AMM2009Date 2008EventReports TalkingTactics:IcePiking..

ISSUE 123Spring 2009

pacgb.com

UnderTheSkinMickyJonesRiverPiking:J.SidleyChrisDonovanPresident’sShieldJohnSynnuck

AweNostalgiaTripGrahamBarstowTimeForChange?CraigWinterAlienInvasionMark Ackerley

Features

WelcomeToPikelines123

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got in touch just before Xmas. His objective:to make us all reconsider the merits ofusing such rigs. As Pikelines goes to pressthis has become something of a hot subjectwith much discussion over objectives andfeasibility. As with all things ‘human’ therehas been good and bad rhetoric on thematter, especially via several forums.

Craig’s drive and passion has tobe admired in it’s raw state, how-ever, he has conceded that someof his objectives and claims haverequired modification to be realistic.A strong sign of good character.

Thankfully, things are back on trackand I am sure Craig’s campaign to endany unnecessary mis-handling of pike onhis local waters will go forward in aninformed, positive manner.

For the love of Esox... SteveOrmrod

So much for global warming spin!We’ve been experiencing a properwinter for once thank goodness.

The only problem with tumbling tempera-tures is that it does tend to restrict ourchoice of venue when the inevitable freeze-ups start. I do hope you are managing toget out and pike fish. For a lot of us, ourrivers will be the salvation and it will beinteresting to see if there are good catchesmade by the end of the season. I say thisas they don’t normally tend to be the No.1choice for pike anglers in more ‘conducive’conditions.

As Nev comments above, single hooks andhair-rigs for pike are coming to the foreagain. It isn’t anything new of course (notmany things are in piking), however, thereare several pike anglers out there pushingfor change. Craig Winter is one such per-son who really amazed me when he first

I can appreciate Craig Winters enthusi-asm for single hooks (see his article onpage 24) and I think that if you can catchpike on hair rigged baits, it cannot do thepike much harm. However the wayforward is to develop self-hookingmethods such as we see in carp fishing(and other coarse fish now) in order tohook pike consistently in the corner of themouth. To develop the method really

needs access to a water withlots of pike so that the

technique can be perfected.A job for SUPERBROWN

(aka Mick Brown) I think?

This is our last but one Pikelines, butplease don’t stop sending in materialbecause the next editor could do withsome choice to get started with.

NevilleFickling

Ideas in pike fishing tend to comearound again and again and if you’vebeen pike fishing for 40 odd yearssome things will have passed you byseveral times by now.

Hair rigs for pike were given a try in thelate eighties as the inevitable progressionyou’d expect from carp fishing.Unfortunately hair rigged baits didn’tcatch on because really it is a small baitmethod and small baits are notalways the answer in manypike fishing situations.

Then there is the uneasy feelingI get when I’m required to let a pikeswallow the bait in order to hopefullyhook it in the corner of the mouth usinga hair rig. The application of themethod to big baits and livebaitspresents problems which may beinsurmountable.

ProductionNotes

Articles/Reports/Letters/News?email Neville at: thetackleshop@btconnect.comPL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

3Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

Editor’sViewpoint

InsideSpring2009

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

ALouderVoiceCov

erS

tory

First Words06 Secretary’sStatementMarkBarrett

06 President’sAddressPhilWakeford

08 MembershipsUpdate‘09 JohnCahill

FeatureArticles18 AweNostalgiaTripGrahamBarstow

24 TimeForChange?CraigWinter

30 UnderTheSkinMickyJones

41 AlienInvasionMarkAckerley

54 TalkingTactics: IceHolePikingInCanada-DianaAndSteveCrook

62 River PikingByJohnSidleyChrisDonovan

Regulars10 NewsFeed AllTheGoss,IssuesandViews

28 YourLettersYourPikelinesVoice

34 JuniorPicturesOurYoungPACMembers

36 MembersPicturesZootaLuresCompetition

38 OfficialPACProductsTheBestPikingGear

48 RegionTalkWhat’sHappeningLocally?

57 RealReviewsTriedandTested!

64 President’sShieldAwardJohnSynnuck

67 SpecialistAnglersAllianceBulletinUpdate

68 RegionalContacts:NationwideDetails

Specials07 Raffle-AMM-Piking2009:NewsAndUpdates

09 ExclusiveMembershipsCompetition08/09

52 WarOfTheRoses2ChasWhite

60 PACEventReports2008

EnjoyYourPikelines...Note: Views and opinions expressed herein are those of the persons namedand are not necessarily representative of PAC policy, conduct or values.

By submitting material for use in Pikelines, authors give their permissionfor possible further use as PAC promotional material.

54

Carl Allen submitted this underwater shotof his fish, taken by Ulrich Beyer.

With the formation of Angling Trust, fishingnow has a ‘louder voice’. See NewsFeed fordetails of this important new collaboration.

The Pike Anglers’ Club of Great Britainwill work to establish an environmentin which pike are valued; both as asporting fish and necessary part of themanagement and ecology of fresh waters.

PACMissionStatement...

PACCommittee Contact Details...

ChairmanColinGoodgeemail:chairman@pacgb.co.uk

President PhilWakeford17RamsburyDrive,Earley,Reading,BerksRG67RT.email:president@pacgb.co.uk

GeneralSecretaryMarkBarrettemail:secretary@pacgb.co.uk

TreasurerJohnSynnuckAvalon,24FRedLodgeRoad,BexleyKentDA52JW.email: treasurer@pacgb.co.uk

MembershipSecretaryJohnCahill312HobsMoatRoad,Solihull,W.MidlandsB928JX. Tel:05601313753 (7-9pm)email:memberships@pacgb.co.uk

CommunicationsOfficerChrisBishopTel:07775 576968email:press@pacgb.co.uk

Promotions&AdvertisingMikeKellyTel:01892513909 07909854347email:m2mlk@btinternet.com

SpecialEventsMarkSkinner33 Chestnut Drive, Polegate, East SussexBN26 5AN. Tel: 07717 754993email:events@pacgb.co.uk

PACProductsMikeHastings9BarkingRoad,NeedhamMarket,SuffolkIP6 8EN. Tel:07729745293email: pacprodman@btinternet.com

WebmasterDaveLumbemail: webmaster@pacgb.co.uk

PLEditor/FeaturesNeville Ficklingc/oTheTackleShop,BridgeRoad,Gainsborough,N.Lincs.DN211JS.Tel:01427613002email: thetackleshop@btconnect.com

PLProduction/DesignSteveOrmrodMyrtleVilla,68BuryRoad,Radcliffe,ManchesterM262UU.email:predhunter.o@virgin.net

PACAdvisoryPanelDoctorBrunoBroughton,ProfessorBarrieRickards,DoctorJohnTate, BillChillingworthandDaveLumb.

PAC Honorary Life Members:MartynPage, MalcolmBannister,DerekUnsworth, GeoffParkinson,JamesHolgate, PeteHaywood,PhilKirk, MartinPhillips, GeorgeHiggins,JohnRoberts, ChrisLeibbrandt,JohnSynnuck, JohnMilford, LeeKemp,PeterClimo,HowardYendle, CarlGarratt,PaulJennings, AlanPalmer,AlastairSmith, WilmaMcDermid,WilliamColquhoun, DavidBatten,NeilShortland, MarkLeathwood,VickyLeathwood, SteveOrmrod,Tracey Foster, DaveFoster,IanMaguire, Neville Fickling, RayFarrell,ColinGoodge, BillWinship,RobMurray, ChasWhite, MikeBell,Adrian Brayshaw, PeterRobinson,MarkAckerley, JohnHodgson,MickCulpanandJohnWatson.

Senior Fellows:Fred Buller, Dr.BrunoBroughton,Dr.JohnTate , DavidLumb, GrahamSteadand PeterS.Green.

Founding Fellows:Prof.BarrieRickards, HughReynoldsand BillChillingworth.

PikelinesContributions: We welcome contributions to Pikelines from all PAC members. Articles, letters, news etc. should ideally be provided aselectronic text files on floppy disc or CD along with a hard-copy. If contributions can be made entirely via email this would be appreciated. Hand-writtentext must be LEGIBLE. Please include contact details and caption any images sent. Images: electronic files from a digital camera are preferred forquality of reproduction. Please send the largest file size possible: 1MB minimum in JPEG or TIF format. Images may also be submitted as prints(10 x 8 preferred) or 35mm slides, but these must be sharp. If you wish material to be returned please include a protective stamped, addressedenvelope. Please send contributions to Neville Fickling, (at the address details above) email text/digital images wherever possible or via the post.We advise sending important material via recorded delivery. PAC reserves the right not to publish material deemed as contradictory to PAC values.

PACTroubleshooters:WeHaveThePower... If you see or hear of anything anti-pike/pike anglers, or indeed anti-angling, eg. press reports or intended club pike-culls, then gather asmuch detail and evidence as possible (paper clippings, dates, author name and address or clubSecretary contact if a cull or abuse) and immediately contact your local LO/RO (details on page68-69) who will deal with the matter first hand or will seek assistance from the Committee.In addition to PAC’s current officials, a number of past officials continue to support PAC in therole of ‘Troubleshooters’, as and when the need arises.

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18

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6462

7Renew/Join online now: http://www.pacgb.co.uk/aboutpac/joining.html6

members total that had become somethingof a holy grail for this committee will be atlast achieved.

On the subject of the new committee,of course all will be shortly revealed as toit’s make up, but I can go on record assaying that I know that the currentcommittee are to a man certain that weare handing over to the best people forthe job. I think that they will continueto take this great club forward andcontinue its presence within UK angling.I wish them well and hope that they havea smooth ride throughout their three years,but I doubt it!

MarkBarrett

With the festive period behind us it’stime to look forward towards the lastweeks of the traditional pike season,and forward to a new year.

It certainly true that for many this will be atough year. Financially many of us will betightening our belts and it looks like therewill be a lean year ahead for many.

That’s why in this year of cutting back andbelt tightening its been great to see thatthe membership of the club is still onthe up.

With a new committee coming in May, andthe buzz that this will undoubtedly causeI am pretty optimistic that the 3,000

As I write this in the second week inJanuary 09 we are in the middle of abig freeze up and I read that it is thecoldest prolonged spell for 12 years.

This has put paid to any plans to fish stillwaters as they are all frozen solid.Any sensible person would stay indoors

at the weekend, perhaps with a good book(and or woman) and wait for the thaw tocome, but I know from meeting andspeaking to many of our members that weare far from sensible, or even sane for that

matter. At least petrol prices have comedown from when I last wrote.

Whatever the weather many of us stillventure out onto the bank to try our luckafter ‘Old Esox’. When I eventually retirefrom work I will be able to pick my daysmore than now but for most of us it’sfishing at the weekend come rain, shine oras with right now cold. Certainly there ismore to fishing than just catching fish butit is rather nice to get a bend in the rodnow and again and all of us like to catchbig fish too.

That said even if the conditions are perfectwe have always got a ready made excusefor us failing to catch because that is thenature of fishermen, isn’t it? The rivers arelow and clear right now and that can leadus to stay away but the fish are stillpresent and can see our baits/ lures andit’s got to be a whole lot better conditions

than when heavy rain colours those samerivers up and we are almost bound tostruggle. Anyway pike fishing gives us theideal excuse to get out of the house andget close up and personal with nature in all

her moods. Most days on boat or bank wesee sights that the none anglers never orrarely do and it can give us a ‘great to bealive’ feeling. That might explain why somany of us are prepared to fight to defendour fish and the sport it provides, tovolunteer to serve on committees or findother ways of getting involved to improvematters on all sorts of fronts.

When each of us retire we will be able toenjoy pike fishing worth having and afterall there is enough depressing news inthe country without us having to look backon missed opportunities to preservepike fishing.

I ask each and every member to try andthink of how they can put somethinghowever small back into our sport.

PhilWakeford

HolyGrailIsStillInSight

EnjoyPikingWorthHaving

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President’sAddress

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com

Secretary’sStatement

PACMegaRaffleUpdateWinter08/09Main Prizes include a Cat fishing Holiday by kind courtesy ofMartin Walker of Catfish Capers. Menteith Golden tickets.Return your raffle tickets and cheque as soon as possible to beincluded in the winners draw which will be made in May 2009.

Right: PAC member J. Holmes pictured at Redmire pool with one of last years raffle prizes: a TGF force 8 Bivvy c/o E-Sox and more.

Date:SaturdaySeptember26th2009 Venue:Stoneleigh,WarwickshireTickets:£12ForAdults(£10InAdvance-PACMembers) IncludesParkingFee OtherConcessionsTBA

Includes:StarGuestSpeakers-TackleStands-PikingPanelForum-SecondHandStallsGuestSpeakerLine-upOtherFeaturesToBeAnnouncedSoonMakeItADateInYourDiary ALLPikeAnglersWelcomeExhibitorsPleaseContactMikeKelly IfYouAreInterested InAttending. Please Note:AllDetailsAboveMayBeSubjectToChange.

PikingConvention2009News

AnnualMembersMeetingHandover2009Date:SaturdayMay9th2009 Venue:HolidayInnJ25M1NottinghamNJ105NJ.ALLPACMembersWelcome ComeAlongToWelcome&TalkToYourNewCommitteeFREEAdmission Refreshments:£2.50PerPerson Lunch:£6.50PerPerson

BecomeANewPACMemberToWinADay’sPikingWithDaveKelbrick

ExclusiveNewMembershipsPromotion08/09

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com8 Renew/Join online now: http://www.pacgb.co.uk/aboutpac/joining.html 9

Numbers.At the time of writing (early Jan)membership renewals and newapplications have continued to bestrong since our traditional year endof September.

Current levels are at 2100 which is slightlyahead of the same point last year. Theeffect of late renewals and the rollingmembership scheme should see the 2009year end numbers similar to those of 2007and 2008 at about 2500.

Unfortunately the 3000 goal has provedbeyond us despite the efforts of the entirecommittee. During our tenure we haveseen membership numbers increase from1830 at May 2006 handover to 2225 (Sept06) and then to 2500 at Sept 2007 (sameat Sept 2008). Maybe at 2500 the PAChas reached a plateau? If we could retainthe year on year 25% churn (lost) inmembers then the club could makegreat strides, especially in income whichcould assist finance perhaps long termresearch projects.

The reality is that most angling clubs suffera churn in membership numbers eachyear, it comes with the territory. Both PeteGreen and I have employed a lot of effort(and cost) chasing members to renew justto stand at present levels so it hasn’t beenfor a lack of effort.

Membership Fees.It has been 5 years (2004) since theclub last increased membership fees.In 2006 we made the decision to fixfees until the end of our term which isfast approaching at May 2009.

I have made a recommendation to thecommittee to increase the fees with effect10th May 2009, this is due to the increasein postage and production costs since thelast increase.

The good news is that if you plan to recruita new member or encourage a lapsedmember to renew then the current feestructure is still in place until May. Detailsof the new fee structure will be revealed atthe AMM in Nottingham on May 9th(see page 7 for details), communicated viasummer’s Pikelines, and the website.

Dave Kelbrick Competition.The competition closes for entries on1st May 2009 with the winner beingdrawn at the clubs AMM.

Following dialogue with Dave and due tothe day he has planned for the winner arule change has been made (see right).Only one angler will be able to attend onthe day, however, if an existing memberrecruits a new member they will both beentered into the draw separately.Whoever wins will I am sure have agreat day. Get recruiting folks!

PAC Insurance.As detailed in previous Pikelines wehave been conducting a review of theclubs insurance over recent months.

The main change is that we haveincreased the level of Civil Liability coverfrom £5m to £10m due to the impact ofrecent court awards in this area. Formembers can I reiterate ‘Cover is for Civilliability providing cover for legal liabilityunder the Civil law to the general publicand members of the insured (The PAC)for personal injury or damage to propertywhilst engaged in the activity of Angling’.

For clarification, it does not meet boatregistration authority requirements of thevarious authorities as they require theboat to be covered. There is also aspecific exclusion within the policyrelating to boat use where ‘members arenot covered when in boats of more than 3metres in length or a maximum speedgreater than 7 knots.

There are a multitude of key facts/exclusions within the policy, a copy ofwhich can be obtained from me (see mycontact details on page 4). At the time ofwriting we await an update from thebroker on a number of aspects relating tothe policy. A further update will follow indue course.

Finally, on a personal note I thoroughlyenjoyed the convention (especially theafter show drink-athon). I marshalled theLlyn Brenig event which turned out to bea ‘modest’ event in terms of results butconditions did not help. I also have aplace booked on the Warping Drain eventto see if I can remember what a pikelooks like! See you there.

JohnCahill

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StrongAndSteadyProgress

MembershipsUpdate‘09Fancy learning new skills with one of the country’s bestlure anglers? Well here’s your chance...We are delighted to announce that Dave Kelbrick has agreed to support us in our ongoingmembership recruitment campaign in 2009.

That’s the prize in a brand new PAC membershippromotion announced by membership secretaryJohn Cahill that’s easy to enter, both members andnon-members of the club can take part. Dave is anaccomplished lure angler with an enviable list of biglure-caught pike. Membership Secretary John Cahillsaid: “Im delighted Dave has agreed to support uswith this great prize, having fished with Dave,I know the winner will not only learn a lot butalso have a fun day out.”

Whether the winner is a die-hard baitangler or lure fanatic, it representsa fantastic day out. All you have todo is either join the club or recruita new member to be entered intothe draw to win a day for yourselfwith Dave.

Please read the rules below...The Executive Committee or their related family members are not eligible to participatein this promotion. Applications for entry are for NEW members to the club(not 2008/2009 renewals). Entries will only be permitted from date of the promotionsannouncement being 27.09.08. Applications are eligible in any format BUT musthave the words ‘Dave Kelbrick Comp’ written on the application. Paypal entries requirea separate email to: memberships@pacgb.co.uk requesting entry into the draw.Prize draw entries will be confirmed to the new member by the MembershipSecretary (please allow 28 days for confirmation). One entry to the draw perapplication received*. In the event of a disputed entry the Chairman’s decision is final.*If an existing member recruits a new member they need to ensure their ownmembership number is detailed on the application/email together with the words‘Dave Kelbrick Comp’. Confirmation into the draw will go to the new member only.The existing and new member will be entered into the draw separately to fish the dayif successful. Ie. a total of one angler only. Existing members can recruit as manynew members as they wish and each will receive a separate entry into the draw.Likewise new members can gain another entry by going out and recruiting a friend.Existing members upgrading to family membership for the extra cost of £5 canintroduce up to 3 new family members and gain 3 entries into the draw.Entries must be received by 1st May 2009. The Draw will take place atthe the Club’s AMM on May 9th 2009. Timing and venue of the day with Davewill be at his discretion. A maximum of 1 angler will be able to attend.

So get recruiting and Good Luck!

How can we influence the outcome of therevision of The Angling Bill to our benefit,to name a couple of matters that will needour attention. Such is our lot and we willnot shy away from it, what is more we areable to demonstrate serious strength indepth in the club as will be revealed whenwe announce the names of the incomingcommittee around May in readiness for thehandover at the AMM.

So my message to the membership is asimple one. Stick with us and support theclub. Try to encourage new membersespecially young ones or others who'smembership has lapsed, the battle willnever be over, but above all, enjoy yourpike fishing.

Phil Wakeford, President.

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com10 Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb 11

NewsFeedHOTNewsFromTheCommunicationsDeskPikelines 124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

Spring2009StandfirstNewsSummary

MickyLandsBestEverCatchInTrueStyleMenteith not only brings out the magical dream ofthat fish of a lifetime, it has for two anglers broughtout a lifetime commitment. Picture the scene, PACLO Micky has hooked and landed an 11lb pike,unhooked the fish, goes to his knees on the bottom ofthe boat, releases the fish and then turns round topartner Julie and says “Will you marry me?” Julie isamazed and says “YES”. Both PAC and PAASmembers, Micky Jones and Julie Bremner will tie theknot on a future date. Mentieth is surely a magicalplace, congratulations to both.

By far the biggest news of the New Year is the formation ofthe new Angling Trust, a partnering of the UK’s strongestangling bodies and experience to represent all UK anglers ona unified front (see right). Other big news: The government haspledged £1.56m to the Angling Development Board in order todeliver more angling opportunities with a focus on getting youngeranglers participating. The new Marine Bill announced as a part ofthe Queen’s speech looks set to enforce legislation which willoutlaw the illegal taking of fish stocks.

Sea deadbaits may well get more expensive as the EU plan toimpose catch quotas. On a brighter note, the EA is hinting at abumper year for rod license sales as anglers flood to the banksand away from the shopping malls and cinemas in an attemptto get more for their pounds!

Elsewhere in the news we have well-wishes to several PACmembers and a big celebration for one of our Founding Fellows;happy 70th birthday Barrie!

Most of the country is suffering fromthe current cold snap seeing manywaters with a lid on them, writes PACpresident Phil Wakeford in a New Year’smessage to pike anglers.

This means that for many of us any sportto be had is limited to fishing runningwater. If you are anything like me you feelthe pull of the water to get you out for afew hours and wet a line. I did that yester-day and even though I was only rewardedwith a small pike the effort was extremelyworthwhile in clearing the head andworking up even more appetite for theNew Years Eve celebrations.How many times has it been said that‘there is so much more to fishing thancatching fish’ (I don’t expect an answer)but for the vast majority of us it is so true.

Seeing the waters in their winter glory, thewaterfowl and other wildlife, trying yourluck and perhaps being rewarded with adecent fish are all enough to get some ofus out of the house.

As far as the PAC is concerned we arealive and kicking. Our membershipnumbers are healthy and we are financiallysound. We could always do with more onboth counts and are always searching forways to achieve this. We can look backat successes during 2008 and indeednever let a serious threat to our speciesand the sport it can provide gounchallenged. For 2009 there are anumber of isues building up that willrequire our collective attention. How willwe ensure that pikers get a voice in thepotentially mega Angling Unity group?

All the organisations participating in thecreation of Angling Trust have nowundertaken the necessary constitutionalsteps to wind up their existingoperations and form Angling Trust onJanuary 5th 2009.

The National Federation of Anglers (NFA)held an EGM in Nottingham on Saturday 6December to approve the dissolution of theNFA and the transfer of its assets and staffto Angling Trust. The meeting was attend-ed both by individual and club memberswho voted 30 to 2 for the resolution.

The National Federation of Sea Anglers(NFSA) held an EGM in Devon onSaturday 6th December at which themembership approved the proposals toallow the winding up of the NFSA and thetransfer of its assets to Angling Trust.Including proxy votes, the membershipsupported the 3 proposals by a margin of418 to1, 418 to 1 and 412 to 8 respect-ively. The Anglers’ ConservationAssociation (ACA) held its EGM inBirmingham on Monday 8 December andagreed to change its name to Fish Legaland to become a part of Angling Trust witha proxy vote of 1,484 in favour to 67against the change.

The National Association of Fisheries andAngling Consultatives (NAFAC) and theSpecialist Anglers Alliance (SAA) had bothapproved the merger with their respectivememberships earlier in the year andtherefore there are now no constitutionalreasons for the merger not to go aheadas planned at the start of 2009.

