Jon Patten was fishing for spurdog from a North Devon shore mark and was surprised when a smoothound grabbed his fish bait presented on a 6/0 hook. Smoothound traditionally arrive in early May. Recent seasons have seem them caught right up until Christmas. So the question I pose is early or late?
North Devon Match Group Championship No. 2 Jennetts Reservoir
(Above) Winner Martin Turner
Some stunning nets of silver fish from Jennetts Reservoir in North Devon Match Groups latest competition. A great test of the all round match anglers skill set.
1st Martin Turner 23lb 10oz
2nd Nielsen Jeffery 16lb 13oz
3rd Kevin Shears 14lb 10oz ,
Section Winners
Wayne Mitchell 13lb
kier Durrant 10lb 14oz
(Above) Nielsen Jeffery
(Above)Kevin Shears
Dan Spearman and Kyle Bishop visited Bratton Water after hearing of recent top catches of brown trout. They were not disappointed landing several stunning brown trout. The images below show off the quality of the brown in this secluded water just ten minutes from Barnstaple.
I am sure that many young people have started on a path to angling as result of a trip to water with their grandparents and I would suggest that there is no better gift to give than a lifetime of angling.
Colin Brown introduced his grandson, Daniel aged nine to the joy’s of fishing at Blakewell Fisheries.
(Below) Billy Daykin visited Blakewell to land a 5lb 4oz rainbow in a bag totaling 8 lb. He used a blue fly that was homemade.
Tyrone Norah with a 28lb mirror from ‘big fish corner’ on Beattie’s lake fishing with cell dumbbells, clockwork orange pop ups over hemp. Joanne Combe tells me that Tyrone hadn’t fished here since 3 years ago and had a fabulous time fishing here.
BIG Congratulations to Arron Fisher who has caught a 47lb 6oz Mirror from the Kracking Carp Lake, not only is he the first angler to catch on Kracking Carp this year so far but this fish is also Arron’s New UK Personal Best Carp, as you can imagine, Arron is pretty chuffed with himself and quite rightly so!
The Kracking Fish have been brought on for many years by our team from Tiddlers at Ounces to THIS BIG, so we are very proud to see anglers go onto catching them and making New PB’s!
Arron said –
“Well here she is, the ‘Jewel of the Lake’ and a new English PB at 47.06lb. I am absolutely buzzing to have caught her especially as it is the first fish out of 2017. She couldn’t resist a 12mm CR1 pastel pop up on a armohawk size 8 chod hook fished with a bag of CR1 crumb and HOB Blitz and hemp. Also a massive thank you to Andrew Moores for driving out and doing a great job on the photos.”
With sport dropping off on the coast there was a low turnout for this club event with just seven members fishing marks all along the coast. Bites were few and far between for some members with small conger and dogfish providing most sport. Rob Scoines fished small baits close in to successfully target rockling landing close to a dozen the best three weighing 1lb 2oz, 1lb 1oz and 15oz to take the top three places.
The milder weather has encouraged carp to start feeding so dust off the cobwebs after the winter and set out to the waters edge!
Steve Pinn landed a cracking new Beatties personal best of 23Ib on Dynamite Baits tutti frutti (testing for Joanne Combes) balanced with fake corn – Best of 7 with Keith Maker who had 4 of the 7 fish including a 22 pounder – A great session for February !
Anglers are enjoying some great sport at Exe Valley Fishery where a new catch and release ticket has been embraced by numerous anglers who appreciate the option of a days sport without having to pack up because they have caught their quota or have more than enough trout in the freezer. Below is Nick Harts latest report on one anglers visit to the water.
Perhaps it is the mild weather but I have been out with a fair few anglers already this year and today it was Andrew Avery from Bristol. He had been having a mare and landed just one fish in his last 3 trips, so it was time to get his mojo back. After an hour tuning up his cast this morning we got straight down to business and found pretty quickly that the fish are very podded. If you catch and then it goes quiet it is time to move! That’s what we did and using Tungsten Buzzers Andy banked 9 fish in total, often reacting to the line moving rather than feeling for the take.
