SHOCK CLOSURE OF QUAY SPORTS ANNOUNCED

North Devon’s anglers will be shocked and saddened by the closure of Quay Sports. The shop has been a real boon to angling in North Devon over the past three years and its closure will certainly have a detrimental impact. I wish all at the Quay Sports the best for the future.

Due to rising costs and diminishing brand supplier margins the Quay Sports Fishing Tackle store will be closing permanently on Friday 5th July 2024.
The import, retail and wholesale side of the business will continue as normal as we have done for many years and we will look to expand this side of the business.
Gift cards will need to be redeemed in store prior to end of day Friday 5th of July 2024.
We will continue to stock bait up until this date.
We will be discounting ALL of the stock as from today by 10% so please pop in for a bargain.
Shop opening hours will be Monday to Friday 9am till 5pm until closure.
We would like to thank all of our customers for their support over the last 3 years.

WARNING – A SINISTER LURKING DANGER – PLEASE READ !

Many thanks to Richard Wilson for sharing his monthly prose on North Devon Angling News. I would urge all who tread upon our green and pleasant land to read this article. I have had many encounters with ticks over the years. When fishing some of our overgrown rivers I have returned home later in the day to find these nasty critters sinking there teeth into my skin. Its a bit like Russian roulette some are loaded with deadly lymes disease whilst others are not carriers. I have heard of several people who have been infected and we constantly remove them from our cat. Others find them in abundance upon their dogs. Awareness is undoubtedly a major factor in getting treated but thats not always straight forward as Richard explains below. 

https://fishrise.substack.com

Lyme Disease: Running Riot

I’ve got it, you may have it too.

This is a good time to be a tick with Lyme Disease to share. You and I may bemoan the weirdness of the weather, but ticks love it.

As the world gets warmer and wetter, they’re partying. 10 years ago, in the wooded valley I call home, we had two distinct tick seasons – from mid-March to June, and a shorter burst in the autumn. Last year I picked up my first in early February and my dog had his last in November, and they continued without a break right through summer.

Ticks are the original muggers. They lurk on the tips of grass fronds, often in and around woodland, waiting for an unwitting victim to brush past. They’re looking for a free meal which, for us, turns into a lose-lose transaction. The tick gets our blood and we get Lyme Disease, a bacterial infection with very unpleasant consequences.

I’ve been paying attention to this because I’ve just been diagnosed with Lyme. Worse, I’ve had it untreated for about 8 years, which is why I can also say that most doctors wouldn’t recognise it even if they caught it, and that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

There are two basics to understand about Lyme Disease, and they come hand-in-glove: An early diagnosis is both essential and very hard to get. Speed is everything because, given the chance, there’s no organ in your body or corner of your central nervous system that the Lyme bacteria won’t vandalise.

So how do you know if you’ve been exposed? A lot of people never see the tick that infects them. It can latch on at 1mm long, infect and then fall off. Others gorge themselves, growing bloated with their head buried in your flesh. The longer they stay, the greater your risk of infection. Thankfully, dog tick removers do a great job for us too.

The official advice is that the first visual clue of infection is a circular red rash around the site of a tick bite. This is where the medical profession starts to screw up.

In 2016 I had a tick bite and circular rash which I took into my doctor’s surgery. The nurse said it wasn’t Lyme (it was solid red from centre to edge and didn’t match the bull’s eye photo on her screen). No treatment was offered and, back then, I was as clueless as the nurse. I now know that anysort of rash or blistering (no rash) that might be tick-related should be treated as Lyme Disease. I also know that many Lyme cases never show a rash or blisters.

For patients and doctors, it gets worse. Blood tests, if done at all, deliver false positives and negatives in equal numbers in up to 25% cases. So even if a doctor suspects Lyme, and mostly they don’t, the test results are very likely to be wrong.

The next problem is your doctor. Once the bacteria get to work, your symptoms will be mistaken for heart disease, flu, a mild stroke, dementia, diabetic neuropathy, fatigue syndrome, Bells Palsy, arthritis, all manner of intestinal and organ malfunctions, viral infections, Parkinson’s, slacking and so on. Victims are constantly exhausted and, in my experience, at times look unevenly grey. This last blotchy observation is not in the textbooks – it should be.