All the organisations are now writing totheir existing individual, club, riparian andfishery owner members with informationabout the benefits on offer from AnglingTrust. These include free public liabilityinsurance for individual members, alongwith the innovative Fish For Free schemewhich can earn Angling Trust membersmore than the cost of their subscription incashback on fishing tackle and the annualrod licence. For angling clubs and riparianand fishery owners, there is a newdiscounted insurance package on offerwhich will give savings of hundreds ofpounds on existing cover. Terry Fell,Chairman of the NFA commented, “This isa very historic occasion both for the NFAand the sport of angling as a whole.

The NFA has been in existence since 1903and has a wealth of history; however theboard believes that now is the right time tobring together all of angling’s assets andcreate one Governing Body for the sport.There is a huge wealth of expertise andexperience in Angling Trust and we are alllooking forward to working with the otherparties involved. The success of AnglingTrust will rely upon the support of theangling community and I would urgeanyone who has an interest in the sportto join up and support The Voice ofAngling: Angling Trust.”

Richard Ferré, Chairman of the NFSA said,“The NFSA is proud to be a part of theformation of Angling Trust. Sea anglersshare an interest in many issues with theirfreshwater counterparts and we will bemuch stronger if we pool our resources.The new Angling Trust will build on thework we have undertaken for many years,lobbying for greater protection for marinefish stocks and running national and inter-national competitions on and off shore.”

Stephen Marsh-Smith, Chairman of theACA said, “The ACA’s unrivalled record oftaking polluters and others to task will becontinued by Angling Trust under a newbrand: Fish Legal. All clubs, fisheries andriparian owners in England should joinAngling Trust and Fish Legal to benefitfrom this unique legal protection. Now thatwe are one organisation, we will be ableto link the legal work with proactivecampaigns to change policy and practiceand to stop damage to fisheries happeningin the first place.”

Mike Heylin, Secretary of SAA said,“We have finally achieved the dream of aunited front for angling with Angling Trust.Now we have to do the hard work ofdelivering for the nation’s anglers and thefisheries they enjoy. I urge all anglers tojoin as soon as they can. It takes money todefend angling from national as well asEuropean policymakers.”

Martin Read, Executive Chairman ofNAFAC said, “It has been a long timecoming, but now the talking is over itstime for action.”

Trevor Johnson, Chairman of MiltonKeynes Angling Association, commented,“One body - speaking with one voice for

England’s anglers - is now the only wayforward if our sport is to survive andprosper. But let no-one think that it is alldone and dusted... that all we have to donow is go fishing. If this is going to workanglers have to put their hands in theirpockets and give Angling Trust theirsupport, whether they fish for bass offCornwall, carp in Milton Keynes or trout ina northern beck. Old rivalries and narrowinterests are going to have to be put asideand everyone, at all levels, must work forthe common good of our sport. That willnot be easy for some... but it has to done.”

Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive of AnglingTrust commented, “Angling Trust will notonly continue the work of all these bodies,but it will also do much more. We will nowbe able to represent all anglers much moreefficiently and effectively. All the staff ofthe organisations involved are working flatout to make sure that everything is in placefor the launch in January. We all hope thatevery angler’s New Year resolution will beto join Angling Trust.”

Angling Trust is supported by Fish Legalwhich will use the law to fight pollution,over-abstraction and any other issueswhich affect angling and fisheries.

Angling Trust will campaign for:• Conservation • Protection of angling• Increased government and EnvironmentAgency support for angling and fisheries

Angling Trust will deliver:• Coaching • Education programmes• Greater participation in angling• National and international competitions• Angling Club development

Angling Trust will fight:• Pollution, litter and over-abstraction• Declining marine and freshwaterfish stocks

• Commercial overfishing• Habitat degradation• Damaging barrages, weirs and hydro-power

• Poaching and fish theft• Unlawful navigation• Spread of diseases and parasites• Predation by cormorants andgoosanders • Access restrictions

• Anti-angling campaigns

Visit: anglingunity.co.uk

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Phil’sNewYearMessageStickWithUsAndSupportPAC

ALeapForwardForAnglingUnityAnglingTrustGoesLiveFormed from a merger of the National Federation of Anglers, the National Association of Fisheries and Angling Consultatives, the NationalFederation of Sea Anglers, the Anglers’ Conservation Association and the Specialist Anglers Alliance. The new Angling Trust is destined tobe the most exciting and important development in the history of angling: the formation of a single body to represent all anglers andangling across all disciplines.

Bristol Water today published an endof year round-up for its trout waters,including pike catches from ChewValley Reservoir. A total of 21 fishweighing over 30 pounds were captured,the biggest being a huge fish of 36.12landed by Shaun Hoskins. This, plus 127twenty-pounders also being landedperhaps confirms what many now think;that Chew Valley is the best pike fisheryin England? More boat and bank fishingdates are to be made available this year.

TheBestUKPikeFishery?

Police are trying to trace the owner of what could be a pike angler’s boatfound on the River Ouse in Cambs. The 3 metre craft, with a camouflaged brownand white paint scheme, was found at Eacon Socon on December 19th. Anyonewho might know the owner should call PCSO Alan Newman, at St. Neots PoliceStation on: 0845 456 4564.

Twitter via the Pike Anglers Club: Use the site tokeep in touch with family, friends or colleagues: twitter.com/PikeAnglersClubScientists seek answers over eel decline: A £2.5m European study is nowofficially underway in a bid to find our more about the breeding habits of the eeland why the species is in sharp decline.

This year’s event attracted over 80 anglers from as far afield as Wiltshire anddespite atrocious weather conditions in the morning a steady number of pikewere caught although they were mainly the smaller jacks.

The marshals kept warm by running up and down the bank, netting, unhooking andweighing the catches, thanks guys you really are marvellous and as Mel from Marie Curiesaid “ever so slightly mad!” The winner with a single pike of 13.12 was Martin Redmanfrom Hemel Hempstead who also won the biggest pike trophy (obviously). The runner upwas last years winner Lloyd Burgess with 2 fish for 13.10 and third was Nathan Brownwith 13.05, all in all a very tight finish. The biggest and only zander was a superbspecimen of 9.04 caught by Simon Jacobs. The prizes were presented by our very ownEddie (ET) Turner and as you can see he got in on the act by posing with a fluffy versionof an esox look alike! Thanks to Eddie and his team for generously donating prizes andsetting up the tackle stand. Thanks also to our Cambridge PAC team of marshals, to theEly Beet Club for their generous help, my son Jack for helping me put the pegs out the daybefore and to everyone who contributed to the raffle. Last but by no means last thanks toall the anglers who took part. The event raised a total of £1,629.00 which takes the 7 yeartotal since the event was first fished to well over £15,000. WELL DONE TO ALL.

Cheers for now and see you next year. Dick Culpin.

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb 1312

NewsFeed2HOTNewsFromTheCommunicationsDesk

GotAnyHotNewsToReport?Email Chris Bishop fast at: press@pacgb.co.ukPL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

GovernmentPledges£1.56mToAngling

FoundingFellowBarrieRickardsADoubleCelebrationFor

Press Release from the AnglingDevelopment Board: Angling hasreceived a £1.56 million boost this weekas Sport England announced its plans tosupport the Governing Body to deliverangling opportunities for all over thenext four years.

Last summer the Angling DevelopmentBoard (ADB) was invited by Sport Englandto demonstrate how angling couldcontribute to government targets ofincreasing participation in active sport,especially through encouraging youngpeople and retaining them as activeparticipants as they grow older.

Sport England also wanted to develop thetalent pool of anglers trying to compete atinternational level and proposals to improve

Founding fellow Barrie Rickards has recently had causefor double celebration. Barrie turned 70 recently, I’m sureall the PAC members will join the committee in wishingBarrie well. Further to this, Barrie received a crystaldecanter and glass set in recognition for his lifelongservice to PAC.

Adds Chairman Colin Goodge: “We all make many friendsthrough our lives but none more loyal to all aspects of pikeangling than the founder member of the Pike Anglers Clubthan Professor Barrie Rickards. I personally owe so much toBarrie that I cannot put it into words. The committee felt thatit was time we presented Barrie with something to showour appreciation for the tremendous service he has givento the PAC and the whole of the piking world.”

“It was with great pride and pleasure that I was given thishonour. On the evening of the 14th January myself, along withDenis Moules, Colin Brett and Mark Barrett visited his hometo present his award. His book ‘Fishing for Big Pike’ inspiredso many of us, along with many other books. I like manyothers know only to well what the Pike Anglers Club has donefor the conservation of pike and the rights of pike anglerseverywhere. I think you’ll all agree that this award wasprobably long overdue, pike angling would certainly notbe what it is today without your years of hard work.”

“So I say on behalf of all pike anglers ‘thanks Barrie’, manymore tight lines to yur mate.”

anglers’ satisfaction with the managementof their sport: a process already underwaywith the formation of the Angling Trust.David Moore, Chairman of the ADBexplained. “The ADB responded to SportEngland’s challenge with a package ofproposals to grow and sustain the sport ofangling. Our Plan is based on a vastamount of market research, much of it fromthe Environment Agency’s data frommillions of rod licences and informationheld by Sport England right back to anNOP survey 40 years ago.”

“The first area identified was the problemof young people who are introduced to thesport but are not converted into long-termanglers. Other sports have much betterlinks between schools, coaches, clubs andfacilities whereas these are widely

fragmented in angling. The fundingpackage from Sport England will help starta regional development network which canaccess local and regional funding and bringschools, clubs, coaches and facilitiestogether. After six months’ hard work bythe ADB team, the timing of this announce-ment coincides perfectly with the transitionof the ADB into the newly constitutedAngling Trust during 2009.”

“We are already making good progress inachieving Sport England’s recognition ofThe Angling Trust as the Governing Bodyfor angling in England.”

The ADB plans to start recruiting RegionalDevelopment Officers and details will beavailable on their website in February:anglingdevelopmentboard.org.uk

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Believe it or not, there are people who request their ashes to be spread on theirfavourite river when they’re ready to sling their hook in that great swim in the sky.Some pike anglers might even consider the Upper Thurne, Llangdegfedd or even Lomondfor their final resting place. Demand has now increased to the extent where a leaflethas been published on how to carry out the practice without upsetting other river users.Avoiding areas other anglers have been pre-baiting is probably a good idea. The InlandWaterways Association says on the subject: “The Environment Agency advises that thereis no evidence to suggest that the disposal of human ashes in rivers and streams has anegative impact on the environment. However, other aspects of these practices, such ascasting tributes and other objects into the water could harm the environment or upsetother river users. Individual ceremonies are unlikely to pollute the water but you shouldcomply with Environment Agency guidelines.” A free Environment Agency leaflet offersguidance on completing the practice without causing harm. The leaflet is available bytelephoning the Agency’s customer contact centre on: 08708 506506.

A Big PAC shout goes out to long-termPAC member; the ageless Ade Kisbey.He is the regular fishing partner of DaveHorton and has caught many big pike fromall over the place.

Ade suffered a heart attack a couple ofweeks ago and had quite a scare. He iscurrently in Basildon Hospital Coronary unitawaiting surgery and can’t wait to getback out on the bank piking. All your friendsare rooting for you Ade. Good luck mate.Phil Wakeford.

Some pike anglers buy their sea deadbaits, others catch their own, while manymore enjoy the odd sea fishing trip. Today it emerged the European Union wantsto impose catch quotas and ban anglers from selling their catches. EU officialsbelieve sea angling is now so popular that anglers could have an impact on specieslike cod and ling. DEFRA has confirmed it plans to hold talks with angling organisationsin the near future report’s the Sunday Times.

EUSetToImposeQuotasOnSeaAnglers

AshesToAshesButDon’tGetInDeepWater!

Record numbers of rod licences have beensold despite the credit crunch, the EA revealedtoday. “More than 1.3 million people took to therivers in 2008 fully armed with a fishing rod andlicence in a bid to find credit crunch-friendlyentertainment that won’t break the bank. Rodlicence sales hit a record high last year and arepredicted to increase by a further 26,000 this yearas cash-strapped consumers seek out cheapalternatives to increasingly expensive trips to thecinema, football and theatre.”

BumperYearAheadPredictsEA OuseLostABoatBeforeChristmas?

PACNewsSnippets

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Report2008MarieCuriePredatorCup

BestWishesAde

Barrie celebrateshis birthday with

Colin Brett andColin Goodge.

Top: ET presents Martin Redman with hiscup and above, getting friendly with ‘fluffy’.

Ade (front left) enjoys a laugh at the Convention.

Chairman Colin Goodge presentsBarrie with his Lifetime Achievemant

Award: a rather nice engravedcrystal decanter set.

TheFutureIsBrightForThePikeAnglersClub

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb 1514

Powers to prohibit the taking of fish caught on line from our rivers are included in the new Marine Bill. Angling groups includingthe Pike Anglers Club are still poring over the finer points of the bill, which is expected to become law next summer after itsinclusion in the Queen’s Speech.

Notes accompanying the bill say it will outlaw the taking of fish caught on rod and line for the pot. Recent seasons have seen widespreadanger among many anglers over the authorities' apparent unwillingness to tackle what has become a widespread problem in many areasof the country, from the River Wissey to the Wye. Pike often bear the brunt of this because they are prized as a food fish by somecultures. They are also vulnerable to capture by roving anglers travelling light with just a lure rod and a carrier bag to carry your catch in.DEFRA's website states: “Whilst the custom in England and Wales is for the catch and release of coarse fish it is not actually a legalrequirement on rivers. We will remove the current right for fishery owners, and anyone with their permission, to remove freshwater fishby rod and line. This undermines any catch and release byelaws the EA may introduce to address fish theft.”

Reading West MP Martin Salter, the Labour Government’s spokesman on angling issues, said: “It has been a long campaign but wehave finally got the chance to do something to protect our fisheries, to give the police and the Environment Agency real powers to clampdown on those who remove fish for either the pot or for private gain."The current hotch potch of fishery by-laws are unintelligible andunenforceable and I know for a fact that the EA are starting work on a national catch and release by-law which I want to seeimplemented as soon as possible. Catch and release must become the norm in freshwater with exceptions available in clearly definedcircumstances such as put and take trout fisheries.” Many conservation groups were celebrating after the legislation was included in lastWednesday’s Queen’s Speech, in which the Government set out its priorities for the next parliamentary session. The bill signals a newapproach to protecting the marine environment that will include conservation zones, a new planning system, reform of fisheries andaccess to the coasts, along with a new agency to manage the seas around our coasts. DEFRA said freshwater fisheries would alsobenefit from the ‘modernised and more flexible powers’ it contains. A statement on its website adds: “These will give the EnvironmentAgency the tools to better manage fisheries for the benefit of anglers and commercial fishers.” To date there has been one prosecutionfor taking fish for the pot; the widely-reported case earlier this year, when two migrant workers were ordered to forfeit boats andequipment worth thousands after they were caught catching fish and barbecuing them on the bank during the close season.

The same Marine Bill could see close season changes too. Powers to alter the dates of the traditional close season on Britain’s rivers toadapt to climate change are contained in the new Marine Bill which now looks set to become law. Explanatory notes to the bill say:“The draft Bill removes statutory close seasons and close season lengths. The current provisions impose an unnecessary restriction onthe EA’s ability to determine appropriate evidence-informed close seasons. The draft Bill gives the EA the power to set close seasonsthrough byelaws, and whilst initially we do not envisage significant changes to the current close seasons, there will be more flexibility toadapt to future challenges such as different spawning times brought about by changes in water temperature due to climate change.This will allow the EA to protect fish stocks when they are most vulnerable.”

So, could we see a situation where pike in our rivers could come under the protection of an extended close season in areas of thecountry where they are known to begin spawning before March 14th?

Over the past 3 years we have had a strong committee, a committee that I believe has raised the profile of the Pike AnglersClub giving the PAC as a club a stronger voice in the world of angling. This in turn has helped us fight against those that seekto take away our rights in the way we fish and try to stop the removal of the very fish that we seek to catch.

A strong committee though cannot speak with a loud voice and without a good strong membership behind it! It goes without saying thebigger the club the louder the voice, so please try this year to just get one of those non-members to join and make us stronger, which inturn will help you to carry on fishing for and catching pike with all methods still available today. The quality of our magazine alone speakshigh volumes about our very name, this and the running of the club like many other things costs money. Today, we face what has becomeknown as ‘the credit crunch’. We continue to try desperately hard to stay on top, which I know only too well gives those that try to knockus down second thoughts about their actions.

On May the 9th 2009 at our AMM in Nottingham, a new committee will be taking over, and I am hopeful that as many RegionalOrganisers and Liaison Officers will just give a little of your time to come along and give your thoughts and proposals to help in mouldingthe future of the club. We will also be welcoming on board those that have volunteered to give there time in the next 3 years to help usfight for the things in pike fishing that we know is right. This new committee I know will, carry on where the previous boys have left off,but they will need your support, possibly even more than in the coming years. The new incoming committee are in constant contact withthe present one, preparing for a smooth transition, in fact they have already been putting into place plans for the 2009 Convention.

It goes without saying they are without doubt very aware of the mammoth task they face in the 3years to come. It is well known that thiscoming year will be tough for everyone, but the existing committee and myself are very confident that we have selected the right peopleto fight for pike and you the pike angler/club member. We are of course all very aware of the new angling body that has been set up torepresent all anglers, called: ‘Angling Trust’. If we want to continue to be heard and remain the strong voice of pike fishing, then we mustkeep membership numbers high and push to increase them. We all know only to well that the majority of anglers in this country arematch orientated, we also know that there are thousands of predator anglers out there that do not belong to our club, we must askourselves and them why? To me, If someone loves their sport that much, then why not join a club that fights for their rights and thevery species they fish for?

We all know that in life sometimes changes are forced upon us, not always to our liking. But to simply to survive in a world that seems tothrow up new financial obstacles, rules and regulations, health and safety issues daily their will be changes. Some you may agree with,some you may not, but be rest assured those that happen will be for the good of pike, pike anglers, and the Pike Anglers’ Club of GreatBritain. No one person ever takes on the task of a committee position without a great love for their sport, loyalty to the club and it’smembership. I firmly believe that the life of this club has been successful simply because of the 3-year cycle of committees, new bloodbrings new enthusiasm new ideas and a renewed will to achieve higher peaks. The new committee have many new ideas that they willpush forward, I personally look forward with a new sense of keenness and vigour to working alongside the new boys. In short, if they canstir an older lad such as me I’m quite sure they’ll give you all a new sense of hope. I look forward to seeing you in May at the handover.

All I ask is that you please attend and give the new committee the support they rightly deserve. Colin Goodge, Chairman.

Saturday the 1st of November 2008. Once again, members assembled in the car parkfor yet another event on Quays. Just a reminder the pit has a track record of produc-ing pike to over 30lb in the past, but has had very little pike fishing pressure on it forthe past 10 years. It has produced carp to 40lb, Bream to 17lb+, large tench and has ahealthy head of roach, hybrids, eels and perch, taking all this into account hopes are alwayshigh that a few good pike can be caught. There are waterskiers on the pit, even though theydo create a bit of a wash they are too far out to cause any problems for those fishing.

As per usual, once everyone had booked in they went off to find a swim, we have regularmembers attending the event and they went off to previously fished swims. Weather wise itwas fine until about midday, then the wind started and pushed in the rain clouds whichseemed to halt right over the pit. Until then I was confident that a few fish would be caught,but the more the wind and driving rain increased, any hopes of fish being caught evapor-ated. Sadly, I was proved right and no fish were reported for the day from the 7 memberswho braved the wind and rain just into darkness. Hopefully our two day event in March willbe a lot more fruitful and that the weather is with us this time. Mark Skinner.

Honorary PAC members Wullie Colquhoun and hispartner Wilma McDermid have recently opened theirnew trout fishery after two year’s hard work.It’s called Alderneuk Fishery and is at Waterside Farm,Terregles, Dumfries, Dumfriesshire DG2 9RZ.Contact: 07901602020 for bookings.

A new permit system will be run on a trial basis when Norfolk'sHorsey Mere opens up in March for the last two weeks of season.Instead of buying a day ticket from the bailiff’s boat, two week permitswill be issued in advance at a cost of £30 per boat. The Thurne Fisherieswebsite says: “The purpose of this is to facilitate both easier access andreduce the need to visit each boat and collect permit fees, this oftenrisking the disturbance of the areas being fished and causing friction withthe anglers. The plan is to issue a 14 day period permit at a fee of £30.00per boat. This will allow the pre-registered boat to fish without theinconvenience of a bailiff cruising through the fishing areas disturbing theswim, to collect permit fees. To see this work effectively it would requirethe prior registration of the boat to be used and for the registrationnumber/name of the boat to be clearly displayed whilst fishing.”

“Boats using this system will immediately be recognisable and will not besubject to a visit from the bailiff. If all users would make use of this systemit will ensure that the whole broad is allowed to settle once everyone isfishing and optimise the chance of picking up a fish.” Limited access topike fish Horsey Mere is permitted during the winter months to avoiddisturbance to over-wintering wildfowl. Forms can be downloaded here:thurnefisheries.co.uk/new-horsey-permit-for-march-2009-open-days/

It’s hard tomake out thecaption belowthis picture.

However, it isevident that thisis a big fish...guesses areoptional!

NewsFeed3HOTNewsFromTheCommunicationsDesk

GotAnyHotNewsToReport?Email Chris Bishop fast at: press@pacgb.co.ukPL124 deadline for submissions:Mar. 27th 2009.

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WillOutlawTheTakingOfFishNewMarineBillLegislation

NewPikeFishingPermitForHorseyMere

HowBIG?QuaysEarlySeasonPACEventReport

WullieOpensNewTroutFishery ..............................................

A silver pike believed to be a1400 year-old silver Anglo-Saxon shield mount has beendeclared treasure trove by a coroner’s inquest.

PACNewsSnippets

castle too. The only option for us now wasto carry the gear across the marshy field tothe shore and ferry the gear over to thecastle in the Nymph. I had not fished fromthe castle before but I was sure that all thehard work of lugging the boat and gear afew hundred yards over the field andacross the loch would be worth it.

We unloaded the car and dropped thegear over the stile in the field ready tocarry it the great distance to the shore.An old pick-up type truck pulled up anda bearded elderly man emerged,I recognised him straight away eventhough I hadn’t seen him for 14 years,it was Alan Gray the owner of the land thatforms Kilchurn bay including the islands.We exchanged greetings and somememories, I was glad to see him againafter all these years, he was now 75years old and still going strong.

I introduced Steve and Ivan and paid himto fish for 5 days on his land, this authoritydoes not allow fishing on the rest of theloch which is controlled by the Loch AweImprovement Association and requires aseparate fishing permit.

