BRYANS ANGLE

Recently i have been drawn towards having a bash at catching some lovely Essex flounders like i used to many years ago. I actually havn,t caught, or fished for, flounder for a good 10 years now. In fact probably the last time i caught one would of been when i used to fish the platforms near Westcliff Leisure Center for anything that would take my bait. I used to love fishing tides that would be at their highest around 9pm, during the winter this was, and would use light gear and cast to the moored boats and end of the groins and would have great fun catching pouting, whiting, flounder, dabs, small bass and sometimes even rockling. My other half at the time thought i was mad as i would go out in all sorts of weather, i loved it that much. Anyway due to reminiscing about my past fishing exploits i decided that i needed to scratch this itch and early one morning last week saw me and Oscar The Wonder Dog walking along the pathway at the bottom of the sea defences at a mark on Canvey Isl...

A couple of weeks back i took my dogs for their usual long weekend walk along Benfleet Creek as a change to our local haunt of South Fambridge. I guess i should of checked my tide app as when we got there it was at dead low water so there basically wasn,t any water for Harry to have a swim. It was a shame as he does love the water, and sometimes i have a right job to get him out of it when we have to go. Unfortunately Oscar doesn,t like to swim, he can swim but just chooses not too. He,s happy just running around splatting in the mud and searching through the scrub grass. Anyway, as we were walking along the creek i was taking note of the gully left behind by the receded tide. In places it came within 10 yards of the bank where i was, and also in a couple of places the water was a foot or so deeper than the average. I know this as Harry was wading through the remaining water and i was keeping an eye on how far up his legs/belly the water was. Seeing all this mud and the dee...

Last week i knicked the morning of work as i fancied spending a few hours after the perch at a small local pond which i,ve been told holds a few biggies within its shallow waters. Weather was perfect, overcast with a slight breeze, as i set up in the last swim to the left of this tiny water. One rod was set up with a ledgered lobworm cast to some reeds where i had seen a big perch lunge at my lure last year. While my other rod was to be floatfished to the right in front of some more reeds with the hope of some silvers that i could use as bait, as well as causing some activity in the hope that this might draw in a couple of perch. Unfortunately the perch didn,t materialise, but i did have an enjoyable mornings fishing catching some gorgeous roach to three quarters of a pound along with a couple of bream to 3lb and 5 carp to around 4lb or so. All the fish were caught on a single floatfished maggot on a size 18 hook to 1.8lb hooklink attached to 3lb mainline. Great fun........ ...

I managed an afternoon after the perch on a local venue 2 weeks ago as i was ' itchin to go a fishin'. The weather wasn,t the best for perch fishing as the sun was strong with only a slight breeze to ruffle the waters surface. First task was to catch a handful of silvers to use as bait, my favourite technique being free roaming a small roach beneath a 1 swan shot loafer incorporating a 9 inch wire trace with a small semi barbed treble hook attached at the end. This set up has accounted for a lot of good perch upto 3lb 14oz as well as pike to upper doubles. As per usual a couple of micro pike snaffled my livies and put up turbo charged fights on my light gear, but they soon paid a short visit to the bank. The speed of these small pike is quite amazing. I could see their every twist and turn through the clear water as i was wearing that most vital item of fishing kit, polarised glasses. Small they may of been but they still had some impressive chompers.... After...

Suday just gone i ventured out to my local estuary with aims of catching a flatfish or two. I was hoping for a nice plump dab as the area i chose is reputed to throw some nice ones up this time of year, or even a nice flounder would of made my day. Baits were fresh lugworm, mackeral strip and slivers of squid, all cast at varying distances. Unfortunately all i managed to catch was 10 of these little blighters which were giving me rod rattles from the off. I,m not going to complain though as i enjoyed my few hours sitting out in the dark watching the tips of my rods silouhetted against the skyline.

The sunday before last saw me whizzing along the A12 racing the rising sun to get to the swim i fancied on my syndicate water. There was other swims on this large body of water that were probably just as good as the one i wanted but i had made my mind up as to where i wanted to go. Arriving in the car park there was only the one cart there so with a 'haste in my pace' i shot off to check if my swim was free. Fortunately it was so i went back to my van and proceeded to load the barrow with all the kit needed for a days piking as well as the bait boat, damn that things heavy with the batteries etc. By 7am i had 3 rods set up and fishing but unfortunately i,d not checked the batteries on the boat hand set, which were flat, so had to settle with casting. There was fish topping and jumping all over my swim at around 30 yds so i dropped 2 baits there and launched the other as far as i could manage. At 8am i had a run on the distance rod which after a cracking scrap resulted in th...

With a heavy heart i had to sell my lovely little fishing dinghy a couple of weekends ago. Unfortunately due to my fishing partner not having enough time to actually go fishing i have not been able to use here as she is just too heavy for me to handle up and down the bank let alone put on the top of my van. So my plans are to build a lightweight fibreglass flat bottomed punt style fishing dinghy that i can handle on my lonesome. Watch this space...  A couple of years ago i bought a kayak hull from a chap who makes them in the Fens. I then employed the talents of my Daddio to build the rest using some very expensive hardwood i had left over from a decking job i did. And he did me proud as always and i had a cracking looking kayak ready to paddle up the river. Until 2 weeks ago the only water it saw was when i gave it a hose down when it got dirty in my warehouse.  That all changed one saturday afternoon recently as i was bored in the office and for some reason decided...