There is no slam-dunk symptom for doctors to see that couldn’t be something more familiar. And to get an idea of what’s familiar, a quick look around their waiting room is revealing. The majority of patients are obese and bring diabetes, coronary heart disease and the such-like. Those who are not obese are mostly old with all that goes with advancing years. There are a small number of children with sniffles and one or two adults who’ve lost arguments with power tools. There are super-size chairs, but no dispensers of free tick removers and no warning signs or leaflets on how to avoid Lyme. It’s invisible.

Stand in most doctor’s surgeries and you’d never guess that Lyme Disease is the most prevalent insect/parasite-borne disease in North America and Europe and one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in both. That’s big. According to the CDC, almost 500,000 Americans get it every year. Many, many more in both North America and Europe are infected but undiagnosed. There’s a lot of trouble coming for a lot of people.

Here’s why it took 8 years for me to get treatment: As said above, I first went to my doctor’s surgery in 2016 with a circular red rash caused by a tick. Patients treated with antibiotics at this stage mostly complete a fast 100% recovery, which is why medical guidelines say treat first and confirm the diagnosis second. Antibiotics are very low risk, but the consequences of delaying treatment are serious. In my case, medical ignorance delivered the wrong diagnosis.

The trouble started slowly. Within 2 years the fatigue, aches and pains were worryingly intrusive. Multiple trips to the doctor, scans and tests revealed nothing. Increasingly worried, I remembered the tick rash and asked for a Lyme test. It came back negative. Nobody told me how inaccurate the tests were, and still are.

Fast forward through many more scans, tests, a gall bladder removal that was supposed to resolve my woes (and didn’t), a 2nd negative Lyme test and more. I was a minor medical mystery. Then, this autumn, I paid for a 3rd test and it came back positive. The next day my doctor re-tested with both the standard LISA test and a Western Immuno Blot test. Both came back positive. 3 positives in a week, including a Western Immuno Blot, is as good as a positive diagnosis gets.

Such a late discovery brings problems. Given time Lyme bacteria also attack and disrupt our Autonomic nervous system which controls all those things that just happen without conscious thought: Blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, digestion and so on. They also disrupt our short-term memory, which is why, if I stop to make a coffee, I may have to remind myself that I’m writing about Lyme. That’s very disconcerting. Weirdly, I don’t forget why I culled an adjective or shunted a sub-clause down a paragraph. It’s also why my blood pressure can veer from 180:140 to 80:50 and my heart sometimes sounds like Animal, the Muppets drummer, playing deranged rhythms with one hand. And as medications are added to treat the symptoms, so cause and effect get complicated.

If getting a diagnosis is difficult then getting rid of Lyme is even harder. Symptoms can persist long after the antibiotic course is completed and the longer you’ve had the disease, the longer they’ll last. When this happens researchers are very careful to refer to Post Treatment Lyme, and not Long-or Chronic-Lyme. This may sound like semantics, but it’s important.

I have been treated with 2 courses of antibiotics (the sledgehammer and then pile-driver versions) and it’s extremely unlikely that any of the bacteria have survived this onslaught. They’re dead. So now I’m living with the damage the Lyme bacteria have done, especially to my nervous system. I felt like sh*t then, and still feel it now. Mending this could take years.

Imagine a human-scale version of a deserted battlefield. The war is over, the armies have gone home and all that remains is a landscape of devastation and dysfunction. Eventually, the land will recover, the trees will grow back and any unexploded munitions will be removed. How long will this take? We don’t know. Welcome to Post Treatment Lyme Disease.

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A Footnote: Whole-genome sequencing of Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacterium that causes Lyme Disease, has shown a huge range in variety and complexity. This is thought to explain the multiple Lyme disease symptoms, from severe arthritis in children to fatigue and debilitating joint, neurological, and cardiovascular impacts in adults.

For further reading, I recommend the Lyme specialists at Johns Hopkinsand Harvard.

Soon there will be a vaccine (it’s in Stage 3 trials). And about time too.

Bulldog carp to 31lb

posted in: Carp Fishing, Sidebar | 0

Bulldogs Carp lake this week has  been challenging with the recent temperature drop and atrocious weather the anglers had their work cut out.

After a wet and wild Thursday night, Rob and Ernie targeted the deeper water on the road side and finally a few fish came out Using boilie hook baits over a steady trickle of the house pellet seven fish were banked

the biggest being a 31lb common.