We set up camp in the shadow of thecastle, the ground was slightly raisedwhich allowed for good drainage, wewere going to be comfortable in this greatlocation, all we needed now was greatpike fishing and for the good weatherto continue, too much to hope for, we shallsee. Baits were cast out and we waited ineager anticipation of the impending actionthat I had promised. The afternoon wasquiet with no runs, I put this down to theweather being bright and sunny, perhaps Iwas kidding myself as I have had somegood catches in similar conditions. I tookthe opportunity to boat across the bay andtake the trailer to Ardbrecknish Housewhere Donald Wilson had pre-agreed tolook after it for a small fee. I noticed thatthe wind had picked up, a stiff south-west-erly was blowing white tipped waves upthe loch towards the castle.

18 19

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This advice is easy to ignore as somepike anglers do return convinced thatthey can at least repeat some theirearlier success. I chose to ignore thisadvice and this is what happened,read on...

During the late eighties and early ninetiesI made two trips a year in the spring andautumn with a group of fellow pikers to themagnificent Loch Awe. This venue was amecca for those ‘in the know’ who wereaware of the lochs potential and who hadhooked into the waters hard fighting pike.

The scenery towards the northern end ofthe loch which is overlooked by BenCrauchan is spectacular, the large shallowbay at the top end of the loch is dominatedby the ruin of Kilchurn castle, a perfectpike fishing venue in every way; so whyhad I stopped fishing the loch?

It was easy to remember the beauty of theplace and the great fishing but it wasdifficult to accept that the areas I remem-ber with such affection had becomeover-fished and strewn with litter.

It was no longer necessary to fight throughthe tree branches and undergrowth toreach the shore as the trees had been cutand burned and pathways worn to thebank. As the years went by I felt myselfdrawn back to the loch but had resistedthe temptation in the belief that the placehad changed forever. By now the pike thatwere left would be lethargic and tatty afterhaving been caught over and over againby so many pike anglers that had fishedthe water since.

I had made mention of those halcyon daysto my good friend and piking partner SteveOrmrod who had never fished the Loch.He’d always had an interest in fishingthere but hadn’t had the opportunity, somyself, Steve, and my other good mateIvan Fletcher (who had fished the lochtwice before) made plans to fish Kilchurnbay in May 2007.

The long anticipated date arrived and weloaded the CRV and the Sea Nymph withenough gear for 5 days and set off up theroad in the early hours on a 300 mile tripto Loch Awe. We drove through Tyndrumand Dalmally which were once smallvillages and had now grown into commer-cial holiday centres, the road surface wasnew and wider than I remember; the areahad certainly changed.

We arrived at the lay-by at Kilchurn bayonly to be greeted with sight of a big whitevan which was taking up most of theparking space; my heart sank. You knowwhat to expect when you see a vanparked up at a venue... other anglers.We hopped over the style in the vain hopethat the preferred swims would beavailable to fish, no such luck, two pikeanglers from Nottingham were settled infor the day having booked into a B&B formost of the week.

We chatted to them for a short whileduring which they landed a good condi-tioned jack pike that made dramatic leapsfrom the water before being netted, muchto Steve’s pleasure! They recalled tales ofgreat pike fishing on the loch in the late80’s and early 90’s, the same time that Ialso fished the loch and had similarexperiences. Perhaps they too were ona nostalgia trip the same as me.

We had only stood chatting for couple ofminutes when a cloud of midges from helldescended upon us and started to eat usalive, it was time to leave and formulateplan B. I pointed out another likely spotwe could fish that had produced good fishin the past, we then heard a bite alarmsound and a figure emerged from the treesto land a nice double figure fish, pike werebeing caught but where were we going tofish? We drove a few hundred yards southalong the road to another lay-by, anothercar was already parked up. The sun waswarm and bright, the castle and themountains looked great in the sunlight,we noticed that three other anglers werebivvied up for a long stay opposite the

FEATUREARTICLE

Awe

I am sure you have heard it said that if you have ared letter day’s fishing on a particular venue thenyou should commit the experience to memory andnot return in the hope of re-living the moment.

NostalgiaTrip

GrahamBarstow

Main picture: We eventually managed to find somewhere to fish in theshadow of Kilchurn castle! Inset: The bay had changed an aweful lotsince I was last here with fewer trees and well-trod paths.

The couple were waving from a 1st floorwindow, I threw them a length of anchorrope which they used to climb down andfree themselves, they thanked me andmade their way towards civilisation.At least it raised a giggle or two.

The day soon turned to twilight and wecelebrated Steve’s moral-boosting catchover a few glasses of fine whisky, a buzzersounded from the camp opposite, a largefish was being played and after some timeit was landed followed by hoots and yellsof laughter. A number of photos weretaken as the flash bulbs lit up the oppositebank. This was one of three fish landed inthe hour before dark; they were obviouslypleased with their captures, I know wewould have been, jacks would have beenprized at that stage. It later transpiredthat two of the fish caught weighed in at13 and 27 pounds.

Wednesday morning arrived dull, windyand wet, the mountains obscured by cloud,the enthusiasm which was in abundanceat the start of the week was now flagging.With the weather deteriorating rapidly, amove at this time was out of the questionand in any case where would we move to?We had limited dry clothing and the lastthing we wanted was to get cold and wethalfway through the fishing trip. Movementaround the camp was now restricted bythe weather which was relentless.The ground was getting a bit soggy andthe water level in the loch was rising.

Alan Gray visited our camp during a briefbreak in the weather. A rainbow filled thesky as the sun briefly came out and Steveran for his Canon as he had spotted anOsprey. Could this be a lucky omen ortwo? We talked about our memories ofprevious encounters and how the pikefishing had changed on the loch. It wasclear from what we had seen during ourbrief visit that a swim doesn’t remainvacant for long before another groupof anglers descend on the loch andpitch camp.

Donald informed me that a weather frontwas on its way. I drove the 7 miles backup the loch where Ivan boated me backto camp.

We retired at 9.00pm after a long andtiring day, it was still daylight. At 3.00amI was woken by the roar of wind and rainbattering the bivvy, weather like this iscommon in Scotland, there is nothing youcan do but sit it out. Tuesday at 5.00amand we were casting the baits out, thewind had eased slightly and the cloudswere breaking, we were ever hopeful butthe morning was quiet with no runs.The Notts. lads had gone during the nightbut the other pikers were still dug in, eventhey didn’t seem to be catching. We allpassed the time by taking photos of thescenery including the castle from everyangle and the prolific wildlife whichincluded ospreys, grey wagtails, redstartsand many other unusual birds. The weath-er was once again sunny and warm with astiff south-westerly which kept the midgesat bay. As soon as the wind dropped, evenfor a moment the midges appeared fromnowhere to feast on our flesh.

Steve got lucky later and had a pike ofabout 10lbs to his infamous CD rig, sheput up a good fight as Scottish pike do.It gave us a much needed lift sport-wise.I decided to take advantage of the weatherand launched the Sea Nymph for a bit of arecce, the Mariner engine (old faithful)sparked into life. Steve and myself wentout into the bay measuring the depths atvarious locations with the fishfinder.We were surprised at what we found, mostof the bay is only a few feet deep and wewere fishing from the bank into about 3ftof water, even at range. There was onepart of the bay where the depth was justover 20 feet, our intention was to return to

Friday morning, our last day dawned withbright, warm sunshine, the wind haddropped and the views of the castle andmountains were revealed in all theirgrandeur; what a great place to be. Thefishing might not have been good for usbut the sheer splendor of the location pro-vides some comfort and answers thequestion, why do we come to places likethis? We spent the morning trying everytrick we could muster to tempt a run or twoto salvage the trip but to no evail. It waspainfully obvious that we were not in thehot areas having seen fish caught, ah well!

Fortunately, Ivan had a run and landed afeisty jack; his trip salvation, I had endureda blank, and that was it for the trip.We started breaking camp for the longslog home, Alan turned up at 12 Noon asarranged with his quad bike and trailer andkindly ferried us and our gear to the carpark at the end of the track on the otherside of the railway line. We loaded the car,hooked up the boat and said goodbye toMaud and Alan who had been very helpfulduring our stay, we agreed to return andhave another go at a nostalgia trip,well maybe?

Graham Barstow.

Postscript: Having recentlyread some of ScottDavidson’s excellentarticles and book chapterson tackling big Lochs likeAwe, I now think it best tobe flexible and mainly usea boat to get the very bestout of this beautiful,daunting water.

The Kilchurn bay area of the loch certainlygets more than its fair share of attention,the days of having to beat a path to theloch and create your own swim were longgone. A well known landmark on theapproach to the castle was a solitary treethat had endured exposure to theelements for many years and now lay asa charred ruin having been cut down andburned by previous visitors, probably otheranglers unfortunately. After about an hourAlan jumped onto his quad bike androared off into the distance, it wasn’t longbefore the wind and rain started again,we dived under our brollies for cover to sitit out yet again. The three anglers whowere fishing on the opposite bank hadbroke camp and left after catching the 27lbpike during the previous evening.How long would that swim remain vacant?

Two green Ardbreknish boats emergedthrough the thick cloud of rain frombetween the islands coming towards us.There were two rain-soaked anglers ineach boat casting lures, they motored intothe bay where they caught two pike after acouple of drifts then they left, the drivingwind and rain being too much for eventhese hardy souls.

A few hours later the weather broke again,I decided to take the Sea Nymph out intothe bay to try my hand at lure fishing in anattempt to catch something, anything!I was getting desperate by this time.Steve and myself climbed in the boat

and pushed off drifting quickly in thestrong wind towards the end of the loch, Itried frantically to get the engine to startbefore we were blown ashore. Old Faithfulrefused to start so I had to row as hard asI could just to get back to where westarted, the lure fishing was abandonedand the boat retired up the bank, the poorengine never worked again.

Four days of fishing and one pike caught...it was looking grim, the weather hadplayed its part in restricting our fishing,some nostalgia trip this was turning out tobe! The swim opposite was now taken byanother group of hopeful anglers whowere oblivious to the fact that a 27lb pikehad been taken from that swim onlyhours before.

2120

fish this area the following day. I took theboat further down the loch and pointed outsome areas where I had caught andwitnessed the capture of some big pike inthe past, we landed at one of these areasto find a black bin liner full of rubbish lyingin the undergrowth, despite this we againmade plans to return to fish this area at alater date. We motored back towards thebay very slowly between the islands wherethe water is very shallow. Suddenly, andwithout warning the prop hit a rock and thesheer-pin broke leaving us drifting out ofcontrol in the wind until we managed toengage the oars and row towards thecamp where the engine was quicklyrepaired.

Alans missus Maud is the keeper of thekeys for the castle, she opens the greatwooden door each morning to allow publicaccess, she returns again at 7.30pm tolock the door. At the end of this particularday Maud had locked the door and left,I wandered past the castle for my eveningconstitutional when I heard shouts frominside the castle. A courting couple hadmissed Maud’s call for any remainingvisitors to leave.

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Midge hell!

Steve strucklucky with alow double.

Alan came downfor a chat.

Helping thetourists!

Maud chats with Graham.

Truly ‘Awesome’ scenery to fish in.

Death of the Mariner, sob!

They came, they caught!

Ivan saved a 4-day blankwith a last-minute jacky.

You are alwayssmiling with mateslike these!

Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb 2322 For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com

TimeForTheCaseForSingleHooks

PACEXCLUSIVE

break off’s when playing fish, or leftunattached baits on the lake bed when myline has been snagged. My second bookwas the forementioned ‘Pike’ by FredBuller which I picked up in a second handbook shop and was first published in 1971.Fred was well ahead of his time with hismethods, rigs and views on pike conserva-tion. This was an amazing read, and reallycaptured my imagination with the stories ofhuge pike.

Fred spoke fondly of Loch Lomond, wherehe was convinced monster, record pikelurked, that fed on the large amount ofpowan and salmon that ran through there.So at the age of twelve I wanted to go toLoch Lomond and pestered my motheruntil she relented and took me up there for4 days. Loch Lomond is a big place for ayoung kid with limited knowledge andsurprise, surprise I blanked for the firstthree days, despite fishing dawn untildusk. Not to be put off, I convinced mymother, who was terrified of the water,that, what I needed, was a boat inBalmaha Bay. So on my last day we wereat the boatyard first thing, hired a rowingboat and me, my mum and younger sisterrowed into the mist and tied up on the lastbuoy in the harbour.

InspirationFromSeminalBooksI was first hooked on piking 27 years ago,at the age of ten when my uncle took mefishing to a local reservoir to do a bit ofworming. Being an inquisitive kid, I wassoon delving through his tackle box andfound a tarnished, silver Toby lure at thebottom and asked what it was for.Five minutes later I was spinning andwithin a few casts I had a small jack ofabout a pound on. I was over the moon,but my day would get even better, as Iwould go on to hook and land a monsterof 4lb.

Regrettably now, as I knew no better then,my uncle quickly knocked it on the head,and I proudly took it home to show thefamily. I was now a pike fisherman and setout to learn as much as I could on thesubject.That week my uncle picked me upa book from the local bookshop ‘PikeFishing step by step by Barrie Rickards’I read this book from cover to cover, overand over again and learned a lot, especial-ly that pike should be treated with respectand always returned to the water. I havenot directly killed another pike since, but Iam sure I have been responsible for thedeath of a few, as like most pikers whohave used the snap tackle I have had

WhyUseAncientTackle?I am sure all PAC members are awarethat lately, a few experienced andrespected pike anglers have comeforward and expressed their preferencefor single hooks over trebles whenbait fishing.

As former PAC regional organiser BobCopping recently pointed out in a report inAngling Times, that since Alfred Jardineinvented the snap tackle (two treblehooks on a wire trace) in the 1880’s thevast majority of pikers have used the rig inthe belief that it is the most effective wayof catching pike. This may well be thecase, especially if the pike is allowed toswallow the hooks, as was Alfred Jardine’stactics back then. According to Fred Bullerin his book ‘Pike’, Jardine was known as aslayer of mighty pike, indeed his friendsreferred to him as ‘Jack the giant killer’.Conservation of these big, beautiful fish,was the last thing on his mind, he justwanted to get them on the bank, and in aglass case. Since then, there has been alot of change in the world of angling, tackleand rigs and also conservation of fish, inour waters.Yet the majority of pikers stilluse the ancient snap tackle.

Pikelines AirsCraigWinter’sPassionateCallForARethink

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24

Change?

25

Main pic: Do we really needtreble hooks when we cansafely catch on singles?

Inset: Craig shows off a lovely16.08 that was hooked in thescissors on a single size 8.

pike angling fraternity. These anglers dothe minimum of damage to their fish, but isit still more than is necessary?Unfortunately, for every ‘good’ piker, thereis, at least 2 ‘poor’ pikers. They areusually the thoughtless type, the sort thatleave their bait in the water with hooktraces attached and walk a hundred yardsdown the bank to see if his mate’s caughtanything. Or, the type, that doesn’t use aweak link on his leger so gets broken off,leaving an unattached bait with hooks onthe bottom for the big old lady of the laketo pick up. Or the newcomer with goodintentions who deep-hooks a pike byfailing to have the know-how or tools toremove the hooks and so returns a fishwith them inside it.

These anglers, who use treble hooks arethe biggest problem to our pike and I seethem on a regular basis. We will alwayshave this type of fisherman! The problemis, thoughtless, uneducated types use thesame tactics and rigs as the experts in thehope of latching into similar big fish, it isdown to the experts to lead the way in rigsafety. So, if we care enough about ourfish should we not reconsider our use oftreble hooks? Obviously we need aneffective alternative, after extensiveexperimentation with singles I reckon Ihave a viable option.

Since the start of this pike season I havebeen using a ‘hair’ type rig for all my baitfishing and it has proved very successfullanding me just as many, if not more fish,

pike fishery has been badly damaged byheavy angling pressure. The pike havetaken a real old hammering since the wordgot out about the place, it is not what itused to be, with many of the big fish nolonger there, and many fish turning updamaged or with traces in them. This hasangered me greatly and I can no longer sitback and let pike suffer the way they havedone for so many years.

I now feel it’s my turn to do my bit for pikeconservation and speak up. I have oftenheard it said, that pike thrive on neglect,but can’t handle angling pressure(Llandegfedd being a prime example).This we know is true, but is it any wonderas pike get a rough deal compared toother species. With piking becoming evermore popular, things are only going to gettougher for them. Something needs tobe done.

Treble hooks for bait fishing are a ratherout of date method is it time for change?I would like to see a revolution in pikefishing where these beautiful fish are nolonger hunted for in such an archaic way.We need to retrain ourselves to skillfullyland these fish, on a reasonably small,single hook. I feel this would be far moresporting and as a result pike will sufferless, flourish and hopefully, in time,our fishing will improve. I would like to sayat this point that I realise there is a lot ofgood pike anglers out there that usetrebles, however, PAC members areunfortunately just a small minority of the

could have moved a fair distance fromyour lead. When playing the fish makesure you keep a tight line and bend in therod but don’t play the fish too hard as youonly have a single hook hold (althoughapart from one, they have all been wellset for me!). Besides, I don’t believe inrushing your fish in either. I feel it’s betterto let her exercise herself and tire more.

Point being, she does her wriggling in thewater, where she is wet, can breathe andis unlikely to hurt herself, much better thanhaving a lively pike thrashing around onthe bank. Upon getting the fish in the netI just unclip the trace from mainline put therod down then walk the fish to theunhooking mat. There are no worriesabout getting the trebles stuck in the net orin the fish... I have seen pike hooked inthe eye by loose flying trebles!

behind the bait. Ideally, your bait needs tobe well inside the pike’s mouth to guaran-tee a hook-up. I recommend you leave it alittle longer before winding down and set-ting the hook. If you find you are missingfish, then I would leave it a second longeruntil you are confident. I truly believe thiscould be the end of badly-hooked pike.If only I can convert everyone... I’m goingto try my hardest!

There is nothing more exciting thanwatching your run develop with thismethod, I have noticed that after pickingyour bait up, the bigger fish will keepmoving away steadily, whereas the smallerfish stop and start making you think theyhave dropped the bait. If legering, whenwinding down to your fish, do it quickly asthere may be a lot of slack, as the fish

than I would have using trebles. The firsttime I tried this rig, I had a 23.08 from ahard-fished water, where dropped runs area regular thing.

The method, involves the use of a tag gun(used in shops to attach labels to clothes)and it is very simple and convenient touse. I will refer to this method as ‘the tag-ging system’ or ‘tagged’ for short. To usethe tagging system, begin by pushing abait flag or a small piece of rubber band

onto the needle of the gun (this stops thetag pulling back through the bait on hardcasts). Push the needle through the tailroot of your bait and then through theD-ring of a size 4 ESP, D-ring Raptorhook. Pull the trigger, and fire a tagthrough, if your using big baits or castinglong distances I would recommend you firetwo tags through, this way you get a bettergrip on your bait. The end result is abeautifully, presented bait that willminimise any damage to our pike.

As your hook is now in a different positionto the usual trebles you will have to makeallowances for this before you wind downto your fish. As we all know the pike willpick your bait up across the flank beforeturning the bait and swallowing it head-first. If you strike too early you will missyour fish as your hook is about an inch

TimeForChange?

2726

I cast out my fillet of herring (the only bait Icould get up there!) and waited.After about an hour, line started to peel offthe reel, I couldn’t believe it! I had a run!After a real battle I had my new PB andfirst double at 16 pounds in the boat thatwas quickly returned after a few pictures.I didn’t catch anything else that day butdidn’t care! My next book, eagerly awaitedand hot off the press; ‘Pike Fishing in the80’s’ by Neville Fickling became my bible,what an excellent book. Neville taught meso much about pike, where to find them,how to catch them and most importantlyhow to unhook and care for them whilston the bank.

Again this book strengthened my beliefs,that pike conservation was the best thingfor our sport. In fact, I learned so muchfrom this book that I have not felt the needto buy another pike book since, just learn-ing from my experiences on the bank andreading the angling press. I feel like I havebeen taught by the best.

Back to the present day, and I have justreturned to pike fishing this season after acouple a years away (due to life and itscomplications!), to find my favourite local

AReturnToPikeFishing

TimeForChange

LeadByExperience

TheTag-gunMethod

SteadyTakers

Craig with the ‘single-hookcaught’ 23.08 mentionedin the text.

Tag gun and tags.

The finished tasty morsel.

“After Extensive ExperimentationWithSingles I Reckon I HaveAViable Option”

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YourLetters YourPikelines:YourVoiceThanks for writing in this quarter. Have your thoughts and viewspublished here. Send all letters to Neville Fickling at:thetackleshop@btconnect.com

PL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

EasternPromiseHello Neville, In Pikelines 120 youpublished a letter of mine thanking theSheffield and Rotherham Region 99 andthe Don Valley Specimen Group forrunning a fund raising event to raise moneyfor a charity called ‘The ChernobylChildrens Lifeline’.

As mentioned in the letter we hosted anine year old boy for a month over Julyand August. He was called Zjenya, and hea great time staying with us in Sheffield.He spotted my fishing tackle and we weresoon out on the towpath of the Sheffieldcanal at Tinsley Marina with some lightspinning tackle. The first session wasunfortunately a blank.

However, he wasn’t put off and wereturned a week later to bank a small jackand an even smaller perch! He wasabsolutely made up, (see junior picturespage 34). You might notice he is wearinga Calcutta lures baseball cap, this wasactually a raffle prize that I won at the fundraising evening, it has now gone back toBelarus with him.

I would like to think that this is perhaps oneEastern European who is now converted tocatch and release! Although he was quiteannoyed when I put the fish back!

Many thanks, Matt Shaw.

RespectNeededAt first I was rather taken aback to seePAC giving PAAS a platform in the lastissue of ‘Pikelines’. On reflection perhaps Ishould have seen this coming. Those whowere not around at the time may beunaware of the unpleasant rift which led tosome PAC members in Scotland leavingthe Club and the subsequent formationof the PAAS.

This was a difficult and upsetting time forall involved and a great deal of hurt wasfelt on both sides. As PAC’s secretary atthat time I had sought, with the help ofSAA, to bring closure to the infightingwhich had divided our sport since theproblems surrounding the pike fishingat Blithfield the previous year.

Despite the very best of intentions on allsides, some were dissatisfied with the

Editor’s comment: Being a fellowcommittee member at the time of the‘Blithgate’ backlash I can emphasise withMark’s feelings. However, as Mark correctlypoints out time marches on and a lot of‘healing’ has been very carefully made inrespect to the after effects of the wholeepisode. We can only put it behind us andgo forward with what matters the most;the conservation and protection of ourcherished sport fish. It has been such agood feeling to be able to communicateand enjoy the company of fellow PAASofficers and members; we are all on thesame side really. I for one am proud thatMark has made a positive response. SO.

SupportForCharityMatchI don’t know if Dick Culpin or anybody elsehas reported on the above match held onthe Great Ouse between Ely and Littleporton 23 November 2008. See full report inNewsFeed, SO. I won the match andbiggest fish with one fish of 13.12 caughton a roach deadbait, legered down theinside in conjunction with one of the newBaitbox Pike Bombs using a Blood and Oilinsert. I forgot my camera for the first time,isn’t it always the case.

