Originally Posted by Jam

I agree my opinion is we live in a fast food society people don’t want to work for things they want it now they don’t want to wait for it. It took me several years to work towards my double figure Barbel why is it that people seem to be able to go to a pond and be able to get one almost instantly no skill involved whatsoever indeed it is shamefull!!

Ah now then Jam. That is opening up another debate entirely. Worthy of a separate thread. And as usual with me, one on which I again have strong feelings. Not that I will be able to change anything by expressing them, and they would annoy the hell out a lot of modern anglers who consider that they are moving mountains rather than molehills.

Your last statement applies to rivers too: so much has been laid out for modern anglers. The need to think things out and to work hard for big fish has long gone. Anyone can catch big fish these days, with tackle straight out of the box, fresh from a TV and internet course of instruction, with a packet of can't fail bait. These newbies will easily eclipse that very big fish you caught 40 years ago, the one that hit the front page of the angling comics. Nothing you can do about it, big fish hunting has been dumbed down more than the GCSEs. You pay your money, and you catch your fish. Just remember that the big fish you caught way back then has not been devalued like the pound in your pocket. That is still one superb fish, and its capture possibly a great feat. But there are a hell of a lot more fish of that size around these days, and they are much, much easier to catch.

In many cases the hardest thing about modern anglers' latest big fish captures was getting out of bed once the fish had hooked themselves.

I don't like many of the changes that have occurred over the last 40 years, but they are here to stay...unfortunately.

[QUOTE=fishboyfishy;5886]I know a syndicate that backs onto a river and has had a couple of fish enter during floods. These fish were caught a few times at first but then never seen again. The lake was netted recently and tuned up a few fish, two doubles one of 14lb, the others were very small fish around 2lb. There has been no floods for quite a while, this can only mean they are breeding. ?
/QUOTE]

Or maybe anglers have introduced a few more small fish? Also the country suffered very severe floods only a little more than couple of years ago.

There are places where you can fish that a bit of skill is still needed. Off the beaten track admittedly and some involve a trek too. The pegs may not be as manicured as some places, overgrown in most part, but there's got to be more of a thrill of finding out where the fish are in these swims than more or less having the lake bed topography more or less handed to you?

It's by no means an easier option but there are a few deciding factors that need to taken into consideration. Some anglers don't have time to find everything out for themselves, does that mean they are less worthy? Some can camp out for days on end and wait for the fish to come to them. Others can't.

Commercials are the ideal place for them, guaranteed bends in rods make for happy anglers.

I'll admit to fishing them very occasionally but you certainly don't learn anything of signficance.

Looking through the "comics" (as JayZs calls them) you'll see them littered with huge fish, mainly Carp now with an increasing number of Barbel thrown in. I doubt whether some of the younger anglers have seen some of the "lesser" indigenous species let alone caught any.

The list of the "aliens" is a constant worry, Rainbows, Zander, Ide to name a few. The furore around the Zander in the fens is one that particularly stands out. According to the experts at the time there would be no fish left. Maybe the stocks suffered initially but eventually found a kind of balance.

There's no way of going back to the earlier years of fishing, the changes, like them are not are here to stay. A rather more manufactured ecological cycle, it's not going to spoil the memories I have or hopefully will make in the coming years.

Quote:

Your last statement applies to rivers too: so much has been laid out for modern anglers. The need to think things out and to work hard for big fish has long gone.

John, this is why I fish the Severn and usually places where I know nobody else has fished it (Montford Bridge apart) and generally not using off the shelf baits (pellets apart although I will soon be in receipt of some new pellets not available on the open market and probably never will be as they are being made especially for me)!! But the Severn as I think you found out recently is not the type of river you can just turn up and hit into big fish or any barbel for that matter in my experience anyway, others may disagree!!

Quote:

That is still one superb fish, and its capture possibly a great feat. But there are a hell of a lot more fish of that size around these days, and they are much, much easier to catch.

My “PB” for want of a better word was a fantastic fish an at 10lb 9oz maybe scoffed at by some anglers but it took some time to catch and I’m still very proud of it. Again talking about the Severn I’m pretty shore that there are some monsters in there even go as far as to say fish that have never been caught but defiantly not easy to catch and generally I would say the average size to 8lb, again some may disagree!!

