weather conditions.

You’ll find Bradley Ponds just off Bradley Road approx a mile or so after Bradley Woods if you are approaching from Bradley crossroads near Grimsby.  Watch out for the turn off though, the sign for it is about the size of a postage stamp.  It’s definitely worth drowning a maggot though, and we’ll be back soon.

Tight Lines folks!

Me and a few fishing mates are going to attempt to catch every species of coarse fish native to Britain.  Being from a town notorious for it’s wonderful quality Fish n Chips, I hope you can see where the name for this challenge came from!

Something similar to the brilliantly engaging tv series by Matt Hayes & Mick Brown ~  ‘The Great Rod Race‘.

Our feat is not going to be so much of a race though, it’s purely for the achievement and ensuing adventure that we accept this challenge.  Everyone taking part has been issued with a little logo of the Fish n Trips challenge, and must include it in every photograph of every fish in the species list to prove it’s capture.  You’ll be able to follow our progress here on the newts.net as I update everyone’s achievements with their stories and pictures.

I have set up a new ‘page’ dedicated to our challenge. All information and links to new posts will appear on this page as well as a chart listing all the fish caught and pictures of them. You should be able to see a button (Fish n Trips) for the page at the top of the website page, or you can click this link…

http://www.thenewts.net/fish-n-trips/