I know people have issues with pikematches but I have supported this onesince it’s conception and each matchraises several thousand from the ticketmoney and raffle. Eddie Turner sponsoredthe match and presented the prizes, so Icame away with £178 (from the optionalpools) and items of tackle for 1st place(Cup) and biggest fish (Shield).

Regards, Martin Redman.

agreement reached and withdrew theirsupport from PAC. Time marches on and,although I would much have preferred tosee everyone remain within PAC, I cannow accept that PAAS has evolved intosomething which is good for pike anglingin Scotland.

Very often people who have been directlyaffected by such events find it difficult toforgive and forget, but sometimes we haveto try and put personal feelings aside if weare to move forward.

I probably have more reason than most todwell on some of these issues but realisethat continually dragging up the past andfeeling bitter towards others gets usabsolutely nowhere. With this in mind,I would very much like to see an end to theimpersonal and derogatory remarks wesometimes see in ‘Pikelines’, especiallywhen these are directed at those who haveserved PAC as committee members in thepast; and whether we happen to haveagreed with their actions or not.

One contributer in the last issue suggestedthat there is something destructive aboutthe general secretary’s position (which)appears to turn normal rational people intomegalomaniacs at times. People areentitled to their opinions, no matter howmisguided, but I do feel that the publicationof comments like these implies a lack ofgratitude and respect for those who havehelped to develop PAC into what it is today.

We can all take great pride in PAC’sachievements over the years. As memberswe all play a part in its success and noneof us deserve to be ridiculed for thecontribution we make.

Mark Leathwood.

Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

QuoteFromThePastIzaac Walton.

“Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elementsare made for wise men to contemplate and for

fools to pass by without consideration.”

“

”

TimeForChange?

Invariably you will find that your fish ishooked in the scissors, this can easily beremoved. The fish can soon be returned tothe water, with very little damage orhandling done. This method is veryversatile and if you are worried aboutstrike timings, you can use it as an ‘instan-t’ strike rig. To do this, use a smaller bait,(eg. a sprat) and attach a smaller tag (theycome in 2 different sizes), this pretty muchensures the hook will be in the pikesmouth straight away for an instant strike.I like to use lamprey sections and attachthe tag to the middle of the bait, againcreating an instant strike rig (see below).Although, I haven’t actually tried thismethod for livebaiting I feel it would workvery well.

Since I have started using this method Ihave thrown away my collection of treblehooks as I know I will no longer want, orneed to use them ever again. I know if yougive the tagging system a fair try you willfeel the same way. I feel it is a far moresporting and enjoyable way to fish, and

thing of the past and enter a new sportingage, where big fish are landed onrelatively small, single hooks suffering littledamage. Now lets see who the skilfullones really are! I have gone as low as size8 when testing this method but find size 4is just right, you certainly don’t need to goany larger. I really believe it is time to getrid of those trebles, hopefully, you will beconvinced!

Next question is probably where can I geta tag gun from? Well, you can get them offthe internet, just put in a Google search fortag gun and they should come up pricedabout £14.95 plus post and package.However, as I am so keen to promote thispike-safe method to everyone I want tomake it easy and convenient for pikers topurchase their gun. I have selected what Ithink is the best one for the job and buystraight from the manufacturer.

I can therefore supply them at £12 plus£2.50 p+p that also includes 1000 tags of40 and 50mm in length. I will also be ableto supply spare tags when these run out.For every gun I sell I will donate a poundto the PAC and whatever I make from itwill go straight into my campaign toprotect pike. For details of how topurchase, give me a ring me on:07814 693089.

One word of warning, the tag guns are notdesigned to be an item of outdoor fishingtackle, so are not waterproof, please keepthem dry or the mechanism inside couldgo rusty.

If you’re not already using single hooksnow is the time to give them a go.Thanks for reading this and please re-consider. I’m sure if we can impresseveryone, our fishing and quality of pikewill vastly improve for future generations.

Tight ‘Single Hook’ Lines.Craig Winter.

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GiveTheSystemAFairTry

TimeToApplyYourSkillsminimises damage to our beautifulspecies. I urge you to give the pike therespect it deserves and use the taggingsystem, if convinced, you could encourageothers to do the same. Now you know asimple method that works well for pike,causes minimal damage and helps toeradicate deep hooking. I’d be verydisappointed if you continued to usetrebles as I believe they are not in thebest interests of pike. I hope everymember who is not already using a singlehook method (a few to choose from now!)will invest in a tag-gun and move forwardwith their fishing and start giving Esoxlucius the respect that such a magnificentfish deserves. Let deep-hooking become a

Left: a roach rigged-up and ready to cast.

Below: Craig’s pre-ferred ‘instant-strike’lamprey set-up.

28

Converted to singles;Craig’s friend Dannywith a new PB of23.15 caught on thehair-rig.

Hi Micky, many thanks for taking partin the Under The Skin series.

Q: How old are you and how long haveyou pike fished? Hi Nev, I am 37 yearsyoung and I hail from the Highland capitalof Inverness, Scotland. I have beenfishing for 25 years but only discoveredpike fishing seven years ago. With beingbrought up in north west Sutherlandwe don’t have pike, so it was all trout,sea trout and sea fishing for me. To giveyou a rough idea TV’s Nick Hancock’sFishing School was filmed on my oldfishing waters, so I can’t complain really.

Q: Favorite water? Living in Inverness Ireally am spoilt for choice, the lochs ofthe Cairngorms, some fantastic waters tothe north and west of me, but I don’t thinkit would be fair to these waters to say Ihad a Favourite. We do have somebreathtaking scenery in the highlands.

Q: Favourite method? Deadbaiting andpopped-up trout at the edge of weedbeds are my favoured methods, but Iam putting a lot of time in chucking fluffand really getting into lure fishing.God knows it’s costing me enough(ha ha).

Q: Biggest pike? Biggest pike to date is24.01,a modest fish to some of you I amsure, but up here we don’t have theshoals of silver baitfish etc like the south-ern waters. We have purely trout, perchand eel as the staple diet for most pike,so they tend to be lean mean fightingmachines. This fish came a week after Ibroke my previous PB of 22.08, so itsbeen going well... 2 pounds in the spaceof a week. I also added a couple of twen-ty braces this year; another first for me.

Q: Who are your fishing mates? Nowthat’s a tricky one. I don’t want to upsetanybody by missing them out. I spent alot of time this year fishing with Rab Hay,the chairman of the RA74, Robbie Milne,Ian Hopkins and all the other members ofthe club (they’re a great group).

I also made a lot of new fishing mateslike Sandy and the guys from NorthLanarkshire RA93, Scott and the guysfrom Ayrshire RA52 as well as JimMorrice, Mikey Pikey, Dave Mc-fluff-chucker, Steve Tapley, Ricky Mcintrye,and the guys from the Pike AnglersAlliance for Scotland, all top blokes.

Oh and of course my girlfriend Julie whohas a habit of out-fishing me. For exam-ple; Julie’s PB of 13.08, again on a daythat I never caught much.

MickyMost

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30

ThisQuarterNevilleTalksToMickyJones

UnderTheSkin

31

Micky’s PB’s... 24.01.

Inset: Fiance Julie withanother Highland beauty.

Micky pike fishes instunning settings.

3332

Q: Is there anywhere you’d really like topike fish? The Baltic. I have seen somany TV programs, I just want to gothere. I have plans for that in 2009(fingers crossed), been very lucky thispast year to cross a few ambitions of thelist. I had a week in Spain with Spanishsafaris which saw a few pike to the boatthe biggest being 16.08. I also had myfirst ever barbel which was a bonus,thanks to Ricky, James and Andy forsorting the trip out. Also had my firstEnglish pike on a charity event onEsthwaite water between PFFA/PAASwhich got me the 3rd place cup.

Of coarse there’s always the lake ofMenteith which I have been lucky enoughto fish a couple of times last year. On mylast visit I proposed to Julie out on thewater and she said yes, so that’s got bethe best catch of the year for me!

Q: What do you enjoy best; bank or boatfishing? At the moment I have to saybank fishing. I got myself a 16ft OrkneyStrikeliner not long ago and am stillgetting to grips with it. Okay, it’s like this;everyone I take out in the boat catchesfish and I don’t. Thinking of getting itblessed or something? Not doing too badon event or hired boats though I just can’tget a fish to my own boat. I now have afloat tube to play with too... happy days!

Q: If you won the lottery what wouldyou do? I would need to buy a ticket first,but say if I did win, I would enjoy it and asfor the begging letters, I would still sendthem! But a pipe dream for me would beto open a pike fishery in the highlandswith all mod cons; loch-side cabins withpiers, plenty of room for anglers to bivvieup etc. Maybe a few boats for the lure/flyfishermen and for it to be a place that folkcan come to relax and enjoy themselves.If there were any change from the tennerI would donate it to the boffins to invent amidge cream that works!

Q: What do you like best about pikefishing? I love the wait. Not knowingwhen the alarms are going to scream off,

is it a 3 or 20 pound fish? I enjoy justbeing out in nature regardless of theweather. The social side is great too,the banter you get with the boys isalways a good laugh and the fact that nomatter how stressful life gets, 10 minutesbehind the rods and it’s all gone. I love it.But I do enjoy watching a fish swimoff safe and sound, none the worse forits capture.

Q: Any dislikes? Again, like most of us,the idiots that leave a mess and chopdown trees etc. I dislike easterly winds,midges and the extra postage costsbecause I live in the highlands. I could goon but I want to keep this rant as shortas possible!!

Q: Any regrets? Not really. I always sayits better to do things and regret them,than regret not doing them at all.

Q: Why are you a PAC member? To givesomething back to the sport that I enjoyso much and to meet like-minded people.I know the PAC, and for that matter thePFFA, PAAS and other groups all workhard to preserve our sport and protectpike. If I can help be part of that I will,well done to all the committees andmembers past and present; the futureis bright.

Q: Profession? I have a small ground-works company, we specialise indrainage and road construction and beingthe gaffer allows me to get more fishingdays through the week, or as I call it...‘a meeting with the bank’.

Q: Favourite pike fishing book? At thismoment in time I am reading PAC30 andjust got a copy of Mammoth Pike whichyou kindly signed whilst up in Lanarkshiredoing a slide show. Maybe one day I willget my ugly mug in there or even do achapter for PAC50, (ha ha). More recentlypicked up a copy of your ‘Big Water PikeFishing’ also ‘Times to Remember’by Bob Buteux and friends at theconvention, but not turned a page yet(must try and read more often).

The latest addition to my small butgrowing book collection was a signedcopy of Fred Buller’s Doomsday Bookof Mammoth pike.

Q: You have the chance of a day on anexclusive trout water. You can take aguest, who would that be? Another trickyone. I could go for one of the big namepikers, but I think it would have to be oneof the RA74 members. I would like toshare my good fortune with the guys Ifish with everyday.

Q: The last piece of fishing gear youbought? Got a couple of Dave Lumb’sbait blasters heading north as I typethis but I do tend to buy a lot of lures(yes one day I will go to rehab). My spareroom would put a lot of tackle shopsto shame!

Q: When do you pike fish? Mostly week-ends but if I can get a few days awayfrom work through the week, I’m off.I normally say if a day ends in Y thenit’s a fishing day.

Q: How far do you travel to pike fish?I tend to stick within a 70 mile radius ofInverness, but I do travel a lot further forevents. I have been known to do 6 hourround trips to fish lochs in southernScotland. My attitude tends to be:‘have rods, will travel’.

Q: Mode of transport? At the moment Ihave a Ford transit pick-up and aMitsubishi Shogun sport. The pick-up ishandy for up to 3 people with room forloads of gear on the back, but have the4x4 for towing the boat and gettingto some of the more ‘off the beatentrack’ waters.

Q: What’s your favourite bankside foodor snack? Now that’s got to be the Lornesausage, bacon and egg with tattie sconein a roll, you just can’t beat that washeddown with a nice cup of coffee!

NJF: Many thanks for responding to thisquarters ‘grilling’ Micky.

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LifeRods

stressful10 minutes

...no matter how

behind theand

it’s gone.all

gets,

...you can’t beat it!

Top left: Highland serenity!

Top right: Putting the rods outafter mooring the boat whileJulie gets the supper on.

Above left: Micky with an 18.08that closely followed a twenty.

Above right: All set for anotheradventure in the boat.

Below left: The best part ofpiking; seeing them power off.

Below right: Mark Berresfordlure fishes; Highland style.

3534 For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

JuniorPicturesAt last, we have enough junior pictures to make up a proper gallery. Apologies to those who sent in material some time ago.I will now need more pictures though! Send digitals to Steve at: predhunter.o@virgin.net or prints to my address on page 4.

Matt Shaw’srecent lettertold of hisinvolvement withThe Chernobylchildren’s Lifeline.

Here’s a pictureof Zjenya, a nineyear old boy thatMatt hosted forthe summer.Say’s Matt “hespotted myfishing gear andwe were soon onthe towpath”.

Well done to Tom Culpin on his recent NewYear’s PB of 17.02. She took a sardine.

Eddie Turner’sGrandaughter lookslike she will keeppiking in the family!

Left: Also keeping piking in the family isMark Ross as son Rohan strikes againwith a New Year’s eve 14.02.

Below: Not to be outdone, Mark’s eldestson Liam with a lovely 10-pounder.

Eric Robinson sent in this picture of his sonElliot with a superbly coloured N. Yorks pike.

Ben Higgins proudly shows off his new 18.12 PB caughtfrom a Southern water on a livebait. Thanks to dad Martinfor sending it in.

Godfrey ‘Goff’Dyer sent in thispiccy of his 15

year old neice Samwith her new PB of

16.00 taken on apaternostered

roach deadbait.

“He likes fish but won’ttouch them” quotesGiles Hill on his sonCharlie’s first pike.

Isaac Hastings looks well pleased with his catch!

Keeping piking in the familyagain is Graham Taylor shownhere with 3 year old Jack and ariver mid-double.

Right: Elder son Kyle with alure-caught PB of 16.00 from alocal gravel pit, “who needsPlaystations” said Graham.

3736

MembersPictures YourPikelines:YourGallerySee your catch here, send digital pictures toSteve Ormrod at: predhunter.o@virgin.net

See more member pictures at: pacgb.co.uk/gallery/index.htm Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

Congratulations to Dave Middleton on behalf of Jim Tyree who has won theZoota Lures/ Pikelines Gallery Competition for issue 123. As with all previouswinners he will receive both the special gold-coloured Curly Jack lure which ismade exclusively for the competition, and also a Zoota Lures voucher worth £20.If you would like the chance to win a prize then all you have to do is send in apicture to the magazine. Each issue my criteria for choosing the winning photo issimply the one that I like best, so as long as it’s pike fishing related your picturestands every chance of winning. Good Luck and Tight Lines from Alex Prouse.

The Pike Shop’s proprietor Steve Bridgen witha lovely Broadland 26.02.

Double the fun...

Left: “I hooked the pike onthe left and on nettingfound two together” saidSteve Rodgers, “I thought Iwas seeing double!”

Right: John Berry got abig surprise when he

caught this low double;a huge fish followed it inand was almost netted

at the same time.

PAAS Secretary Joe Toner with a summer 20 to warm you all up!

New member Gavin Kelly tackled upwell and caught his first pike; a Welshdeadbait-muncher. Welcome and welldone Gavin, the first of many we hope.

Brian Puzey’s grin says itall as he holds a Rutland19.04 caught on aWobbly Bob lure.

My river 20 at last! Stuart Turnerlooks over the moon after fulfilling adream on opening day last summer.She fell to a float-legered roach.

SENPAC’s KayNeedham lookingvery happy withher catch

Order online at the PAC shop via the homepage link at: pacgb.co.uk 3938

OfficialPACProductsToOrder:CompleteAndPostYourProductsFormOr contact Mike Hastings at: pacprodman@btinternet.comVisit PAC’s NEW ProductsWebshop at: pacgb.com

Note: All items shown are for illustration purposes only and are not

to scale. Errors and omissions accepted.

a. Baseball CapColours: Green and BlueOrder Code: BCOne Size: £9.00

b. Wooly HatColour: Green.Order Code: WHOne Size: £8.00

c. T-Shirt*Order Code: TSChild: £9.50. Adult: £10.50

d. Polo Shirt*Order Code: PSChild: £15.50. Adult: £17.00

e. Sweatshirt*Order Code: SSChild: £16.50. Adult: £19.00

f. Hoody*Order Code: HSChild: £20.00. Adult: £23.50Colours: Child: Red, Grey,Navy. Adult: Green only*Items (c-f) in Green only

g. Camo T-Shirts‘Hardwood Green’ pattern withthe PAC logo embroidered onthe chest. Sizes: Medium, Large,XL, XXL.Short Sleeve.Order Code: CSS. £21.00.Long Sleeve.Order Code: CLS. £25.00.Note: personalisation is NOT

available on Camo items.

h. Roving VestAdult sizes: M,L,XL,XXL.Order Code: RV. £25.00.

Sizing Guide:Child:5/6,7/8,9/11,12/13Adult: Small (36”chest)Medium (38”-40”chest)Large (42”chest)Extra Large (44”-46”chest)Extra-Extra Large (48”chest)(unless otherwise specified)

Personalised embroidery:Name and other details can bedetailed under the logo on all shirtsand fleeces (see right).Per Item:First line: £1.50 extraPer next line: 50p extra

i. Full-Zip FleeceColours: Green, Grey,

Blue, RedOrder Code: FZF

Child:£24.00 Adult:£28.00

Half-Zip Fleece(not shown)

Colours: Green, Grey,Blue, Red

Order Code: HZFChild:£23.00 Adult:£27.00

PAC Badgesj. Three-inch dia. Cloth.Order Code: CB. £3.50

k. One-inch dia.Enamelled metal

Order Code: EB. £3.00

l. Round car stickerOrder Code: CS. £1.50

m. PAC Mouse MatOrder Code: MM. £2.50

n. Thermal MugStainless steel

Order Code: TM.£5.50

o. 6” Boat StickerLarge full-colour PAC logo.Order Code: BS6. £3.00.

Pikelines A4+Binders

Holds 12 copies(not shown)

Order Code: PB. £6.00

All clothing is suppliedwith the embroidered

PAC logo as illustrated.Sizes are approx. and for

guidance only.

Products can be viewedand bought at the AnnualConvention and from the

PAC stand at shows.

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pacnews.blogspot.com

SafariShirtA Colin Goodge ‘Classic’ shirt.High quality long-sleeve in Khaki with embroidered gold PAC logo.Sizes: Medium, Large, XL, XXL.

Special order only, there is a waiting time of 3 weeks for delivery prior to order.Order Code: SAF. £25.00. Note: personalisation is available on this item, see right.

PAC30BookThe celebratory book that is proving tobe a best seller with 30 great stories.

History, humour, heartaches, passion,but above all... inspiration from someof PAC’s greatest writers.

Hurry, get yours now asremaining stocks areselling out fast.

Hardbacks: £25 + £5 P&P.Leatherbounds: £185+ £5 recorded P&P.

To order: Please send yourcheque payable to The PAC to:Mark Barrett,32 Berristead Close, Wilburton,Ely, Cambs. CB6 3RS.

Or order via PAC’s webshop at:pacgb.co.uk

LatestProducts

E.T. Predator TackleE.T. MULTIPLIER LURE SERIES RODS

E.T. STINGER 7' casting weight 14 - 42gm £79.99Middle to tip action, two piece high modulus carbon lure rod. Lightweight trigger gripreel seat, aluminium oxide rings. The Stinger is designed for spoons, spinnerbaits, smallto medium sized soft plastics and crankbaits.E.T. DARTER 6' 6" casting weight 21 - 84gm £79.99Middle to tip action, two piece high modulus carbon lure rod. Lightweight trigger gripreel seat, aluminium oxide rings. The Darter is designed for medium sized jerkbaits,large sized soft plastics and crankbaits.E.T. GATOR 6' 6" casting weight 28 - 140gm £79.99Middle to tip action, two piece high modulus carbon lure rod. Lightweight trigger gripreel seat, aluminium oxide rings. The Gator is designed specifically for jerkbaits andlarge soft plastics.

E.T. FIXED SPOOL SERIES RODS

E.T. FLIPPER 6' 6" casting weight 10 - 30gm £59.99Fantastic high modulus fixed spool spin & jigging rod. Featuring new ergonomic reelseat, lightweight, extremely tough, braid friendly titanium rings and the new 'CrackedIce' finish. Suitable for jigs, small/med plugs, spoons and spinners.E.T. THRILLER 8' casting weight 15 - 40gm £69.99Fantastic high modulus fixed spool spin & jigging rod. Featuring new ergonomic reelseat, lightweight, extremely tough, braid friendly titanium rings and the new 'CrackedIce' finish. Suitable for small/med plugs, spoons and spinners.E.T. TORMENTOR 9' casting weight 20 - 60gm £74.99Fantastic high modulus fixed spool spinning rod. Featuring new ergonomic reel seat,lightweight, extremely tough, braid friendly titanium rings and the new 'Cracked Ice' fin-ish. Suitable for med/large plugs, spoons and spinners.E.T. MAULER 9' casting weight 60 - 100gm £79.99Fantastic high modulus fixed spool spinning rod. Featuring new ergonomic reel seat,lightweight, extremely tough, braid friendly titanium rings and the new 'Cracked Ice' fin-ish. Suitable for large plugs, spoons & soft plastics.

E.T. PIKE RODS

E.T. PITMASTER LR 12’ 3.0 lb T/C £119.99E.T. PITMASTER LR 12’ 3.5 lb T/C £119.99E.T. BOATMAN 10’ 6” 3.0 lb T/C £89.99E.T. Pitmaster Long Range and E.T. Boatman - A new series of high performance pikerods produced in a powerful middle-to-tip action high modulus carbon with 'Cracked Ice'finish. All rods feature a lightweight reel seat, lightweight braid friendly titanium rings.

E.T. ULTIMATE PITMASTER £99.99The original version of this classic rod is prized by many of today's leading pike anglers.We have improved on the original by upgrading the blank to woven high modulus car-bon and fitting "braid friendly" aluminium oxide rings otherwise it's the same sweetaction as before!FREE E.T. Ultimate backbiter (worth £29.99) with every E.T. Ultimate Pitmaster purchased!!!

E.T. 'Ultimate' Backbiter £29.99Totally reliable 'reed switch technology' "works whateverthe weather", extremely loud sounder, drop back or dropoff activates alarm, simple adjustable line clip suitable forbraid or mono.

E.T. FISH CARE

E.T. CONTINENTAL CATFISH SLING 7' x 2' 4" Price: £49.99Heavy duty catfish sling long enough to handle the largest continental catfish. Reinforced webbingweigh straps and handles at either end, help lift/drag fish from the water, when straps and handlesare fitted over the scales hook, fish cannot slip out. Constructed from heavy duty PVC.