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[QUOTE=drynetter;5908]There are places where you can fish that a bit of skill is still needed. Off the beaten track admittedly and some involve a trek too. The pegs may not be as manicured as some places, overgrown in most part, but there's got to be more of a thrill of finding out where the fish are in these swims than more or less having the lake bed topography more or less handed to you?/quote/

It will always be possible to make things more difficult, whether by tackle chice, swim choice, bait choice. But you now have another choice: the easy route, which did not use to exist.


Looking through the "comics" (as JayZs calls them) you'll see them littered with huge fish, mainly Carp now with an increasing number of Barbel thrown in. I doubt whether some of the younger anglers have seen some of the "lesser" indigenous species let alone caught any./Quote/

Yes indeed. They have missed out on all the fun of an angling apprenticeship, the gudgeon, that first perch, caught by sheer fluke due to inappropriate tackle, but a thrill nevertheless. A lot more anglers begin as teenagers these days, rather than as younger kids, and thus at an age when the instant gratification culture is already very ingrained.

/quote/
The list of the "aliens" is a constant worry, Rainbows, Zander, Ide to name a few. The furore around the Zander in the fens is one that particularly stands out. According to the experts at the time there would be no fish left. Maybe the stocks suffered initially but eventually found a kind of balance.

QUOTE]

I remember well the zander prophets of doom, saying that the native fish will all be wiped out. It never happened of course. All that happened was that the predators diversified a bit. It was interesting, early on, to read in magazines like "Fishing", of "V" shaped marks on dropped livebaits. No-one apparently knew what was causing them...or so it seemed. But there were a few anglers "in the know" who were fishing for the zander, catching them, and keeping fairly quiet about it.
You don't mention the worst and most commonly encountered alien: the carp. The massed ranks of carp we have these days are not much like the wildies introduced by the monks, many years ago. These are more recent "varieties", selected for growth potential. And there are millions of them. These have had far more effect on the waters and on angling than have zander.

[QUOTE=Jam;5909]But the Severn as I think you found out recently is not the type of river you can just turn up and hit into big fish or any barbel for that matter in my experience anyway, others may disagree!!

QUOTE]

My one trip is not, perhaps, very diagnostic. Let me go a couple or three more trips

[quote=JayZS;5911]

Originally Posted by Jam

But the Severn as I think you found out recently is not the type of river you can just turn up and hit into big fish or any barbel for that matter in my experience anyway, others may disagree!! QUOTE] My one trip is not, perhaps, very diagnostic. Let me go a couple or three more trips

Sorry John not an attack merely an observation and next time you come down I will make dam sure that I am available, I've sat on the river Severn many a time and blank only for people to say “why do you do it if you haven’t caught anything surely its boring” but these are the sort of people who are used to fishing lakes or people who just don’t understand the joy and thrill of what I’m doing!!

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"Yes indeed. They have missed out on all the fun of an angling apprenticeship, the gudgeon, that first perch, caught by sheer fluke due to inappropriate tackle, but a thrill nevertheless. A lot more anglers begin as teenagers these days, rather than as younger kids, and thus at an age when the instant gratification culture is already very ingrained."

As a relative late-comer to fishing, (I didn't discover it until I was 11!) I have now been fishing for 50 years. In all that time I've never stopped learning, both from my own experience, and from listening to the advice of others.

"But the Severn as I think you found out recently is not the type of river you can just turn up and hit into big fish or any barbel for that matter in my experience anyway, others may disagree!!"

The Severn is a river that rewards those who follow the learning approach, 'seek and ye shall find'! This season I've seen a lot of people who are moaning about how poor the fishing is, they sit on one peg all day, in bright sunshine, and wonder why they don't catch? I, on the other hand, have had some of my best early season results ever, passed 100 barbel for the season in only 13 visits, ironically on Friday 13th! To do this I've fished plenty of swims that rarely, if ever, see another angler and I've walked a good few miles to do it. Some of my catches have come from swims that I know from past experience, but the most rewarding ones have been from swims that I've found by applying some of the knowledge I've gained over the years.