UPPER TAMAR CARP

posted in: Carp Fishing, Sidebar | 0

Aaron Bunning’s has enjoyed success on trips to Upper Tamar banking several fine carp including fish of   20lb 14oz, 19lb 14oz, 19lb and 18lb 12oz. All fish were caught using Nash Bait scopex squid. Great result Aaron!

A good stamp of fish are being caught from the venue at the moment, with the first South West Lakes Trust Mainline Baits pairs competition of the year next month, I don’t think many would argue if they managed to get these fish in the competition.

Places are still available for the March competition. With £3500 worth of prize money and Mainline Baits goodies available, visit our website to book a place:

The Carp Fushing removal project is also being repeated at Roadford this coming season!

Rainbows and spartics at Bulldog

I joined Wistlandpound Fly Fishing Club for their final Winter Challenge match of the season at Bulldog Fishery. After heavy rain the water was a little coloured and members struggled to catch for the first hour.

As the morning progressed I noticed rods starting to bend as members found the right formulae. I had been fishing a floating line with a bead headed black lure and had received just the one pull after an hour and a half of concerted effort.

I had tried several areas around the recently enlarged lake and noted that other members were catching from the very spots I had departed. I had to leave at lunch time and knew that if I was to catch I needed to change tactics.

I swapped over to an Intermediate Snowbee line, stuck with the black lure on the point and a Montana nymph on the dropper. After five minutes I had a good pull through the line and briefly hooked into a fish that came off after a few seconds.

A recently stocked spartic

Encouraged and with renewed confidence I continued to search the water moving a few yards to a small promontory. The line zipped tight and I was delighted to net a spartic trout of around 1lb 8oz. A few minutes later a chunky rainbow of around 4lb was safely netted after a good tussle. I fished on with confidence and completed my three fish bag by 1.00pm. Speaking with fellow members it was interseting to note that several fish had been tempted using flies with a touch of orange. I had caught on a black pattern; would I have tempted my fish earlier with a touch of orange? Was success down to depth and rate of retrieve? Or did the trout simply come on the feed?

My three fish bag including a 4lb rainbow and spartic.

Competition Result :-

1st Andre Muxworthy – 3 trout 9lb 3oz

2nd Wayne Thomas – 3 trout 8lb 8oz

3rd Nigel Bird – 3 trout 6lb 10oz

4th Colin Combe = 2 trout 5lb 10oz

5th Dave Mock –2 trout  5lb 5oz

Winner Andre Muxworthy with his three trout for 9lb 3oz.

It was now time for a quick catch up with fellow club members and to take a look at the drained carp lake with fishery owner Nigel Early. The lake has been drained, nuisance bream and small carp removed. The lake will reopen this coming Friday with plans to stock more carp over coming months. The lake has already produced carp to 33lb and will flourish over the coming months for sure. I have included a few pictures of the lake for future reference.

New Stock for North Devon’s South West Lakes Trust Waters

South West Lakes –
Title: New Stock Added

___________________________________________________________

Jennett’s has been stocked with 19 new additions to the lake! 15 mirrors between 16 -18lb and 4 bigger mirrors to just over 23lb

Darracott has received a boost in stocks in 2023, to ensure there is a great future of sport in the lake for years to come. 72 fish have been added all together to 23lb. This should be a good venue over the winter to get a few bites and keep you busy on the bank!

Melbury has received 4 new additions to the lake to improve an already impressive stock. Two mirrors were added from from the Roadford lake carp removals, both of these were doubles and two fish were added from Lana springs carp farm (19 and 20 Plus). These are stunning fish and will no doubt be target fish for the future!

 

Coarse fishing end of year newsletter December 2023 – South West lakes Trust

Coarse fishing end of year newsletter
December 2023

Dear fellow anglers,

Where has 2023 gone? Another brilliant year of angling on our coarse fishing venues has flown by. There have certainly been some highlights this year and it has been fantastic to see the reports and photos sent in of people’s captures this year.

It was a great start to the year for pike fishing on College Lake, with the lake recently allowing limited pike fishing tickets through the winter season. All the anglers that took up the opportunity to pike fish the lake had a great time with multiple fish caught over the colder months. These tickets are available again this year, please ring the office for details on 01566 771930.