E.T. UK CATFISH SLING 5'6" x 2'4" £30.99Heavy duty catfish sling long enough to handle the largest UK catfish. Reinforced webbing weighstraps and handles. Constructed in heavy duty PVC.

E.T. JUMBO PIKE WEIGH SLING Size 44" x 24" £17.50The original crescent shaped sling designed for big pike.

E.T. JUMBO PIKE UNHOOKING MAT Size 49" x 23" x 1.5" £33.99Extra long and thick unhooking mat. Heavy duty PVC cover, calming flap. Designed for 'big pike'.

E.T. UK CATFISH UNHOOKING MAT Size 55" x 23" x 1.5" £37.99Extra long and thick unhooking mat. Heavy duty PVC cover, calming flap. Designed for UK cats.

E.T. PIKE TUBE £17.99Long tube constructed from 'air-flo' sacking material, zipped top access & draw cord ends.

E.T. BAIT TUBE £11.99Mini keep net with draw cord top, constructed from 'air-flo' sacking material.

E.T. PIKE OILS

E.T. OILS £8.50Return of the original range of flavours, plus 2extra. Field tested with outstanding success,confirming these are still "the best by test" pikeoils on the market. Freshwater eel, Kipper,Lamprey, Oily Sardine, Sandeel, Smelt.New flavours: Mackerel or Salmon.

E.T. WINTER JUICE £9.50Water soluble even in coldest water without theneed for emulsifier. Perfect for cold water condi-tions experienced from January to March. Freshwater eel, Oily Sardine or Smelt.

E.T. JUMBO SYRINGE £2.99

E.T. TRACEMAKING COMPONENTSE.T. 49 STRAND WIRE 35lb x10m £7.50, 50lb x 10m £7.50, 95lb x 10m £9.50Traces made from 49 strand will out last those made from standard 7 strand as its so difficult tokink! Get more pick ups when deadbaiting withj this extremely limp 49 strand wire, perfect formwobbling and spinning traces too. Can be knotted or crimped.

E.T. 7 STRAND WIRE 30lb x 20m £4.99Very good quality 7 strand pike wire "used by the experts". Can be twisted or crimped.

E.T. CRIMPS All sizes 25pk £1.500.8mm (10-30lb), 1.0mm (30-50lb), 1.2mm (50-100lb)

E.T. DOUBLE CRIMPS All sizes 50pk £2.990.8mm (10-30lb), 1.0mm (30-50lb), 1.3m (50-100lb)

E.T. TWIDDLIN' STICK £2.99Neat tool used for the 'twist method' of making traces.

E.T.' KING SHARP' TREBLES Sizes 4,6 & 8. 10pk £4.99Long point, shallow barb, 'King Sharp', black nickel finish.

E.T. TOOLSE.T. CRIMPING PLIERS £7.99Use these precision crimping pliers forcreating neat, strong joints.

E.T. SIDE CUTTERS £9.99These stainless steel hook cutters willcut easily through thick gauge hooks.

E.T. NEEDLE NOSE PLIERS £9.99Use these stainless steel pliers toremove large lure hooks.

E.T. MULTI PLIERS £7.99

Buy your E.T. tackle from the following dealers:BEDFORDSHIRE

Leslies of Luton 89-93 Park Street, Luton 01582 453542

CAMBRIDGESHIRESheltons 67 South Street, Peterborough 01733 565287

DORSETDavis tackle 75 Bargates, Christchurch 01202 485169

ESSEXK.D.Radcliffe 150 High Street, Colchester 01206-572758

HERTFORDSHIREJohnson Ross 2 Amwell Street, Hoddesdon 01992 462044

KENTAnglers Base 309 Beckenham Road, Beckenham 0208 676 8000Friendly Fisherman 25 Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells 01892 528677Danson Angling 159, Blendon Road, Bexley 0208 2989090Tackle Box Watling Street, Dartford, Kent 01322 292400

LANCASHIRETed Carter 85-88 Church Street, Preston 01772 253476Ossy Tackle Box Oak Street, Oswaldtwistle, Accrington 01254 390431

LINCOLNSHIRETackle Shop Bridge Road, Gainsborough 01427 613002

NORFOLKAnglers Corner 22-24 Windsor Road, Kings Lynn 01553 775852Angling Direct 277, Aylsham Road, Norwich 01603 400757

SURREYApollo Angling Unit 1, Bourne Valley Garden Centre, Addlestone 01932 340000Guildford Angling 93-94 Haydon Place, Guildford 01483 506333

YORKSHIREBeverley Angling Centre 8 Maple Drive, Beverley 01482 869948York Carp Centre 2 Oak Street, Poppleton Road, York 01904 788856

SCOTLANDCraftye Fisherman 13 Montagu Terrace, Edinburgh 0131 5511224

NORTHERN IRELANDTight Lines 198-200 Albertbridge Road, Belfast 02890 457357

REPUBLIC OF IRELANDAnglers World Specialist Tackle Balmoral Business Park, Naven, Co Meath

00353 46907 1866

See the full range on the website atwww.etpredatortackle.co.uk

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FEATUREARTICLE

41

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Article graphics/layout kindly supplied by Mark.

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Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb44 For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com 45

GREYS PRODIGY PIKE RODSUNCONDITIONAL LIFETIME WARRANTY AGAINST BREAKAGE!NEW LOW PRICES...Prodigy Drifter 12’6”, 31⁄4lb, 2pc.... Was £109.99. Now £84.99Prodigy Deadbait 12’, 3lb, 2pc....... Was £99.99. Now £74.99Prodigy Jerkbait 6’, 50-150g, 2pc.. Was £59.99. Now £44.99Prodigy Jerkbait 6’6”, 50-150g, 2pc. Was £59.99.Now £44.99Prodigy Jerkbait 7’, 30-100g, 2pc... Was £59.99.Now £44.99Prodigy Spin 8’6”, 20-60g, 2pc....... Was £79.99.Now £59.99Prodigy Boat 10’6”, 2pc................... Was £89.99.Now £69.99

LOZ HARROP LURESProbably the Best Handmade Jerkbaits on the Market!!Various Colours. Models as below:XL Darter .........................................................................£16.99Large, Middle, Small, Darter...........................................£15.95Titchy Darter ...................................................................£14.00Hedgehog’s.....................................................................£15.00All Hogs...........................................................................£15.00Large, Small, Jackal .......................................................£22.50Baby Jackal ....................................................................£18.00Titchy Jim........................................................................£13.50Big Jim ............................................................................£13.50Bull...................................................................................£14.50Time Bomb .....................................................................£15.00

OWNER STINGER TREBLES NOW INSTOCKST36 Sizes 8’s -2’s ...........................................................£4.20ST41 Sizes 6’s - 1/0’s.......................................................£5.50

RUBBER LURESAs reviewed in November 2005 PikelinesBig Curly Shads 9 inch(Firetiger, Mackerel, Perch, & Rainbow Trout)..................£3.99Little Curly Shads 6 inch(Firetiger, Mackerel, Perch, & Rainbow Trout)..................£1.99DAIWA SONIC TAIL LURES...WHY PAY BULLDAWG PRICES!Colours: Black, Gold Red Tail, Green Yellow Tail & Black Red Tail25cm - 45g ...................................UNBELIEVABLE PRICE OF £ 2.9935cm - 110g .................................UNBELIEVABLE PRICE OF £ 3.99

EAGLE FISHFINDERSNEW LOW PRICES - FREE POSTAGE WITH ALL EAGLE FISHFINDERS110-37 Cuda 168............................................NOW ONLY £89.95110-80 Cuda 168 Portable ..........................NOW ONLY £134.95110-79 Cuda 242 .........................................NOW ONLY £109.95110-87 Cuda 242 Portable ..........................NOW ONLY £149.95110-69 FishEasy 245....................................NOW ONLY £139.95110-681 FishEasy 245 Portable...................NOW ONLY £179.95110-302 Trifinder 2 .......................................NOW ONLY £240.00

POWER-PRO BRAID 150yds 300ydsProbably the best braid for lure fishing!20lb, 30lb & 50lb Breaking strain £18.99 £32.9965lb Breaking strain £21.99 £39.9980lb Breaking strain £26.99 £43.99100lb Breaking strain £29.99 £51.99

PIKE REELS RRP CASHABU Ambassadeur 6501 C3 LHW £116.99 £69.99ABU Ambassadeur 5501 C3 £112.99 £69.99ABU Ambassadeur 5601 C4 £109.99 £87.99ABU Ambassadeur 6601 C4 £124.99 £99.99Shimano Cardiff 201A L/H £79.99 £71.99Shimano Cardiff 301A L/H £84.99 £75.99Shimano Cardiff 401A L/H £89.99 £80.99Shimano Corvalus 301 L/H £59.99 £53.99Shimano Corvalus 401 L/H £64.99 £57.99Now in Stock: Fox Stratos FS £129.99 £99.99

FOX PREDATORPRODUCTSFox Piker Deadbait 12ft 2.75lb £54.99 £49.99Fox Piker Heavy Deadbait 12ft 3.25lb £54.99 £49.99Fox Piker Multi Spin 9ft 6in 20-60 gms £42.99 £38.99Fox Piker Jerkbait 6ft 6in NOW ONLY £39.99Fox Trolling Boat Rod Rest £19.99Fox Micron P MkII Drop Off Alarm £29.99 £26.99Fox Micron PS MkII Drop Off Alarm £44.99 £40.99NEW FROM FOXFox Micron PSR Remote Alarm £74.99 £67.99Fox Micron RX3 Digital Receiver £129.99 £116.99

Ted Carter85-88 Church StreetPreston PR1 3BSTel: 01772 253476Fax: 01772 883011

E-mail:enquiries@tedcarter.co.uk

POSTAGE& PACKING

Reels 24hrs £5.50Jiffy Bags from £1.50

Rods & LargerParcels (24hrs) £7.99

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4746 Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgbFor the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com

10%Discount

for all PACMembers

company and you are more than welcomeback anytime. Mark was rewarded with hisfirst Scottish twenty as well as a fewdoubles, with Olly getting a few to lures.

December saw us struggle a bit withoutings due to a lot of water being eitherhigh or frozen, but as the year draws to anend we turn our attention to preparing forour AGM in January and the presentationnight in February. Some results are still tocome in regarding trophies etc a moredetailed report will be included in the nextissue. I can confirm so far...CLUB CHAMPION: Micky Jones.RUNNER UP: Rab Hay.BIGGEST FISH (outings): Allan Stewart.BIGGEST FISH (non points outing):Micky Jones. FLY/LURE: Robbie Milne.

On behalf of the club I would like towelcome our latest member aboard:Graham Slater, We look forward to fishingwith you in the New Year. Finally, we thecommittee would like to thank the membersof RA74 for all the work and effort over thepast year. The club is going from strengthto strength with the future looking brightand that’s something we can all be proudof. Thanks guys an tight lines for 2009.

Micky and Rab.

It seems to have been very busy at theMighty 48 but looking back it was onlythe St. Barnabas fish-in late in Nov. thatwas extra to our usual routine.

Since the last episode we have had twospeakers and a bring and buy sale.We had the one and only Mike Bowen inOctober and Ian ‘I like to dress in ladiesclothes’ Weatherall in December. Now mosttalks have a few pike and a few wittyanecdotes but ‘Mad’ Mick Bowen combinesthese standard elements with most of thecharacters from ‘The Comedians’ and‘Who do you do’. Never have we seen so

many props used by one person including19 foot of bright yellow canoe that we had

RA48Lincoln

RA74Inverness/Highlands

RA93NorthLanarkshire

to manhandle past the bar and up thestairs. Mick then covered his ‘surprise’canoe under a very thin piece of cloth andleft it at the front of the room away fromprying eyes! Simply put, Mick puts on afantastically entertaining talk that had us institches for most of the night. Many regionswill not have had Mick down but I canhighly recommend his talk or perhaps Ishould say stage show.

November saw us sell out and stage abring and buy sale, lots was brought, butnot much was bought, but enough to makeit worthwhile. It did give us a chance to talka bit more than usual though which isalways a bonus. December saw IanWeatherall, a Mighty 48 regular try us outas guinea pigs with his first talk. Prior tohim arriving he messaged me to say hehad been to the toilet a dozen times andcouldn’t eat his tea. Arrrgh.

Despite his high level of first night nerves,malnutrition and a belly full of bitter hegave us possibly THE talk of the season.I knew Ian had caught a few very goodpike and zeds in his time but he had beenkeeping his cards very close to his chest,lot’s and lot’s of very good fish wererevealed. But more importantly, andimpressively was the sheer effort and hardwork that he had put in to catch them.We had a mixed audience on the nightand so several of Ian’s anecdotes were notused. He still delivered some crackersthough. I think Ian actually enjoyed thenight himself so may be open to a littlearm twisting to do more talks.

Our first ever fish-in took place in lateNovember and we turned it into a charityfund raiser for the St. Barnabas Hospice.The water had been gifted to us by MickCobb and his syndicate. I had managed tocobble together a few trophies and ChrisChadwick had donated a £50 voucher froma Mr Fickling’s tackle emporium inGainsborough, all was set for a great dayon a very productive water. On the morningof the great day it turned colder than thecoldest cold thing, the wind rose and thenit snowed! Not looking great then. Despitethe now adverse conditions we senteveryone out and waited. The snowstopped, the winds dropped and thesun came out, and we waited...Continues on page 50...

of 33 anglers and a couple of juniors butdespite the weather being dreadful weploughed on regardless. This time aroundwe had special guests, a camera crew fromthe Readers Digest were in the areamaking a DVD on the Great Glen andCaledonian Canal waterways and wantedto include some fishing. We agreed as thiswas an opportunity to raise both our cluband the PAC’s profile. They came alongand filmed some interviews with clubmembers and a junior as well as comingout on the boat and getting some footageof Allan Stewart coming up trumps with thebiggest fish. Club member Robbie Milnedemonstrated some of the techniques andtackle we use for the camera. Again a bigthanks to all the members that donatedprizes for the raffle and to Rab and Ewenfor organizing and overseeing the event.

November started off with a red letter dayfor one of our newest members, RobbieOfficer who landed a nice brace of twentiesthe biggest being 25+, a big well doneto Robbie.

We also had a special guest at ourNovember meeting, Mark Barrett managedthe long trip north for a couple of daysfishing and chance to meet and fish withsome of our members. Mark was on aweek’s holiday in Scotland with pal OliverNewman so a big thank you guys formaking the effort, we enjoyed your

Most Improved Angler: Eddie Herd.RO’s Award and the Emerald Isle Trophies:Colin Mackie and Graeme (Taff) Stevenson.Inter-Region Fish-in: Dylan Johnstone.Outing Winners: Oct.‘07: Sandy Mackie,Loch Venacher. Nov.‘07: John Johnstone,Loch Tummell. Jan.‘08: Steve Smith,Loch Awe. Feb.‘08: Craig Devine,Loch Fad. March‘08: Charlie Springett,Loch Urr. May‘08: Nicky Burke, LochTummell. June‘08: Graeme Stevenson,Loch Ard. July‘08: Malcy Ward, Loch Ken.Sept.‘08: Davie McInally, Loch Insh.

Members, friends and families galore cameto see all this and more. Trophies, prizes,lucky dips and a buffet that would putpounds on your hips. New members joinedtoo, both females the pair, and all that wasmissing were those who weren’t there!!

Mark Barrett was also presented with asmall token of appreciation by the commit-tee of RA93. On the membership frontwe’ve taken a bit of a hit this year withsome not renewing, (for whatever reason)so a couple of month’s outing winners didnot qualify for trophies. It’s been a busy oldyear for the club and 2009 promises to bejust as busy with another Irish trip and allthe other home ground activities we havefor the members already in the offing.We would like to take this opportunity towish the PAC committee and all theregions and their respective members ahappy and prosperous New Year and ofcourse, tight lines!

Malcy Ward.

Hello again from the Highlands time foranother installment from our mostNortherly Region.

The last few months have again been abusy time for us. October saw our clubchairman Rab Hay improve on his PB forthe 3rd time in 2008 with a superb 24+So again, well done Rab (you are on firethis year). I must say a big thank you toNeil Baker who was on hand to take thepicture. We also held our open competitionthis month and again had a great turnout

The fog by this time had started to thicken,putting us in mind of a Stephen King novel,but after a while this started to break whichput the geese to flight. The sun eventuallybroke through, revealing a beautiful bluesky and the snow-capped mountains.

Eddie Herd got the smallest of touches onone of his rods, which again resulted in adropped bait, but in such marvelloussurroundings, it didn’t seem to matter.By 2.00pm it was back to being a differentstory as the fog and freezing temperaturescame back with a vengeance dropping thetemperature so low that frost formed on therods and ice in the rod rings. It didn’t putfish off as the lads in car park 1 had somefive or six other runs, although not a fishgraced the banks this day!

A Christmas Tale.‘Twas the fortnight before christmas’ andeveryone was feeling happy... why?Because it was the club christmas bashand presentation night In ‘The Joker’,that was the plan and in the company ofnone other than the big man himself;Mark Barrett, General Secretary of thePAC, Angling Columnist and ‘all round’gentleman. Mark gave of his time andwealth of experience, to give us a short talkon the thing we all love... FISHING!

But not only that, he came to present thevarious awards that were on offer to themembers. They had doggedly perseveredall year, in all manner of conditions andhaving travelled many miles, in pursuit ofold Esox the wily pike and whilst doing sohad won the trophy for that outing. Indeed,a long list of awards and prizes were givenon the night, the recipients being:Senior Angler of the year: Charlie (Chic)Springett. Junior Angler of the year:Samantha Johnstone. Heaviest Fish of theyear: Steve (Swampy) Smith: 25.08. LochAwe, January. The ‘Twenties’ Club: SteveSmith for his Loch Awe 25.08. CharlieSpringett: 21.02. Loch Awe, January.Davie McInally: 21.00. Loch Insh, Sept.

Six Runs in Minus Six...Nine of the thirteen members whoattended this outing, rescheduled fromHarelaw Fishery due to its closing,met up at the ‘Joker’ to travel toLoch Venacher on Saint Andrew’s Day,Sunday 30th November.

We had heard that it had been fishing wellso off we went. A hard frost had fallenduring the night and throughout our drive tothe Trossachs, we experienced banks offreezing fog which stayed with us for mostof the day. But not to be deterred, wearrived at the Fishing Lodge on theLochside in search of a further four of ourmembers. We were informed by one of thestaff at the lodge that the banks were busywith anglers who had stayed overnight andthat space would be at a premium.We moved further up to car park 1 wherewe were met by solitude as the place hadmysteriously emptied! Mind you, when oneof the lads had recorded the temperatureat -6 degrees, it was maybe no wonderthey had all left!

We spread out between the lodge, the lay-by, car parks 1 and 2 and got down to thebusiness of fishing. With it being so cold,it took a couple of hours for the first run todevelop, and that to the rod of Rab Tait,who has quietly persevered for so manyoutings in the hope of getting a fish. Sadly,it was not to be as the fish dropped the baitafter the initial strike.

Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

What’sHappeningAtYourPACRegion?Send your reports to Neville Fickling at: thetackleshop@btconnect.comPL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

4948

NewsAndViewsFromYourLocalUKPACRegion

RegionTalk

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For more regional news visit: pacgb.co.uk/regions/regionnews.html

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RA31SouthLancashire

RA40Selby

RA17BlackpoolNews

RA21/89Teesside

and two whole hams into the space wherehe had kept his 3 outsize bream deads inthe freezer. Despite the fact we didn’t allget to catch we had a very enjoyable dayout on the water and of course, moreimportantly, we all raised money for theSt. Barnabas Hospice in Lincoln. We raiseda quite staggering £990.75 which wasrounded up to £1000. My thanks go out toall that participated and to Mick Cobb forproviding us with somewhere to fish,also to Chris Chadwick for his generosity.I promise that next years event will seemore fish on the bank... honest.

Chico and Andy.

Hello All, Happy New Year and all thebest for 2009 from all the membersof the Selby Region.

A big thanks to Jon Neafcy for giving up histime and coming over to the Novembermeeting to entertain us all with his talk/slideshow entitled ‘Stepping Stones’.Jon’s talk was very interesting and enjoyedby all. At Decembers meeting the regionwelcomed PAC stalwart ‘Sir’ Peter Green.Peters talk/slideshow was as always firstclass and at the end of the night all themembers commented on that they couldlisten to Peter all night.

I would also like to thank John and JackDinnewell for all their hard work withadvertising the Selby region for me.Thanks to John and Jack we have had agood turn out of members to the meetings.Also a big thanks to Eric’s Angling Centrein Leeds for their support with raffle prizesand letting us advertise the meetings inthe shop via posters. The region is still inits early stages and in time I am planningto organise monthly outings for themembers and hopefully some weekendsaway in pursuit of old Esox.

Tight lines everyone, Mark Green.

Happy new year to one and all. I hopeSanta brought you all the new fishingtackle you asked for, I know I did quitewell so I must have been a good lad!

Some changes to our region will haveoccurred by the time this goes to print as Iwill have stepped down as RO along withour treasurer Conrad Tebbs. On behalf of

Steve Ormrod did us a cracking talk onNorthern Reservoir Piking at our Decembermeeting so much so that we havere-booked him for our April 2010 present-ation night as star guest! Our remainingmeetings for this season are on the firstWednesday of each month at 8.00pmonwards in the upstairs function room ofThe Caledonian public house at Ashton-In-Makerfield (next door to the Tesco garage).

The rest of the line up is as follows:Feb: Paul Haughton Region 31 Memberand all-round specimen hunter.March: Neville Fickling.April: Presentation night withJames Holgate.As RO I am proud to see the regiondeveloping and prospering and amoptimistic for 2009.

Jon Neafcy. Wigan Piker!

Phil Gould, ex Cheshire Region RO,is now living back up in the Blackpoolarea and has suggested restarting theBlackpool/ Preston region.

If there is anybody interested in eitherjoining or becoming more involved inrestarting this region, then please eithercontact Phil Gould himself on:07721 436184, or contact Mark Johnson,NW Liaison Officer via email at:mark-cheshirepiker@fsmail.net

Best regards, Mark Johnson.

Excellent news Phil and Mark, cheers, SO.

remember if he zeroed his electronicscales or not, if he did then the fish went awhopping 31.05. However, as he is notsure he went for the lowest possible weight(minus the weight of the sling which wouldmake the fish 30:00).

Other members have been doing well too,I’ve added another 6 twenties to my tallythis season and Mike Ashcroft (leader ofthe Chester Predators) tally of twentyscontinues to grow.

The Region is currently talking to a localangling club regarding another teach in forjuniors and begginers in October 2009. Weare also talking to another local anglingclub regarding helping them manage pikefishing on one of their waters.

RA48Lincoln

For more regional news visit: pacgb.co.uk/regions/regionnews.html

RegionTalk2NewsAndViewsFromYourLocalPACRegionPL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.

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Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb 51

Happy New Year! It is with pleasure thatI submit this the first region report of2009, I will continue along the lines ofthe ‘continuous improvers’ article in theprevious issue.

