BRYANS ANGLE

Cracking sunset tonight.

So as some of you might have guessed from my posts for the last year or so i have been spending most of my spare time working on the never ending extension of my home. When i originally decided to build this extension of gargantuan proportions i had very little work on as my business had slowed down, so the idea was i,d take 6 months or so out and get this project built. Well as soon as finances and plans were accepted and in hand i had lots of work come in that i couldn,t turn down, typical, so for the past 2 years i have spent most evenings and weekends building, constructing, wiring, plumbing, plastering and painting. The project still has a few months to go but i,m getting there. This has seriously made a dent in my fishing time, as well as my photography and my country walking time, but i,m slowly getting to the point where i can have more free time. This means more fishing and hopefully more blogs, and really hopefully more fish. Anyways last sunday morning i had a sneaky coupl...

So a couple of weeks ago I re-joined a syndicate I had been a member of a good few years ago. It's a beautiful water of roughly 25 acres with plenty of features to fish too and some pretty impressive common carp to fish for, as well as some big mirrors, big rudd and apparently some good size perch. After joining I fished the following weekend hoping or some action as the weather was spot on and I was looking forward to returning. Well as you,d expect I blanked, much the usual for me,but then so did everyone else fishing the lake. So I didn't,t feel too bad after all. Although I didn,t catch anything I did have a sharp short take on my second morning, and I did learn a few things about the area I was fishing.  One thing I did notice was some big perch striking at the shoals of small fish in my swim. By. The disturbance they made I reckon they were of a good size so definitely worth a try for in the future.   I had a visit from the owners dog on my first morning and got robbed o...

I'm sitting here at a London hospital, for the life of me I can't remember the name of it, waiting for my mum to finish having some tests done prior to having an operation, nothing serious this time thankfully. There's nowt to do but browse the web for fishing related stuff and I've found some quite interesting content and some complete pony. I've watched a utube film showing perch taking lives, ginger angler I think the chaps called, which is well worth a watch, and I've been flicking through people's perch catches from up and down the country. All those beautiful sergeants have really got me in the mood to have a try or them this weekend. Unfortunately I have a lot of diy to do but I'm going to try and grab a couple of hours dangling Sunday morning, hopefully I'll have something to report soon. I have actually been fishing once or twice since last posting so hopefully I'll update you on these trips soon, once I can find a spare hour or so. ...

Fished the weekend on my syndicate a few weeks back hoping for my first carp from this BIGGG tricky water, but to no avail. I set-up in a swim i,d fancied for a while as it had lots of open water to go at as well as a nice shallowish reed and tree lined bay to the right. I spent quite a while finding some nice spots to fish, and duely noted them down in the diary. The weather was perfect, a mixture of sun and rain with the wind pushing into my shoreline. Alas it was not to be, but i thoroughly enjoyed myself trying. The stump my cup of Latte is sitting on was my viewing perch for the duration of the weekend. It felt great sitting on that with my toes cooling in the warm shallow water. The new BBQ worked a treat as well, most impressed was i....

Last week i had some energy left after work and decided that i fancied a couple of hours fishing. The only problem was i couldn,t make up my mind whether to go to the local park lake and have a go for some surface carp action or pop to the local estuary and target the ever wary mullet or trot up the road to a local day ticket and just float fish for whatever came along. The later option was chosen. After quickly sorting some gear and grabbing a tin of sweetcorn i was set up in my chosen swim on a beautiful local water. I love this water but unfortunately it can get a bit noisy with the local scrotbags riding bikes along the paths behind you and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Today they were well behaved but unfortunately there was a small group of Europeans on the opposite bank who were chatting very loudly and constantly getting phonecalls. They were putting the fish they caught back in the lake so thats definately a good thing, so i can,t complain too much c...

I bought this little beauty at Tesco yesterday for the princely sum of £12.50 and it looks to be worth every penny. It measures roughly 12" square, weighs 1.8kg, collapses flat and even has its own carry bag. I,m looking forward to bbq steak on this beauty next time i,m on the bank...