New format a success for Mainline Baits

Soon, spring was upon us and with the pike season coming to a close the other species started to wake up in in the reservoirs with multiple catch reports coming in from Argal and Upper Tamar in early March.

The end of March saw the return of the Mainline Baits Pairs competitions on Upper Tamar. There was a rule change this year on how the final result is taken, where a pair can register their three biggest fish and the final weight is taken from that. This led to a much more competitive and close competition which could be won at any time by anyone.

Over the year we offer three pairs competitions on Upper Tamar with £3,500 of prize money up for grabs. All anglers get a goody bag from the match sponsor Mainline Baits. We look forward to running these again in 2024 (dates to be announced at the start of the year).

Upper Tamar on top form for matches

Springtime also marked the start of the matches on Upper Tamar. Upper Tamar is such an amazing venue and once again it showed its form with some cracking weights of bream, perch and roach from the matches through the year, it’s no wonder it is regarded as one of the best venues in the country. It was great to see familiar faces this year and once again there was some top banter to go with it.

The match calendar for Upper Tamar is already full for 2024, we apologise for any disappointment. There are still dates available for Jennetts and a couple of other venues, please get in touch for details.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the match organisers and competitors for their support in 2023. We hope 2024 will bring another successful year of matches on our reservoirs and we look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Get Fishing Awards at Porth and Darracott

As summer started, plans were well under way to try to show a wider audience just how amazing our sport is. Through the month of August, we aimed to roll out the Angling Trust ‘Get Fishing Awards’ at Porth and Darracott. This was a gateway for newcomers to try fishing and have the confidence and knowledge to get out there and go fishing by gaining a Bronze, Silver and Gold award after three sessions.

A massive thank you to the volunteers who helped at the events, we aim to carry on these sort of events in 2024 and plans are in place to try and kick on from this to encourage more into the sport.

Carp removal project at Roadford Lake

September saw the start of the carp removal project at Roadford Lake. Due to fish spawning in the first week of May we had to put a hold on it until September. This gave the opportunity for people to fish the 700+ acre venuefor carp for the first time.

Due to agreements and legislation when Roadford was created, the lake can only be run as a brown trout fishery. Therefore, the aim of the project is to remove carp to improve the brown trout fishing and at the same time use the fish to improve the stocks in some of our reservoirs. Throughout September, over 200 carp were caught and moved to other venues to improve the stocks of the lakes.

Pike, Catch and stock: a busy end to the year! 

As the year draws to an end it has seen the matches finish on the venues until next year, the pike season has started again, the day tickets have moved onto the Catch app and we have invested in some new stock for the lakes, with over £15,000 of carp being stocked (including this stunning mirror at Melbury, below).

A big thank you to all those that took part in the season ticket survey.

Notable catches and results on the lakes

There have been some notable catches and results on the lakes this year. Longham has been on fine form producing a bream of 20lb to Chris Harrison and a new lake record 48lb 4oz carp to Alan Thurlow.

Lee Kerry was crowned the Feeder Masters champion for the third time at Upper Tamar. The close competition was won with a winning weight of 65lb 10oz after two days, beating second place and last year’s champion Zak Williams by 2lb 6oz.

Lower Tamar has once again produced some fantastic bream (see photo below) with multiple double figure fish getting caught through the year. The lake has also been producing some cracking 30lb carp and some great tench to over 7lb.

Trenchford has had a great start to the winter with a 24lb pike making Julian Fraser’s day, it was his first ever pike! Porth and Argal have seen some stunning carp landed this year, Jennetts has been producing some lovely carp with a good number being over 20lb and the silver fish fishing has been fantastic on the venue with a 20lb plus bag of silvers not uncommon.

There are many other great catches on the lakes this year but we can’t list them all.

 

NORTH DEVONS TACKLE SHOPS – Buy Local

We are very fortunate in North Devon to have some excellent fishing tackle shops providing local anglers with a wide range of tackle and bait. Tackle shops are at the heart of the local angling community providing a meeting place where anglers can pick up the tools of the trade before spending their hard earned cash. Tackle shops are also a vital social centre where anglers can mingle to plan trips to the water’s edge. I value the support given to North Devon Angling News by our local tackle shops. Over the last few days before Christmas why not pop into your local tackle shop and maybe buy a present or two and stock up with tackle for the Christmas holidays and next year’s fishing trips.