We have had some bad luck and somegood luck on the recent club outings.Martin Sailsbury managed a nice double of15.04 on one outing. I managed a lowdouble on another, whilst Keith Duttonmanaged his first Scottish pike on yetanother outing, in fact he managed 5including his first scottish double!Martin had been struggling to get outrecently due to the birth of his babydaughter and it was great to see him outfishing and catching. Martin has also beenbusy preparing and presenting a slideshowfor the region in January which wasexcellent, so he is not just continuallyimproving on the bankside! It is great tosee region members doing slideshows!

I take my hat off to the capture of a firstthirty for out Treasurer Ian (Banjo)Whitaker. Ian caught the beast (a new PB)beating his previous best by almost 7pounds. The fish was caught from a hardNorthern venue, on his very first trip (seeIan I told you it was a good venue mate!).

Once again the comaradarie in the regionwas evident as Ian was presented with anA4 Framed photo of him with the fish alongwith a bottle to toast the capture at ourJanuary meeting. The catch was witnessedby fellow Region 31 member Neil Stubbs,Ian now firmly has an entry for our region’sbiggest local fish trophy! Ian was so excitedwhen he caught the fish that he can’t

myself and Conrad I would like to say ithas been an honour and privilege to serveour club and we have both enjoyed ourtime on the committee. Many thanks to themembers and all those who havecontributed to making our region thestrong, enthusiastic, friendly, enjoyable andsociable club it is today. We wish the newRO and treasurer all the best and we willhelp out as much as we can in the futureand of course GOOD LUCK! Details ofthe restructure will be in the next issueof Pikelines.

We are continuing to attract new membersand I would like to give them all a warmwelcome. In particular father and sonpartnership Eric and Elliott Robinson.As you can see from the photographsElliott is already giving his dad tips on howto catch the bigguns! (see junior section forElliot’s pic, SO).

Our trophy season ended in November andthe results were as follows:

Biggest fish overall: Shane Patterson:21.04. Biggest river fish: Shane Patterson:20.00. Biggest loch fish: Sam Benson 9.08.Biggest lake fish: Phil Dale: 17.00.Biggest on a club trip: Shane Patterson:20.00. Biggest lure fish: Jim (tumble) Taylor8.11. Biggest by a junior: Elliot Robinson:10.00 (PB). Biggest canal fish:Shane Patterson 21.04. Mini pike/Under1lb Plonker award: Shane for falling in andlooking like a drowned rat! Trip pointswinner: Shane Patterson with 210 points.Pike angler of the year.

Voted on at the AGM As you can see‘Mr Competitive’ did very well again!Watch out he may poach a swim nearyou soon!

Our next two guest speakers dates of noteare: Steve Rodwell: Tues. 3rd February.Graham Slater: Tues. 3rd March.

All to be held at Coxhoe Workman’s Clubat 7.30pm. It just remains for me to wisheveryone a PB for 2009 and who knows Imay even get round to writing an article forPikelines if I get any free time!

Cheers, Craig Patterson.

Continued... The pike had turned fickle in thecold and we had lots of dropped runs, runsthat couldn’t be hit and follows. Amidst allthis there were actually 7 fish caught by 5anglers, nothing big but very welcome fishon the day.

Three were caught by a wandering Catfishman Chris Roberts who took the biggestfish 12.08 and won the biggest fish trophyand his other two bagged him the highesttotal weight trophy too.

His clean sweep was only marred by MickHunt catching an 11.15 that was closest tothe ‘Mystery weight’ prize that won him the£50 tackle voucher, very well done to theboth of them. Other captors on the daywere Leigh Vickers, Aaron Hill and MickCobb. I have to mention that Lindsey,the long suffering fiancé of Simon Blaydeshad a stroke of luck when she managed tofit the christmas turkey, 4 large gateaux’s

5352 For more regional news visit: pacgb.co.uk/regions/regionnews.html Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

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Chas White reports on yet another worthwhile event in the Roses saga that raised over £3000 for charity

Right: Barry with one of his winning

doubles at 14.08.

Right: Lucky winners on the day receive

their tackle prizes off Pete and Jane.

Top: Barry Bland, Lower: Christian Carswell.WarOfTheRoses2 TheFightForFlask!

It was still dark when Sir Peter Greenon his black hearted charger ‘Bessie’led me, his faithful serf down thesnow-laden streets of Sheffield towardsthe cold, black area at the head ofDamflask Reservoir.

I had been dragged protesting from mywarm bed of straw in the cellar of SirPeter’s castle, Green Towers, in Wakefieldat 5.00am by a boot up the backside anda curse! Actually, what happened was thatI had been invited by Sir Peter to spend awarm, comfortable night at his housewhere we had talked (and probably boredpoor Lady Linda) about fishing ‘till almostthe small hours. However, the earliersentences sound much more dramatic!

Sir Peter had even cooked baconsandwiches before we set off towardsDamflask so he is definitely not the villain Imake him out to be. Anyway, back to mytale! “By, ecky thump serf, ‘tis cold thismorning, you can put light another halfstub of candle to warm me up a bit moreand stop standing in front of it”. This wasthe greeting I had received, when I haddragged my protesting body down the coldsteps of Green Towers. He’s nothing if notgenerous is Sir Peter, he even let me rubmyself with warm horse faeces (posh ‘aint I)to warm my old bones!

Now I really am getting carried away,nearly as bad as that rubbish that Koshspeaks from the crazy world of RoystonVasey, think I’d better get back to myreport on the event!

The world was wet and cold when we gotto the dam head at about 6.45am.Amazingly we were not the first to arrive,Mel, the Bailiff was already there waitingas were a couple of others. Sir Peter isvery resourceful and had managed toobtain a huge banner to show peoplewhere he was which was promptlydisplayed over the rump of his charger(his car really but it sounds betterdescribed thus). He had also managed togather an amazing pile of goodies asprizes for the winners of the event and thefollowing raffle.

Yorkshire Water had been extremelygenerous in letting us have the reservoirfor no charge on the day with Mel andcolleagues on-hand to give out advice.The first hour was very busy with ladsturning up to either pay on the day or toreport in and collect their catch returns.Loads of money raised in sponsorshipswas also handed over to us and manythanks must be given to not only thesponsors, but also the people who didmanage to gather it.

Special mention must be made of BillyJordan and his grandson ChristianCarswell (Darlington, Teesside & Durhamregion) who between them managed togather a magnificent £306!

Billy is due to go into hospital shortly for aserious operation so I know all PACmembers will wish him well! Many otherlarge amounts of cash and cheques werealso handed over at the start of the day.Much, but not all, gathered by PACmembers and all of this money will beused to great effect by MacMillan Nursesto help people affected by Cancer.One Wakefield PAC member had not hadthe opportunity to gather any sponsors sohe handed over £200 of his own cash tothe fund, that is total generosity and showshow well regarded the work of MacMillan’sis! Talking of their work sometimes bringstears to the eyes of even the hardestanglers when they relate stories of their orrelatives experiences with Cancer so weknow how much it means.

The cold wind and rain did not affect thewarm regard in which Sir Peter is held bymembers and many handshakes weregiven. We managed to nearly keepeverything dry and anglers set off in alldirections to their chosen swims. By thistime, tales were starting to be told of blackice on the high routes to the reservoir, carsspinning at bends etc. but all managed toarrive safely if not a little shocked.Even the afore mentioned Kosh arrivedwith his posse of troops. It seemed thatMel was the second person that everyonewanted to talk to and gather advice onwhere was fishing well. The next time anyof you meet Kosh, ask him about beingtold to go to a particular swim and himwalking right past it! Much to everyoneelse’s amusement, I think that swim was

where the winning weight came from too,caught by someone else, Doh! Never mindKosh, you gave us all a laugh. He evenfailed to catch so don’t follow him in future!Over 50 anglers had reported in by thetime we decided to walk the banks to seehow people were getting on. They hadarrived as far away as Cheshire,Lancashire, Yorkshire and Durham toanswer the call and thanks must be givento each and every one of them! Sir Peterand Brian Birdsall (Yorkshire LO) walkedthe west bank, Mark Green and I walkedthe other.

Great tales of experiences wereexchanged and I was amazed how manypeople were regulars at this venue.For those of you who have never been it isvery picturesque, set in a wooded valleyon the outskirts of Sheffield. It hasproduced some great fish over the yearsbut unfortunately on this day, they failed tomake any appearance, although a coupleof anglers did report pulling out of big fish(or were these just fisherman’s tales?).A couple of decent doubles were bankedso at least some catches were filteringthrough. Peter had arranged a venue foran after-event get together at theWisewood pub and we received a warmwelcome from Rachel, the Landlady.

The Sheffield area manager for MacMillanNurses, Jane Furness arrived to receivethe donation and hand over the prizes.The winner of the biggest fish award wasStuart Mackenzie with a fish of 16.08 witha total catch of 29.00 (3 fish). The winnerof the award for the biggest weight of fishwas Barrie Bland with a total weight of29.06 (2 doubles). Incidentally, Peter hadbeen talking to Barrie and he had asked tojoin PAC. Peter had sorted out his mem-bership there and then and with a hand-shake welcoming him into PAC his drop-off literally ‘dropped off’ and he landed afish of 14.06! As Peter then pointed out,that is the benefit of being a PAC member!Peter also joined up a few others on theday but unfortunately for them his magicfailed to work!

The most important issue on the day andthe whole focus was to raise money forMacMillan Nurses. Trying to count wads ofmoney on the bank of a cold and windyreservoir however is not the easiest oftasks! After all of the excitement of the dayand the receipts of the end of event raffle,I had reached a figure of £2801 which wasduly handed over to a very grateful Jane.She gave a short speech after receivingthe bag of money and cheques but wasnot able to do a final count.

I have heard that when the money wascounted in a nice warm office the final total

was actually £2701 (my fingers must haveslipped on the calculator). This is amagnificent effort from everyone and Ibelieve that there is a further possible£300 in sponsorship to come in whichwhen received will obviously raise the finalamount to over £3000. Well done to allinvolved! On behalf of everyone, I wouldlike to thank Peter for all of his efforts.Mark and Brian also deserve praise fortheir support to him.

I know that several companies gave prizesto Peter for the day (Eric’s Angling, Leeds),Chris Leibbrandt (Salmo Lures), EddieTurner, Mel Rowbotton and YorkshireWater, Rachel at the Wisewood Inn,The Bait Kitchen, Eagle Claw, DaveEvans, Bag-up-Angling and SovereignSuperbaits. I also personally want to thankSir Peter and Lady Linda (who shopsmagnificently for his Lordship) for thewonderful hospitality. Even their dogaccepted me in the end although I nevergot to meet the parrot!

We would like to thank Jane Furnessfrom MacMillan Nurses for turning up ona cold day to show support for the eventand hand out the prizes. The result ofthis event shows that pike anglers careabout others as well as the fish.For 50 plus people to turn out on a coldNovember day to raise a huge pile ofmoney for other people less fortunate thanthemselves speaks volumes and must beapplauded. I know that a lot of banter was

shared on the day and probably to catcha fish was a bonus. Thank you to eachand every one of you.

Finally, Sir Peter and I have alreadydiscussed next year’s event! He who shallbe obeyed has decreed that peace willprevail between the 2 Roses (even thoughYorkshire won of course, don’t theyalways). He has said however that he willthrow down the gauntlet to all the southernsofties to get them to come up to thefrozen north and support this magnificenteffort! Come on then, how about a northversus south event? Are you hardenough? Can you southerners catch ourhard to find northern pike? Watch thisspace for further details!

Chas White. Useless accountant, serf andgeneral dogsbody with frozen pinkies!

Just a few extra words to add to Chas’spiece in that I would like to thank himpersonally for all his effort in helping withthis event. Brian and Mark were brilliantwith their help on the day but Chas didmore than I could expect from him.He did all the catch returns and most ofthe tickets as well as organising theMacMillan side of it. This all helped tomake the day run like clock work, I knowhe does not like praises put on him so Ithought I would. And finally a big thankyou to all who took up the gauntlet, fishedthe match and raised so much money forthe Macmillan nurses. Pete Green.

Although we were fishing from the comfortsof the shack three layers of clothing andboot’s rated to –50 degrees C are essentialas when you do get a run you still have toface the severe temperatures to play yourfish. When you first arrive for a session itslike walking into a freezer but once we firedup the propane heater it became verywarm, very quickly. We cooked our mealson a Coleman cooker and any un-cookedfood could be left as the temperature in theshack overnight is colder than a freezer!

Specialist fishing gear.Ten inch holes were drilled with a ‘jiffy’ iceauger, several were drilled over a widearea covering as much of the bay aspossible. The fun with this type of fishing isyou don’t have to move swims you just drillanother hole. After drilling the hole all theloose ice has to be removed from the holeand then you can set your lines. We do notuse rods in these conditions as the waterfreezes very quickly after drilling so we usea ‘Tip-Up’. It’s a North American version ofa handline, but with many modifications.

IceHolePikingAtRedRiver

ASeriesThatGivesMembersTheKnowledgeToSucceed

DianaAndSteveCrookCoverTheirIceHolePiking

TalkingTactics

Esox action at the Wavey Tavern.January 17th saw Diana and Ireturn to Manitoba Canada foranother two weeks ice-fishing inpursuit of the pike, fishing thefrozen Red River and Wavey Creekone of the many creeks that feedthis superb river.

Temperatures prior to our trip were a littlehigher than normal therefore we wereconcerned about the thickness of the iceon the river as it needs to be at leastsixteen inches thick to be safe to drive on.

On arrival at Winnipeg our fears provedunfounded as the temperature had droppedto –20C and below and the ice thicknesswas now between two and three feet thick!‘Perfect’!!

Comfort and warmth this year.We picked up the 4x4 (Toyota Rav4)essential for ‘ice-road driving’ and headedoff for Lockport where we were staying forthe duration and is also base for ourspecial friend and Canadian fishing guideCarl Loutit. Carl informed us that this yearhe had placed an ice-shack (CanadianBivouac) on Wavey creek and also he hadinstalled large windows so this year wecould sit in comfort and warmth while wewaited for action. This was unlike ourprevious trip when the truck was our onlyprotection from the freezing conditions.

Wavey Creek is about a forty minute drivefrom Lockport including a short drive on theice to reach the shack. The boat launchesthat are used for summer fishing becomeextremely handy ramps for trucks to gain

access onto the ice in winter, some of thembecoming official routes onto the ice.Wavey Creek is as wide as the Thamesso it was a nerve-racking drive to reach theshack which was located in a large bayabout a mile from where we enteredthe creek.

Carl and our other Canadian friends Scotty,George, Boone, Blinky and Cowboy hadmade the Shack very ‘environmentallyfriendly’ as they had planted old Christmastrees around the shack. A good example ofCanadian ‘re-cycling’! Carl and the boysnamed the shack the ‘Wavey Tavern’ aname inherited from the Canadianfondness for drinking beer! Although duringour stay a name plate appeared that being‘Little Britain’ no doubt trying to makeDiana and I feel at home.

54 55

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Diana & Carl at theWavey Creek Tavern.The ‘Thin Ice’ signwas just for show asit was 21/2” thick.

Above: Diana with a good pike caught when the temp. was -35C.

Below: Steve gets towork drilling ice holeswith the Auger.

Left: The Tip-up isset as the waterbegins to freeze upinstantly.

Below: A Tip-upcomplete withbite alarm & flag.

‘‘’’WeDon’tUseRodsInTheseConditionsAsTheWaterFreezesVeryQuicklyAfterDrillingSoWeUseA‘Tip-Up’

This wire, available from Eddie Turner, isa stainless steel, seven-strand wire witha blood-red nylon coating. I’ve beenusing this wire for up-traces and I haveto say it is perfect for the job.

The wire, with the nylon coating, is thickerthan normal, but very soft and nice tohandle. The extra thickness is something Ilook for in an up-trace as it helps with bothabrasion resistance and tangle prevention.It also gives you something comfortable tograb hold of when about to hand land ajack; something I’ve been doing an awfullot of recently!

The extra thickness is again beneficialwhen using an up-trace with a pater-nostered livebait. A few years back I usedto use a tube covered wire for this job, butthe Bleeding Leader Wire, in my opinion,is even better.

This wire can be twisted in the normal wayif you burn off a part of the outer coatingwith a lighter first. However, it crimps verywell indeed, without the need to removethe outer coating, and it is this method thatI now prefer as it is just so quick, neat andeasy. Bleeding Leader Wire is available in30 and 45lb BS spools, priced at a veryreasonable £4.95 for a 30ft spool. Part ofa growing range of tackle available onlinefrom Eddie Turner at: eddieturner.co.uk

Mark Ackerley

We can be contacted via email at:crook@pikehunters.freeserve.co.ukIf you live in the Surrey area visit theTackle Exchange in Walton on Thameswhere Diana works, she will be only toopleased to talk you. If you fancy somethingdifferent then give it a go...You might just like it!

Diana and Steve Crook.

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Manufacturers/Members:AnythingNewToReview?Please contact Steve Ormrod at: predhunter.o@virgin.net

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The net is fitted to a slightly oval shapedframe measuring 75 x 70cm (30”x 28”) andhas a decent depth of 60cm (24”). The netitself has a knotless hexagonal mesh whichis 20mm across and is dark green incolour. The rubberised finish really doesresist hook penetration and seems to bevery fish-friendly as well. It doesn’t removeall the pike’s protective slime and doesn’tdamage fins either. The net has a strongaluminium handle, 85cm (33”) in length,which slides through the top of the ovalframe for easy trans- portation and has acomfortable black rubber hand grip.This net fulfils all my requirementsextremely well.

So far it has helped the Leathwood team toland lure-caught pike up to 22.12 in weight(nice one Joe!) and I can honestly say Ihave no complaints at all.

Although I have only used it for bank fish-ing it would be eminently suitable for boatuse as well, with either lures or baits.Sam Baxter tells me that Spro are a Dutchtackle firm, with a significant stake in theAmerican lure fishing market. I subsequent-ly ordered a couple of Spro lures from Samand was similarly impressed by their veryhigh quality and moderate price. Spro’swebsite is well worth a look for you lurefishing enthusiasts too.

Find their extensive online catalogue at:spro.nl/UK As well as other products bySpro the site features some very tastylures and accessories at prices which areextremely competitive.

Baxter Angling is a regular advertiser inPikelines and so deserves our support.Visit their website at: baxterangling.com

Mark Leathwood

AFWBleedingLeaderWireFor some years now I’ve been landingall my lure-caught pike by hand, largelyin order to avoid the horrific tangleswhich frequently result when ordinarymicro-mesh landing nets are used.

However, there are some swimswhere hand landing is awkwardbecause it is difficult to getright to the waters edge and,rather than skip past theseplaces, I have thought forsome time that I reallyshould invest in a decentlanding net in order to beable to give them a try.I wanted a net which waslight enough to carry aroundwithout it becoming anuisance, but still be largeenough to accommodate a20+ pike, should I be luckyenough to encounter one.Also, I wanted something with afairly large mesh, and of a type whichwould resist penetration by treble hooks.

Needless to say, the tackle shops inmy area don’t sell anything remotely like this and searching on the internet hadfailed to identify anything suitable at aprice I was able to afford... until I workedmy way through the advertisers in Pikelinesand found the Spro Big Fish rubbercoated landing net being advertised byBaxter Angling.

I had never heard of Spro, or ‘SportsProfessionals’, to give the company its fulltitle, and must admit I was a little wary ofbuying a product which wasn’t from one ofthe trusted manufacturers I was familiarwith. However, the specifications lookedgood, and I certainly couldn’t argue withthe £27.50 price tag, which included postand packing. I took the plunge and placedmy order. I was very impressed with boththe speedy and friendly service from BaxterAngling and by the Spro Big Fish net itself,which arrived two days later.

RealReviewsTriedAndTestedItemsOfInterestToThePikeAngler

57

A spool of line is attached to a spindlewhich rotates in a piece of tubing which ispacked with grease to prevent freezingwhilst in the water. At the top of thespindle there is a ‘T’ piece which allows aflag attached to a spring to be placedunder the ‘T’. When a fish takes, the flagshoots up indicating a run. The base of thetip-up can be straight or round as long as itspans the ice hole. We had many runseach day and landed plenty of pike butyou also experience many pike comingoff at the hole.

Conservation comes first.Remember, you are trying to bring a fish upthrough what is really a three foot tube andif you cannot turn the fish quickly enough itwill pull the hooks free (barbless hooks aremandatory in Canada). When the pikeare landed it is essential to unhook,photograph and return the fish very quickly,otherwise the fish will freeze. We do notweigh our fish as this takes too long andthe fish would freeze to the sling.The weight doesnot matter to us asthey are all superblooking fish and it’sbrilliant catchingthem in the icewhere nobody elsehas fished. It’s moreabout the enjoymentand challenge!

Experience equalsenjoyment.This was our third ice-fishing trip to Canada,it keeps getting better each trip. We cannotwait for next winter to arrive! Before weclose this article we would like mention ourfriends in Canada, Carl, Scotty, George,Boone, Blinky and Cowboy, these boy’sreally know the ice and make every trip afantastic experience and a lot of fun.We have learned so much from them.

We believe we could not experience anyfishing more interesting than ice fishing,a big thanks to all of you. If anyone isinterested in trying this unique branch ofour sport we will be only too pleased toadvise and put you in the right direction.

Our friend in Canada Carl Loutit is aprofessional guide for both summer andwinter fishing and has unequalledexperience and knowledge to guideyou in both seasons.

‘‘’’It IsEssentialToUnhook,PhotographAndReturnTheFishVeryQuickly

SproBigFishLandingNet

Main pic: A lovely Northernalmost climbs out of thehole herself!

Above: Back she goes.Note the spool on thestainless steel tubing,it’s packed with greaseto ensure free-rotation.

Steve shows off anotherpristine, unmarked fish.

56 Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

as far to say if you can’t buy it online at:piketrace.co.uk then your trace needsreally are different! Of course, if this is thecase, Alan will very gladly make a sampleup for you to your own specifications.PAC members buying off Alan will alsoenjoy a hefty discount too. Job done!

Alan can be contacted on: 07815308463Email: adudhill@btinternet.com

SteveOrmrod

As a lot of you probably know, I ama great fan of groundbaiting for pikeand have written several articles aboutit in the past.

Nev often pulls my leg about it, but he’snow brought out his own ‘Lucebaits’ brand.The product comes ready to use in 1Kilofrozen, vaccum-packed bags, enough for ashort session to bait up a couple of rods.The mix itself consists of well mashed-upfish pieces (won’t fill your quarry) combinedwith Nev’s ‘secret’ crumb mix that bindsvery well. The bait is very easy to handleand I would recommend leaving it to thawout overnight before a session. Reasonbeing it’s far easier to form into air-freeballs and won’t float off when thrown in!