Well i,ve fished the syndicate twice more since i last posted about the place but unfortunately have not been successful in catching any carp. I have however caught more bream than i was hoping for and learned more about the place which is always a good thing. My free time has been very limited over the past couple of months so i havn,t been able to put as much effort into fishing the place as i had hoped, but on the couple of trips i,ve made i,m slowly getting to grips with fishing such a large water for so few fish. One thing i have noticed is that the lure anglers both on the boats and on the bank can be a bit of a pain in the arse. I,m all for letting everyone enjoy their fishing but when lures get chucked over your lines from the next swim down because they ' didn,t notice you mate' and boats anchor up above your baits 50 yards in front of your swim and then the guys argue that they are only fishing mid-water upwards and that it won,t spook the carp on the bottom, it doe...

Used this bad boy a couple of months back and have to say its the perfect tool for cooking up a big boy brekkie bankside...

A few weeks back i decided to fish the local park water, me getting down with the kids urban angling hahaaaaa,  for a few hours early one morning as after my trip to the syndicate i thought it would be nice to catch a carp so i,d remember what they were like. I,m really not a lover of fishing this type of water as there is just too many people around for my liking, but having walked the lake quite a bit with the dogs over the years i thought i,d give it a go. It is a pretty little lake and well kept, just up the road from where i live and has a good head of carp so was an ideal venue to brush off the cobwebs. Also i wanted to try zig fishing and this seemed an ideal place for this technique as i,ve seen carp swimming sub surface on most of my visits.  Having arrived at first light i set up in a swim with easy access to fish a small island in front. One rod to the near margins with a small stick and bottom bait and the other rod out to the margins of the island. Nothin...

Well finally i was given a pass by the better half to have a couple days out from working on the extension and without any hesitation plans were made and bags packed for a 2 night trip to my new syndicate water. The weather was bloody cold when i arrived at first light but after a couple of hours walking part of the banks i opted for a nice tree lined section of bank which was sheltered from the cold wind and considerably warmer than the rest of the 100 acres. Even the sun came out to greet me. It wasn,t just because it was warmer here, i had also seen quite a lot of small fish activity here when i first walked through the trees. They were only silver fish but seeing as though i had not seen any activity at all anywhere else on the lake i thought this would be as good a place as any. The swim also gave me plenty of water to fish and even more water to scan in case any carp showed themselves anywhere else. By mid afternoon i had everything set up and three rods fishing in w...

Its been a couple months since my last post for which i apologize. Work and diy has got in the way again, a frequent occurrence for the past couple of years, but i do have a little something to tell all you fisher folks. I have been deliberating as where to fish this coming season as last season i joined a local water which i,d been a member of many years ago, a time i thoroughly enjoyed back then, but this time round i did not enjoy it due to the numerous Korda Klones fishing, and messing up, the place. It was obvious this was not the place to join again so i donned my thinking cap as to where to go this season. Maybe just stick to the local day tickets i thought firstly, then slapped myself hard for ever having such a stupid idea. What about joining BDAC or CAPS, local angling clubs with numerous waters on their books, but they didn,t really interest me one little bit. Then i remembered a very large water i fished a few years back which had practically everything i wanted out of a wa...

Well a couple of weeks ago i got the urge to have a bash at catching a flounder or two, and when that certain fishing itch strikes you have to give it a scratch. Checking the local tide times it turned out that the following nights tides were ideal, highwater about 8pm, so i promptly ordered 2 packs of lugworm from a local bait digger which i picked up an hour later and set about tying up some flattie bashing rigs. After a couple of hours fiddling with my tackle, ooo eerrrr missus, i had numerous rigs made up and two of my pike roads set up ready to rock the following evening. I like using my lighter pike rods for flounders as they detect even the smallest knocks and when you do actually hook a fish they allow you to enjoy the fight. Flounders do actually give a good scrap when fished for on lighter tackle, as do small bass and even whiting. The only downside with the lighter rods is they compress a lot when used in waters with strong currents, not very good if i,m fishing my local...

Got these little beauties through the post this morning. I reckon they will be great for perch on a couple of waters that i know. Not bad for £3.50 of Ebay... Slow sinking with an internal rattle, got to have a fish or 2 on these. I,ll give them a try first to see how they fair and then might change the hook for a smaller size..........

I,ve just seen this on bookface and thought i,d share it.