On the bank it ‘balls-up’ (Nev’s words) verynicely with slightly wetted hands and youcan then throw them a decent distance.If you find you still have some left after asession, don’t waste it, just squeeze theair out of the bag, seal up and re-freeze.Onto effectiveness; I can recommend youalways have a bag in your freezer as it hashelped me catch a fair few decent fish to25.00 so far. I have tried it on stillwatersand ‘running water’ venues with successon each. Price per 1K bag is just 0.75p +P&P at cost; very good VFM. Availablefrom Neville at The Tackle Shop:01427613002 thetackle-shop.co.uk

SteveOrmrod

Choice of crimp is important; I use Fox 40lbCarboflex crimps, and these are a nicetight fit when passing the 60lb wire throughthree times. You will also need a dedicatedcrimping tool. I use the Fox Multi tool thesmaller slot on these is exactly right for the40lb crimps.

As mentioned, they will last forever and thehooks will need replacing first, with this inmind I have been looking at ways of beingable to change the hooks without binningthe trace. What I do is to attach the hooksto a loop in the wire via a small split ring(see pic). The photo shows this being donewith a small 65lb BS oval split ring, which Ibuy from Fishingpool.

No problems as yet with this method,though it needs a longer period of evalua-tion before I will be totally happy with it.Titanium trace wire is expensive, but whenyou consider that a finished trace could lastyears, then it actually works out quite abargain! Tackle Shop titanium trace wire ispriced at £9.99 for 30lb and £12.99 for 60lbrespectively for a 3m length. See theTackle Shop advert on page 46.

MarkAckerley

I’d never had the pleasure of meetingSteve Bown; aka ‘Billy Two Fish’, untillast year’s PAC Convention. But whilewe live and fish very different waters,on opposite sides of the country, it turnsout we shared a few thoughts when itcomes to drop-off indicators.

After trying several shop-bought drop-offs,which were too light and had plastic clipswhich trapped the line, I graduated tomaking my own a few seasons back,featuring heavy, weighted heads andadjustable Solar steel ball clips. Steve wentdown a similar make-your-own route withthe acclaimed ‘Billy’s Backbiter’ rear alarm,which he now markets commercially to agrowing fan base, with the likes of John‘Watto’ Watson and Dave Horton singing

Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgbFor the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com 5958

As some may have noticed from recentreviews I’m a fan of lures that arehomemade with attention to detail(and dare I say love?) as opposed tomass produced, off-the-shelf lures.

I think it’s fair to say that Alex Prouses’‘Zoota’ lures fit the bill where ‘attention todetail’ is concerned but don’t let ‘home-made’ fool you into thinking Alex’s luresaren’t professionally made. These rubberlures look as good as anything on themarket... and they catch fish too!

I’ve owned a mini wagtail for a couple ofyears now and it has become one of my‘go to’ lures in many situations. The versionI like is unweighted, making it ideal forfishing slowly over weed in the shallowrivers of the east; it’s caught fish on thedeeper venues too! The Wagtail is a curly-tailed lure in the tradition of the Bulldawgwith a familiar rippling action but with aslight side-to-side wobble too.

What sets this apart is the material which ismuch tougher and pike resistant than thedawg and also the very clever hookarrangement. This latter feature pulls clearof the lures body which leads to excellenthook ups. As I said being unweighted it ispossible to fish the Wagtail in situationswhere it would be impossible to fish regulardawgs or even springdawgs.

They come in a range of ten finishes tooand, dare I say it, these are anotherimprovement on the original dawg and allthe recent cheap copies. If this choice isn’tenough for you then Alex is able toproduce custom colours on request too.I have no interest in building up a vast

collection of lures, many of which willhardly ever be used (are you paying atten-tion Mr Hill, LOL!). I want lures that areeasy to use and catch fish, the wagtail ticksboth boxes. Simply cast them out, countdown to the required depth, wind themback and hold on tight. They’ve caught fishfor me from the Broads and Fen rivers anddrains as well as a reservoir and pits and Ihave no hesitation in recommending them.Advert on page 22, or look up Alex’s siteat: zoota.co.uk

MikeHastings

Titanium trace wire has been availablefor a while now, but in my view it hasyet to receive the following that itdeserves, perhaps due to the difficultymany people have when handling it.

It is, however, well worth the effort,because a titanium trace, when constructedproperly, is simply indestructible, they willnot kink, ever! The Tackle Shop sell titani-um trace wire in two breaking strains; 30lband 60lb. I have used both types, but it isthe 60lb variant I have settled on, and Ireckon this is quite simply the ultimatetrace wire. It is a seven-strand wire, and if Ihad one criticism, it is that at times the wireis prone to the strands unravelling after it iscut. A couple of things here; the 60lb wireseems better in this regard, and also I havenoticed that one end of the wire spool ismore prone to separating than the other,so I obviously cut from that end. I shouldadd that when a trace has been construct-ed the wire does not come apart, it is onlywhen you have a cut end of wire that thiscan be a problem.

When making a trace with titanium wire,the first thing you will discover is that it cannot be twisted. Also, it is not particularlyeasy to crimp, but never fear, there is ananswer. And no, it doesn’t need two crimpsNev! The answer is to pass the wire backthrough the crimp a third time, (see pic).

Manufacturers/Members:AnythingNewToReview?Please contact Steve Ormrod at: predhunter.o@virgin.netRealReviews2

TriedAndTestedItemsOfInterestToThePikeAngler

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their praises online. Realising that howevergood they were, there would always be asizeable group of pikers who prefer thefront alarm/drop-off combination, Stevealso now markets drop-offs.

My advice; buy some if this is yourpreferred form of bite indication. There’snothing out there that comes close to themin terms of quality, it really is that simple.From front to back, the line is clipped up byan adjustable steel ball clip that won’t trapthe braid most anglers now use, so it willshow a drop-back if a fish comes towardsyou. The head can be unscrewed to inserta Starlite or isotope for fishing after darkand it pivots on the end of the arm makingit easy to set correctly; hanging down justbeneath the spool. Even if your rod tips areangled down on steep banks or to beatthe wind.

The arm is around a foot long and made ofsteel tubing. A 2oz weight slides along thearm, which means the tension and sensitiv-ity can be adjusted when, for example,fishing a flowing river, a wind-sweptstillwater, or even when a still drain startsbeing pumped. At the rear there’s a hingeddownrigger which attaches to a bankstick,or even a pod if you’re that way inclined.

In use I found them simple to get set rightevery cast (tip of the day: stick a bit of tapearound the rod handle to make sure youget the banksticks the right distance apartwhen you change swims). If you’re stillpersevering with either an unweightedshop-bought with plastic ‘vee’ clip, or yourown home-made concoction, do yourself afavour and go online to order some ofSteve’s for just £12.00 + £3.99 P&P.

Steve has also got a website with stacksmore information about different alarmsand bite indication. Check it out online at:billysbackbiters.blogspot.com

Chris Bishop

ZootaLuresMini-Wagtail

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LucebaitsPikeGroundbait

PikemasterTracesPart2

Billy’sBackbitersDrop-Off

TackleShopTitaniumWire

In the last Pikelines I ‘bench-tested’and reviewed Alan Dudhill’s top qualitytraces and snaptackles. Since then Ihave had chance to get out on the bankto see how they perform in the mannerthey were designed to.

I’m very pleased to say that the traces andtackles have more than exceeded myexpectations with several fish caught onthem including a very big twenty.As I mentioned in the last review all thematerials and construction values are firstclass and at the prices Alan sells them atyou probably won’t need to make anothertrace again!

I have mainly been using the ‘fixed’ stylesnaptackles with size 4 and 6 trebles(crushed barbs) on black 33lb coated wire.Even after catching 3 jacks one morningthe traces stood up to the ‘mangle’ test andremained useable with no bad kinking orloss of the coating, quite remarkable! Oneupper double did give a trace a run for it’smoney after a good fight which saw a lot ofheadshaking, still, minimal damage wasmade to the trace and out it went again.To be honest I am not a great fan oftrebles, nothing mysterious, it’s just that Ihave always used specialist doubles orsingles for my piking and have no reasonto change. Therefore, it has probably beena good plan for me to try these traces out,I had no problems with these snaptackles.

Alan is constantly updating his website andstyles/variations of traces/snaptackles areincreasing all the time. In fact, I would go

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LlynBrenigNov.2nd-3rd2008.Well, something of a contrast weather-wisefrom 2007 when we had sun drenchedskies and active pike with a lot of action(follows in my case).

I decided to go across country through midWales this year and whilst Brum wasrelatively mild on departure on Sunday thatsoon changed as we approached theSnowdonia range with snow abounding.Having had a look at a couple of othervenues myself and boat partner PhilCooper reached Llyn Brenig to find thatsome melting snow still remained on theground. Hmmm we thought!

Day one started dull, cold and the pikewere not in active mode. Phil and myselfstayed away from the usual areas toexplore which proved fruitless and our boatblanked. At the end of the day a number ofmid to upper doubles had been caught,with one reported whacker lost, but fishnumbers were down. At least we had agood night in the pub with the Norwich ladsplus Messrs. Steve ‘I had two doubles’Ormrod and Chris ‘ladies man’ Parry!

Day two with a hearty breakfast inside uswe were keen again. Whilst we had fishedday one on lures a change to deadbaits onday two was of course tactical and nothingto do with the beer from the previous night.Again staying away from the ‘crowds’ I tookPhil to a spot I had caught on the previousyear and where ‘Mad Mick from Redditch’had shown me how to hook and lose bigpike (no it wasn’t a 30 for a change).

Four rods out and a brew underway andmy near bait was away at pace. A realgood fight ensued and I told Phil to becareful as he would be netting a twenty.At 13.08 it just shows I don’t catch muchthese days! A great start but that was it forus for the day, other boats were strugglingbut just to show events can turn two lowtwenties with the best to PAC member NeilAirey were caught.

On a disappointing note we did seeevidence of anglers attending withinadequate gear, eg. no traces. I recalldiscussing this with a number of anglers inthe car park afterwards and said the PACwould be taking this up with the Llyn Brenigmanagement, which, to my astonishmentone angler (I don’t know his name or if hewas a PAC member) told me I was wastingmy time as such gear is standard ‘up thisway’. Well me old son the day I turn a blindeye to such matters is the day I hang the

6160 Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgbFor the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com

Menteith,Brenig08EventReportsA venue record on the Lake of dreams and a cold 2 days in North Wales.

Above: one ofthe few twentiescaught.

Right: JC withhis ‘wishful

thinking’ 13.08.

Below: history is made: StuartMcNairn and his venue record21lb rainbow.

Lower: Back she goes safely.

rods up. What of Llyn Brenig as a venue,well weather and temperature did notassist this year but I still feel it has yet toshow its full potential. I understand it willopen to bank fishing in Feb 2009 and it willbe interesting to see what that produces.It’s a nice venue, it will never be a Menteithor Chew in my opinion.

Will it do upper twenties or thirties, well Ithink it may but not in large numbers as thePike population appears relatively small.

Would I go back...Yes!

John Cahill.

Editors comment: being on the sameevent I also witnessed bad behaviour onbehalf of several ‘non-PAC’ booked boats.

This included fish being photographed toolong and one boat fishing with smallspinners... obviously for the trout, (6” min.lure ruling) of which I duly reported to themanagement. This just proves we still havework to do even in this day and age. SO.

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MenteithNov.1st2008.So as usual with such events, a full jettyof expectant anglers, hustled andbustled about, loading boats, shootingthe breeze and looking forward to awonderful day on the lake of dreams.

What was unusual was the fact that theday dawned mild and still, in fact the lakewas like glass as the first hardy soulsset afloat.

Unfortunately, this decent spell of weatherdidn’t spur the big girls into feeding, andsoon reports drifted back of an awful lot ofjacks snapping at the assortment of woodsand plastics being thrown around the lake.One boat that did get amongst the biggerfish was the disability boat, with a nice lowtwenty, and rumours circulated of at leastone other. What was a shock though wasa lake record rainbow of 21lb, which wouldhave brightened any angler’s day.

At the end of the day as the boats drew into shore, it became obvious that it was aday for action rather than quality, with fewanglers drawing a blank and many havingmultiple catches. The final figures were334 fish caught, of which 299 were underten pounds in weight. Good fun and onceagain the lake had made this day oneto remember.

Mark Barrett.

63

only to be hectic elsewhere on the rivertowards dusk. This screams out ‘feedingroutes’ with the same fish being responsi-ble only in different areas, this is a theorynot explored in this part of the book.He makes some excellent comments onpike fishing the tidal areas of the Severnand has some interesting thoughts on winddirection and in particular the clarity of theriver. He also believes that if there is anycolour at all in the river you may be wast-ing your time as you wont catch anything.I am sure there are many anglers who fishthe Severn today who would argue withthis. In my experience the slightest rainfallbrings colour to the Severn very quicklyand if you waited for clear water youwould wait a long time especially duringdeep winter.

He finishes off the book by naming a fewwaters and areas where big pike had beencaught and this must have made a few ene-mies and is something that would definite-ly not be seen as ‘wise’ in the modern day,and rightly so. Whether Barrie Rickardsassessment of this book lives up to thehype will be down to the individual.I don’t think it does but John does state atthe beginning of the book that he is thefirst person to write about this subject insuch detail, so maybe I should be a littlekinder. This book give an insight into theway things were and I wonder how Johnwould have viewed the Severn as it istoday, would he still catch as many pike?We will never know but I’m sure it would-n’t have been for the want of trying.

Chris Donovan.

Mick Brown comments further: Chris,much of what you say is very perceptivefrom someone who only knew him in pass-ing. It’s such a long time ago, I don’t thinkabout those days very often as things havemoved on so much. I fished the Severnalongside John from about ‘77 to ‘83 or 4when I decided that I must leave the riveralone and move my fishing forward. Johnstayed, he loved the river and apart fromthat, had no car. He never had other than amotorbike licence and relied mostly oncadging lifts. We rarely fished together,there was a sort of friendly rivalry, goingon different days and because the numberof good swims were limited, we used a bitof kidology at times to put each other off.

The first year we bank fished but the boatfishing really opened things up. How henever drowned I don’t know, safety neverwas an issue for him. Yes, John wasobsessed and single-minded about theSevern just as he was about his eel fishing.It was his whole life. I don’t think heworked much at all (if ever) in the years Iknew him. He just fished and fished.

He fished for eels most nights through thesummer and lived at the lock keepers cot-tage on Tewkesbury Island for months at atime in winter. He never lived healthily.Crap food, pills to keep him awake, pills tomake him sleep, gallons of coffee in thenight and fags galore. His doctor once toldhim he had the body of a 60 year old.He was 36 and one of the first casualties ofthe ‘modern age obsessive angler’. Medialed, he was a simple man who tried to keepup with the hype surrounding him.

The ‘route’ theory was something we bothagreed on. There were just five spots in theweir area (in summer) where you wouldcontact pike. We suspected that the pikemoved between them. One area was thefamous ‘sunken tree’, then there was the‘log hole’, 2 areas in the weirpool and along glide below the island. This isprobably the mid-river swim he referredto. It didn’t have a great flow pressure.I’ve caught in many swims just like itfurther up river.

11lb Sylcast... yes it sounds all wrong but Iknow it did the job. I used it too and we’duprated from 9lb. It sounds irresponsibletoday, yet I caught 4 thirties on such linewhen I started pit fishing. We play it a lotsafer now but it seemed right at the time.

You should make some mention ofwobbling; John was very good at it. Hewas over-obsessed with big baits, causedgreat controversy and, in reality he nevercaught bigger pike on them than thoseusing smaller baits. He was a good angler,but I don’t think any better than manyaround him like Roy Greenwood fromTewkesbury and other visiting anglers.

It wasn’t hard fishing really, always plentyof pike. It was time put in that built up histally. No-one else would sacrifice theirfamily life and health to simply keeptopping up the numbers. The numbersgame did play on his mind. I think heenjoyed the statistics more than actuallycatching the fish. Like a few others thatspring to mind!

I’m rambling Chris, this is opening up alot of memories. Some good, some bad.I would rather not say any more. John isnow gone and I’d like to just rememberhim as one of the great pike anglingcharacters. I still send his wife a Christmascard each year. She went to school withmy late first wife. Those were our forma-tive years. We had no rule books or guide-lines. We learned the hard way, notthrough magazines and videos. I wouldn’tchange how it was for anything. Hope youwill understand what I am saying.

Regards, Mick Brown.

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On stillwaters this is not generally the casebut rivers are different to stillwaters inmore ways than one and reverse thinkingis sometimes needed to be successful.

The next part of this book which had sucha promising start now plummets downhillwith a vast portion of the middle sectiondevoted to tackle. Now we all know weneed tackle to fish but there gets to be apoint where the author must give the read-er the benefit to know the best tackle forthe job in hand. With tackle changing allthe time, any section on this subject quick-ly becomes dated and irrelevant to thereader in later years. A quaint sense ofnostalgia is evoked whilst reading throughthis section but it’s value is only historicalwhich is a shame. One piece of advise Iparticularly find astonishing is that herecommends 11 pound Sylcast as hischosen line. I personally wouldn’t use anyline with a breaking strain of less than 20lbs and it surprised me that he would usesuch a weak line considering both theareas where he expected to catch his fishand their tenacious behaviour whenhooked! 11 pound mono (albeit a goodmake and the ‘in’ line of the times) wouldappear to be greatly under strength.

Next, we visit his comments on rigs whichwere at best simplistic, I have no problemwith this but a page describing how to puta float and beads on a line after (wouldyou believe) explaining that this must bedone after running the main line throughthe rod eyes borders on nonsense. Some ofthe rigs that are well detailed by DaveLumb could be viewed as being progres-sive for the times if you weren’t there andfishing yourself. I was and there wasnothing new for anyone other than a realnovice to gain from this section. Even the‘up-trace’ had been used for many yearsprior to his revelation in this book. I waspleased that at no stage did he admit toinventing the set up, very pleased indeed.One method of fishing worth noting isJohn’s way of dealing with shy feedingpike by trying to pull the bait from it’smouth giving the impression of a strug-gling fish. I don’t agree with the reasonshe gives for why a pike would hang on tothe bait but in practice this does happenand it works.

The final section that interested me wasthe one titled ‘Feeding Times, Weather andWater Conditions’. He starts by making anastute observation on feeding stating thathe believes in feeding periods which canbe as long as a week and a relationshipbetween surface showing silver fish andthe pikes feeding times. Something I agreewith although not exactly as he describes.He also notes that if a swim fishes well inthe morning the feeding spell will tail off

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FEATUREARTICLE

The most enjoyable part of doing thesepost publication reviews is that it gives methe chance to sit down and read booksthat I either haven’t read before orhaven’t read for a long time.

In this edition of Pikelines I have decidedto enter the lions den and review a bookfrom a person who provokes manydifferent emotions from both people whohave met him and those who haven’t.I crossed swords with John many years agoconcerning an article he wrote on an eelhospital and met him once whilst fishing atLlangorse Lake. His tackle was at bestbasic (which impressed me as my tackle isslightly more prehistoric) but he did havewonderful baits and any man who had abucket full of silver fish was going tocatch pike, and that he did in abundance.I don't know what his pike caught to hours

spent on the bank side ratio was? I suspectit might have been low, but this was apiker from the old school whose dedicationto what he loved was obsessive. This aloneputs him in the top drawer of pike anglersof the twentieth century. The book title is abit pretentious as I assume John intendedthis book to cover all rivers but it’s a wellknown fact that ‘River Piking’ could havebeen named ‘Pike Fishing TewkesburyWeir’, although I was about to find outhow much of the book would actuallycover other rivers that I am more familiarwith. River Piking was edited (or some saydeciphered) by Barrie Rickards withsketches from Dave Lumb so I anticipateda well produced book if nothing else.

I was not disappointed on that score, eventhe front cover is iconic with John shownholding a mid-double figure pike withTewkesbury Weir as a backdrop. It’s a

photograph typical of its timeand even John’s clothingshows a naiveity that waspresent in those days wherebeing cold didn’t even comeinto the equation. We justpike fished and worried not ajot of future consequences.

The book starts with a glowing testament to John’s abilityand attitude by Barrie Rickardsand I hope that his comments“Because he is an innovativeman in many ways, you willfind new tips and wrinkles intackle arrangements, newapproaches to boat fishing, andin places a totally new philoso-phical slant”. Well, lets find out ifthe book meets these high expect-ations from the modern day fatherof pike fishing. Making statementsof fact as you see them can be thekiss of death for any pike angler butin the first pages John states thatbeing static on rivers is not the best

way to fish them and you need to be asmobile as possible to be successful. He alsostates that you will also get nothing unlessyou work hard at it. Nobody could arguewith this and in fact this philosophy is justas true when fishing all waters whether theyare fast moving rivers or lakes. His dedica-tion to the cause was rewarded by multiplecaptures of double-figure pike that would beunheard of today on the zander-riddenSevern and this must be attributed to hismobile and intensive fishing approach.

His stated river tally of six hundred doublesand fifty four twenties is in fact quiteremarkable. All during a ten year period andhe was a lucky man to have fishing like thatavailable to him. Although a member of thePAC he recognised that it was due to organ-isations like this that pike fishing wasbecoming more popular, and he himself wascrowded out of some stillwaters that hefished. This may not have been a bad thingfor him as he ventured upon TewkesburyWeir and the rest is history. Despite this,he never shirked from advertising both hiscaptures or where he caught them so thisfeeling of being pushed out may have beena self-fulfilling prophecy whereby he was avictim of his own success. It could be saidthat he contributed to his situation and hadno one else to blame. He is quick to high-light one factor that does separate river pikefrom their stillwater relatives and that istheir fighting ability and he makes an eerieobservation that you should think twiceabout taking up combat with river pike ifyou have a heart condition as they will“make the ticker miss a beat”. Unfortunatelyfor John this was not far from the truth!

Now to a section of the book that doesinterest me and that is pike location I decid-ed to read it a few times to take it all in.Initially I thought it would have been bettertitled ‘Location of River Pike at TewkesburyWeir’ as this theme does seem to repeatitself throughout the book, but to be fair tohim, that’s where most of his fish werecaught. I am sure his theories would trans-pose from one water to another. He evenmentions ‘Routes’ which are a particularfavourite of mine and his preference tonatural underwater refuges such as sunkentrees as opposed to backwaters and slacks isinteresting. His belief that pike are just athome in the main stream of a heavy flowingriver (albeit at varying depths) flies in theface of what I see happening on rivers that Ifish today where slacks are hammered andthe main river remains untouched.Something for everyone to think of there!

He finishes the chapter with the best advisethat can be given to any prospective riverpike angler and that is to concentrate in midwinter on the match stretches or areas whereshoal fish gather en-mass.

JohnRiver Piking by

SidleyChris Donovan

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62 Book cover scan by kind courtesy of Neville Fickling.

Other times I just sit back, let a fewdeadbaits soak, and recharge the batter-ies. I still love going pike fishing and getthat glow the night before. God, I hope Idon’t lose that! I’m so mad about pikethat I have even named one of thecompanies I work for after them! (PikeHousing Services). I’m always on thelookout for a ‘special’ water, and in factam fishing two such waters at present,as well as fishing better known fisherieslike Thorpe Park. So yes, the magic isstill alive for me.