 Last week the it snowed as predicated. The weather men had predicted heavy snowfall along with strong winds as a bad weather system was meant to be hitting the country. People started the usual panic buying of food in case we were going to get snowed in for countless days, and what did we get... Barely half inch... And guess what, this small amount of snowfall brought chaos to the country as it usually does. How come Canada can be under feet of snow and no one bats an eyelid and keep going about their business, but we get half a fookin inch and all hell breaks loose. This country is a joke sometimes. Now on that note i couldn,t work the first day of the snow as the boss pulled the plug on the building job we were doing. But this time i wasn,t complaining as i had deadbaits in the freezer and my pike rods were already set up and ready to go from a session a couple of days. So as the sun was rising i was crunching through the now thinning but frozen solid snow on my way to t...

 I soaked a couple of deadbaits for a couple hours the other day at a local water hoping to catch a half decent sized pike.  It was a bloody cold morning and a good part of the lake was frozen but i found a nice looking spot and cast out my two floatfished deadbaits. One was a standard static bait, half a bluey cast to the far reeds. The other was a smelt hooked through the back so it sits just of horizontal in the water and was set up under a float allowing it to drift around the swim on the breeze. Expectations were high but the pike didn,t want to play ball. I left after a couple fo hours ready for a nice big fry-up at the local eatery........ I had a visit from a friendly Robin though so wasn,t all bad.

After taking a walk along my favourite marina and seeing the lock empty it gave me the urge to get up there at first light and have a wee dangle for the once plentiful perch that used to reside there. So the next day saw me sitting in the car park just before dawn eagerly awaiting the big ball of fire to rise over the tree tops. After what seemed like hours but was probably only 20 mins it was light enough for me to grab my kit, dropshot and light lure set-up this morning, and try my luck. Well i started of by using the drop shot method in between the moored boats in the hope of a perch or two as i,ve had plenty of action here in previous years. The drop shot is an ideal method for fishing in tight gaps as i was, because you can just flick the small weight and lure out and fish it in one position for a while, just giving the rod tip a little tap tap now and then to get the little imitation fish to waggle around seductively. I did this for 45 mins or so in various spots, all spots tha...

 Over the years i,ve walked across and fished alongside countless amounts of locks on numerous rivers and canals, but i,ve never really given much thought as to what they actually look like once empty. A couple of days ago i took a walk along a local river and found that one of the lock gates had been removed and the lock itself had been drained and obviously is having some work undertaken. I took these pictures with my phone just to show how deep the lock actually is. I wish i,d taken a picture of the removed lock gate but didn,t think of it at the time. The gate fits where the scaffolding is now, and i,m standing on the middle gate. Standing on the scaffolding looking inland. Its amazing that all that is holding back the river is these steel sheets thumped into the river bed and that one steel rsj. There must be one hell of a lot of pressure pushing against that sheeting. I wonder if you get danger pay for going down that ladder and working at botto...

My first trip of the New Year saw me on a perch hunt at my favourite location armed with a couple of pints of maggots to catch some livebait and a tub of lobworms as back-up in case no little silver fish could be caught. Arriving before it was light i sat in my truck eagerly waiting for the sun to rise so i could set of to my chosen spot. I,ve fished this location  quite a bit over the years and have had some cracking perch, fishing small free roaming livies in between the moored boats. My PB of 3lb 14oz came from here as well as more perch over 3lb than i can remember. In fact a few years ago it got to the point that if i hadn,t caught a perch over 3lb in the 2 hours i was there, bit of a naughty place to fish so only had a couple hours fishing before lock keeper was out of bed, then it was a poor session. Anyway, eventually it was light enough so off i trudged through the car park and up the steps to find the whole river frozen solid. OOPPSSS!!!!! Should of checked the weather...

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my fellow danglers out there... I guess a round up of the highs and lows of my years fishing would be in order at this point. Except that i,ve barely set foot on the bank this past year. Work and building my extension has literally taken over my life, resulting in not having much free time and when i do i,m generally too knackered to lift my lazy arse outta the bed. I have had a few short sessions and thoroughly enjoyed myself, even though catch results have been pretty poor. But as they say that,s why its called 'fishing' and not 'catching'. Highlights of my year, not fishing related, have been getting more and more interested in photography, Earlier in the year i purchased a Canon 7D mk11 so i could use it to take better quality pictures of the local wildlife, although time has restricted me to limited use so i,m still learning about the camera and the various settings, jargon etc. A couple of months back i had a right result and bought a s...