I know that you have quite a highpowered and demanding job.How does that square with finding thetime to do all of the committee work aswell as finding a few hours to actuallypike fish?

Someone once said that the busier youare the easier it is to do more things.That’s what I find. As you say, I have ajob that requires a significant amount ofmy time, both at work and thinking, (andworrying!) about it outside of work.I’m lucky in as much as I have a lessdemanding workload than some of theother Committee members but, neverthe-less it does take up time and yes, often atthe expense of going fishing. I try to dothings when I can, often at some godfor-saken time of the morning, and it allseems to fit!

Apparently you have been involvedwith the likes of Les Webber andothers to promote fishing as a pastimefor youngsters and in particular thosethat need to find a new direction inlife. How did that come about andwhat is and has been your involvementwith teaching kids to fish? Have youfound it rewarding personally?

Les does not get the praise and recog-nition he deserves. I’ve been involvedwith Les’s work for a number of years,providing tuitions and lessons on pikefishing. I first got involved in the 1990’sthrough working with Ian Welch, onevents at Thorpe Park for PAC members,and have been involved off and on eversince. At best, for me, it’s a few days ayear. For Les it’s a full time commitmentand as I say I cannot praise him toohighly. Its great working with the kids,asthey often ask the questions you have notthought about and knowing, through Les,that the work Angling Projects does turns

a lot of them into lifetime anglers, awayfrom the many issues that causedproblems to their lives.

No doubt you have some ambitions yetto be realised in your pike fishing orhas catching a 35 plus dealt with muchof that? What did catching a fish ofthat magnitude mean to you?

My ambition is to catch the next pike,no matter what size. Yes, as you say Ihave been fortunate enough to catch avery big fish and I’d love to catch oneover the magic 40lb mark, but in allhonesty I’m more concerned about catch-ing the next one. In an earlier answer Imentioned I am on two waters which arenot pike fished, but have the potential todo big fish. My ambition is to catch a 20from each this year, If I do so, I will be ashappy as I was when catching the 35lber.

You would know as much as anybodyabout the running of our club. Is it ina healthy condition right now, what arethe major challenges to it and to pikefishing generally and as if that’s notenough do you believe that the PACcan make a tangible difference tothings or are we just a talking shopfor like minded people?

Wow, do you want a paragraph or athesis! The club is healthy and able todeal with the challenges it is likely toface. In no small way renewal of themajority of Committee members everyfew years helps this, as fresh minds andfresh ideas are constantly being broughtin. The real basis of your question is,I believe, what is the PAC and is it still fitfor purpose. I would answer yes, becauseI believe the club is here to influencethose who are involved in angling today,be they clubs, fishery owners, the anglingpress or the tackle trade. We can seemany examples of this. I am not suggest-ing we are successful in every case, farfrom it, but the very fact that we can anddo exert influence shows the importanceof the club.

With improved methods of communica-tion, in particular the PAC’s website andthe RO structure, information andfeedback are more readily available toenable swift responses. We will alwayshave the keyboard warriors telling ushow useless etc the club is, its just ashame they don’t expend the same

amount of energy doing somethingpositive for their fishing.

How far progressed is the obsessionwith things pike in you John? Are yousomebody that lives, sleeps and breath-es pike. Do you collect books on pikeand if so which are your favourites.Lastly what would you do if you didnot fish for pike, perish the thoughtbut with global warming we may needto make contingency arrangements!

Yes, I am still nuts about pike and pikefishing. As I said earlier I have evennamed one of the companies after myfavourite species. And, like you, I have atleast one copy of most pike bookspublished and am always looking onwebsites etc to see if I can add to mycollection. Whilst pike are my favouritespecies to fish for, at the moment I amalso enjoying fishing for catfish both inthe UK and in France and Spain. Godforbid if we lost piking I would probablyspend more time catting although I doalso have a passion for tarpon.

I know that you like to stay a bit inthe background and watch thingsdevelop sometimes only gettinginvolved say in website disputes whenyou absolutely have to. Is this percep-tion correct and if I may draw you justa little, what would your message beto the piking fraternity both PACmembers and not?

You are right, I rarely post on websites,although I often access them to see whatis happening. I don’t really know why Ido this, as you know I’m not a shrinkingviolet!, but on thinking about it so muchenergy seems to be expended windingeach other up it seems a puerile exercisewhich I don’t want to get involved in.Debate, particularly passionate debate, isgood, it’s fun and often helps the peopleinvolved sharpen up their argument.However, so much appears that is delib-erately and unnecessarily derogatory thatit defeats the argument that thoseinvolved are trying to put. My messageis a simple one; Whether we like it ornot pike are still misunderstood andpersecuted by many. By standing togetherwe can provide a better future for pikefishing than remaining as individuals.History teaches us that vocal minoritiesoften have the greatest influence, so letswork to achieve this.

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We were then offered Fox Pool, at a verylow rent, as it had been netted to removethe big carp. We thought this would be anideal way to establish the sanctuariesplus offer members some decent fishingat day ticket prices. The Committee werenever credited with the Hawkshead initia-tive and were accused of setting up foxpool for their own use! The fact that itwas 50 plus miles away from most of us,when the likes of Bough Beech reservoirwere a 15 minute drive away, seemed tohave been lost. Because of all the badpress created by this, the Committeeabandoned its plan to try to set upsimilar projects throughout the country.I’m sure people will still say it was thewrong thing to do but this Committee atleast tried to deal with the issue ofunwanted pike, a problem that still facesus today. I also served, as Treasurer, forthe first year of the 1994/97 Committee.

Lots of names come and go in pikingbut the likes of you and I seem to stickwith it. How do you motivate yourselfto stick with the sport especially whenthe going is hard? Are you somebodyto just go through the motions on thesame few waters or are you always onthe look out for new challenges andopportunities?

An interesting question Phil. In the 40odd years that I have been fishing, I haveexperienced many, many fantastic experi-ences. But my first love is piking. Why, Idon’t know. For me, now, fishing is therelease from a demanding job, my trueR&R. Its how I get my mind to rest.Sometimes, when I go, I’m almost hyper-active, changing baits, methods andswims almost too quickly.

Could you tell me about your involve-ment with various PAC committeesover the years? Also perhaps commenton any trends that you have noticedand maybe describe some of the highsand lows along the way.

I was a member of the committee thatserved between 1991 and 1994. Duringthat time I undertook the roles ofTreasurer, Membership Secretary andEvents Organiser, all at the same time!In addition, I wrote a column, on behalfof the PAC, for Anglers Mail and I organ-ised some junior events. This Committeesaw the highest ever PAC membership todate, a shade under 3000. It was duringthis time I came to realise how persecut-ed pike were. We, the Committee, seemedalways to be trying to convince someclub, or owner, not to kill pike. As withany PAC Committee, there wereinevitable highs and lows.

To this day I still get irritated when Ihear, or see, criticism of the work of theCommittees past and present. It’s athankless task, too many people haveideas but no desire to do the work to seethem through and there is often thesuggestion that Committee members aredoing things for their own benefit.A good example of this is when weopened Fox Pool. We wanted access, forPAC members, to decent pike fishing.We also recognised that we couldn’talways win the arguments with owners/clubs who wanted to remove pike, so wewanted to try to create ‘sanctuaries’where they could go as a last resort.The first fishery we managed to getaccess to was Hawkshead, in the Lakes,where we had a PAC boat.

John you have been on the PAC scenefor many years and to my knowledgedone a lot for the club as well as pikefishing itself so I decided that youwould make an ideal interviewee forthe Presidents Shield. I’ll start with astandard sort of kick-off question, howdid you first get interested in pike andpike fishing please?

I started fishing when I was 9. It was oddreally as my family lived in Bermondsey,central London, at that time and none ofthem had any interesting in fishing!Anyway, I managed to do a bit and wesubsequently moved to Abbey Wood, insouth east London, which was reasonablyclose to Dartford Lakes. Typical of a boy,interested in fishing, I was fishingwhenever I could. When I was 12 myfriend and I decided we would like tocatch pike. We had, as almost everyonedoes, experienced a number of roach etctaken by pike when reeling them in sothought it was about time we caught one.

We fished a then well known part of thelake at Dartford, slaughterhouse bay.We caught some livebaits in a small pondin the slaughterhouse itself, they werevery easy to catch there, and by about10am had 2 livelies out, under gazettebungs! We were using our ‘normal’coarse rods, but less the top section assomehow we though this would give usstronger rods! My first pike came withinabout an hour. It was about 3-4 lb but tomy friend and I it seemed enormous.

We had looked at books in the library,particularly Mr Crabtree!, so roughlyknew how to unhook them. Unfortunately,then, gags were in common use and Iremember even then thinking it wasn’tright. Anyway, that pike laying on thegrass, looking at me in only the way pikedo, got me hooked on pike fishing.

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“By standing together we can provide a better futurefor pike fishing than remaining as individuals.”AWARD

ThePresident’sShield

John Synnuck

6564 For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the exclusive PAC forum: websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/pacgb

‘PAC’s backstop voiceof reason and still amad keen piker’

S P R I NG 2 0 0 9 NOM I N E E

Visit Angling Trust’s website at: anglingtrust.net

• Commerce and industry would start to appreciate the impor-tance of angling to their well being. Significant sponsorshipof international teams could be introduced from outside angling,bringing money and TV to the sport and encouraging moreyoungsters to take it up

• Angling Trust could buy waters at risk and lease them to anglingclubs, assuring access to them for generations to come

• Angling Trust could persuade Sport England that angling really isa significant sport and valuable to the health of the nation bringingmore medals home than any other sport in England and worthinvesting serious money in

• Politicians and administrators would think twice about legislationwhich might interfere with such a significant part of the population

• Angling Trust could persuade British Waterways to improve thetowpaths and access to canals, the fish stocks and water qualityand to take an active role in angling development

• The Environment Agency might be persuaded to carry out theirstatutory duty to consult on fishery matters at local level. AnglingTrust could become the licensing authority, generating millions forangling and development, and commissioning fisheries workssuited to the needs of AT members and the wider environment

• Angling Trust could develop and run a whole series of matchesfor different groups of anglers in all sectors of the sport on all sortsof venues to give you the angling experience you want.

• Angling Trust could get a ban on imported live fish to stop theintroduction of disease

• Angling Trust would be seen as a key partner in conservationwork and more funding for fisheries would result

• Angling could finally attain its rightful place in England with afishing rod in every home, every child with access to water andschools using angling creatively to encourage and involve childrenin education. The world would be our oyster and angling, anglersand our fisheries would benefit

Will you join to support this dream? Don’t think about it, do itnow, send your cheque or join on line using your credit card at:anglingtrust.net

See you in the twenty first century.Mike Heylin, Secretary SAA.

SAA is no more; Angling Trust springs to life.As of January 5, 2009 Angling Trust became the singleorganisation to represent anglers and angling in England, whenSAA, NAFAC, ACA, NFA and NFSA all merged into Angling Trustand ceased to exist as individual bodies. Specialist anglers willcontinue to have a voice through the Specialist Angling AdvisoryCommittee of Angling Trust and PAC will have a seat at that tableso the specific interests of pike anglers will continue to berepresented at a national level.

Angling Trust is not like previous attempts at forming a single bodyfor angling, it is a membership organisation designed for and runby and for individual anglers. Clubs and associations may join butnot in a representative style but as members in their own interest toget the benefits of insurance cover for their executives and officersetc. Individual anglers will have the loudest voice and to ensurethat pike anglers maintain the strong representation we haveenjoyed in the past it is vital that PAC members join as individualmembers of Angling Trust. As an individual member you will get£5million public liability insurance for all your angling activity,regular newsletters and updates on what Angling Trust iscampaigning for and where it is succeeding, an interactive website,eligibility to fish AT competitions and membership of the Fish ForFree loyalty programme. All this for only £20 a year.

Angling and fisheries are under increasing pressure from otherusers of the countryside, European and national legislation,demands from conservationists and the ever present animal rightsmovement. £20 a year will help protect your sport and ensure thatyour children and their children can continue to use a rod and lineto catch fish long after you are gone. You can join on line atwww.anglingtrust.net. Do it now for the future of your children’ssport. When anglers join Angling Trust in numbers it will be able todo things we could only previously dream of; with a million anglersin membership, Angling Trust would have the ear of government.No other single interest group is as big as angling yet AT needs themembership numbers to show government and politicians just howimportant the fisheries environment is to the health of the nation ingeneral and to the countryside and anglers in particular.

With a million anglers in membership, Angling Trust would get:• Delivery of better management of our marine environment,more stocks of fish for recreational anglers, the Golden Mile,access to Marine Protection Zones, a ban on gill nets, a ban ondisruptive bottom fishing methods. If all that failed we could buyout the licenses that continue to allow the rape of our seas underthe common fishery policy

66 For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com 67

SpecialistAnglers’AllianceBulletin.............................................................................................

Cotswold RA46Malcolm Yates, The Old Post House, Salperton,Northleach, Gloucestershire GL54 4EE.Tel: 01451 850659.

EAST MIDLANDSLiaison OfficerPete Haywood, 20 Carisbrooke Avenue, Gedling,Notts, NG4 2RD. Tel: 01159 615958.

Nottinghamshire RA26 (Caretaker RO’s)Pete Haywood, 20 Carisbrooke Avenue, Gedling,Notts, NG4 2RD. Tel: 01159 615958. Phil Kirk,8 Edge Hill Court, Long Eaton, NottinghamNG10 1PQ. Tel: 01159 731347.

Leicester RA67 Soar Valley RA80 (Both vacant)

Burton-on-Trent RA49Gary Edwards, Honey Cottage, Hatton Fields,Sutton Lane, Hilton, Derbyshire DE65 5GQ.Tel: 07896778546.Email: gary@garyedwards.orangehome.co.uk

Amber Valley RA84David Holmes, 33 Thurston Avenue, Somercoats,Derbyshire DE55 4JP. Tel: 01773 603607.Assistant RO: John Milford,Email: John.Milford@drakauk.com

ANGLIANLiaison OfficersDenis Moules, 32 Fairhaven Close, Lode, Cambs.CB5 9HG. E-mail: moules@btinternet.comDave Batten, 14 Mill Lane, Carbrooke,Thetford, Norfolk IP25 6TD.

Cambridge RA2Andrew Blazey, 3 Mason Gardens, West Row,Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk IP28 8PH.Tel/Fax: 01638 717128. Mob: 07770 970946.Email: andrew.blazey@primeag.co.ukJoint RO: Richard Wesley, 15 Holland Park,Cheveley, Newmarket, Suffolk CB8 9DL.Tel: 07812 161955.Email: Richard.Wesley@incadigital.com

Suffolk RA8Colin Hall, 2 Rymer Point Cottages, Barnham,Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PN. Tel: 01842 890652.

Herts/Chiltern RA16John Lawrie, 12 Mallard Walk, Biggleswade,Beds. SG18 8DY. Tel: 07894 561348.Email: lawrie1@ntlworld.comJoint RO: Dave Thompson. Mob: 0703390045.

Kings Lynn and West Norfolk RA72Chris Bishop, Tel: 07789 592834.Email: chris_bishop1@hotmail.comJoint RO: Steve Rodwell, 10 Methwold Road,Methwold Hythe, Thetford, Norfolk IP26 4QH.

Restarted: Norwich RA33John Currie, Lodge Farm, Halesworth Road,Ilketshall St.Lawrence, Beccles, Suffolk NR34 8NJ.Mob: 07776221959. E-mail: jcurrie@ymail.comJoint RO: Steve Roberts, Comfrey Cottage,2 Low Common, Swardeston Norwich NR14 8LG.Mob: 07950292933.

6968

Ely/Fenland RA32 Fenland/Lincs. RA45(Both Vacant)

Corby RA91David McLachlan, 15 Jubilee Close, Islip,Kettering NN14 3DU.

Lincoln RA48Mark Winterton, 53 Silver Street, Bardney,Lincs. LN3 5XG. Tel: 01526 397174.Email: thewaits@btinternet.com

THAMESLiaison OfficerPhil Wakeford, 17 Ramsbury Drive, Earley,Reading, Berks RG6 7RT.

Reading RA14Lyndon Barrett, 15 Adam Close, Baughurst,RG26 5HG. Tel 07880783976.Email: Mandylyndon@tiscali.co.uk Joint RO:Peter Wardle, 65a Kings Road, Caversham,Reading, Berkshire RG4 8DS. Tel: 07876 503569.Email: petersrgi@hotmail.com

Walton on Thames RA15Dave Fish, 63 Ashurst Drive, Shepperton,Middlesex TW17 0JH. Tel: 01932 562929.Email: dave.fish@waltonpac.org.uk

Swindon RA34 Guildford RA51North Essex RA102 (All vacant)

Lea Valley RA85Caretaker RO: Dave Horton, 88 Berecroft, Harlow,Essex CM18 7SD.

Tring and District RA101Brad Sinfiend, 89 Kingsley Walk, Tring, Herts.HP23 5DR. Tel: 07879 070167.

SOUTHLiaison OfficerMark Skinner, 41Brook Street, Polegate,E Sussex BN26 6BH. Tel: 0771 754993.Email:south.lo@pacgb.co.uk

Restarting: West Sussex RA11 Details TBA.

Canterbury/Thanet RA30/60John Roberts, 102 Minster Road,Westgate-on-Sea, Kent CT8 8DG.

Southampton RA39Lewis McCall, 264 Warsash Road, WarsashSO31 9NZ. Tel: 01489 575077.Email: esox9@btinternet.com

Medway RA59 (Vacant)

East Sussex RA70Gary Hodd, 14 Smith Close, Ninfield, E. SussexTN33 9RB. Mob: 07734 045233.Email: garyregion70@aol.comJoint RO: Jon Cook, 17 Swale Close, Stone Cross,Pevensey BN24 5GY. Tel: 01323 743736.Email: jonregion70@aol.comWeb: sussex-pac.co.uk

NORTH EASTLiaison OfficerRobert Murray, 33 Greenlaw, West Denton,Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE5 5DD.Email: northeast.lo@pacgb.co.ukWebsite: pacgb-northeast.co.uk

Teesside and Darlington RA21/89Craig Patterson Tel: 07984 164746.13 Castlefields, Bournmoor, County DurhamDH4 6HH. E: peter@patterson5177.fsnet.co.uk

South East Northumberland RA24Mike Bell, ‘Stonepykes’, 2 Holystone Drive,Holystone, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE27 0DH.Email: pikeymikeyatra24@blueyonder.co.ukJoint RO: Neil Baker, 2 East View, Burnopfield,Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE16 6HP.Email: neillyn.luke@virgin.net

Tyneside RA86Geoff Clarkson, 17 Monks Crescent, DurhamDH1 1HD. Tel: 07872 188658.Email: geoff007@tesco.netAssistant RO: Dave Mitchell, 13 Cauldwell Villas,South Shields, Tyne and Wear NE34 0RZ.Tel: 01914 235188. Website: pikergrove.co.uk

YORKSHIRELiaison OfficerBrian Birdsall, 3 Hough End Crescent, Bramley,Leeds, W Yorks. LS13 4RU. Tel: 01132 298789.Email: brian.birdsall@ntlworld.com

Restarted: Selby RA40Mark Green, Oakland Waters, Gowdall Road,Gowdall, Goole, E Yorks. DN14 0AP.Mob: 07960118685.Email: markpike73@googlemail.com

Halifax RA47 Keighley RA79 (Both Vacant)

East Yorkshire RA42Ady Brayshaw, 11 Hall Walk, Walkington,Beverley, E Yorks.

Ripon RA50Bill Winship, 7 Knox Chase, Harrogate,N Yorks. HG1 3HZ. E-mail:bill@pacp.fsnet.co.uk

Restarted: Leeds & Bradford RA66/44Andrew Brown, 37 Coppicewood Avenue,Guiseley, Leeds LS20 9JP. Tel: 01943 871765.Email andyjanebrown@aol.co.uk

Doncaster RA78Jeff Squires, 147 High Street, Dunsville,Doncaster, S Yorks. DN7 4BT.Email: esoxjeff@talktalk.net

Wakefield RA96Peter S Green, 17 Lincoln Street, Wakefield,W Yorks. WF2 0EB. Tel: 01924 782705.Email: psgreen@blueyonder.co.ukRoad, Ossett, W Yorks. WF5 8BA.

Restarted: Hull RA95Tony Derrick. Poplar House Farm, Church Lane,Skirlaugh, Hull HU11 5EU. Tel: 01954 563645.Mob: 07976965756. Email: tony@skirlaugh.co.ukWeb Blog: hullpac.blogspot.com

For the latest news visit: pacnews.blogspot.com Visit the regions: pacgb.co.uk/regions/index.htm

Huddersfield RA100Craig Beverley, 93 Knowle Road, Golcar,Huddersfield HD7 4AN. Tel: 07815 785726.

Rotherham and Sheffield RA99Philip Heaton, 4 Straight Lane, Goldthorpe,Rotherham, S Yorks. Tel: 01709 888996.Email: rotherhampac@yahoo.co.uk

NEW: Aire Valley RA104Brian Birdsall, 3 Hough End Crescent, Bramley,Leeds, W Yorks. LS13 4RU. Tel: 01132 298789.Email: brian.birdsall@ntlworld.com Joint RO:Jim Taylor, 4 Trent Road, Redcar TS10 1NN.Tel: 01642 472636. Email: jimataylor@google.com

NORTHWESTLiaison OfficerMark Johnson, 6 Chestnut Road, Market Drayton,Shropshire TF9 1LY. Tel: 07817 419286.Email: mark-cheshirepiker@fsmail.net

Blackpool RA17 Restarting details TBA.

Cheshire RA9Andy Bates, 4 The Close, Northwich, Cheshire,CW8 1JX.Tel: 01606 871066. Mob: 07834999129.Email: andybates7@sky.com

Preston RA6 Manchester RA65Newton-le-Willows RA73 Colne RA82Southport RA103 (All Vacant)

North Lake District RA5Tommy Thompson, 32 Clifton Lodge,Great Clifton, Workington, CumbriaCA14 1UR. Tel: 01900 602253.

Glossop RA88Andy (Kosh) Kershaw, 18 Meadowfield, Hadfield,Glossop, Derbyshire SK13 2BL.Tel: 0797 6797158.Email: pike4kosh-22@zen.co.uk

South Lancashire RA31Jon Neafcy, 30 Greenbank, Abram, Wigan, Lancs.WN2 5XU. Email: roregion31@blueyonder.co.uk

WESTMIDLANDSLiaison OfficerSteve Bown, 32 Saxonwood Road, CheswickGreen, Shirley, Solihull, West Mids. B90 4JN.Email: solihullpac@hotmail.com

Birmingham RA1Robert Tonks, 5 Barford Close, Sutton Coldfield,West Midlands B762UL.

Dudley RA3John Tate, 12 Cherry Orchard Avenue,Halesowen, W Midlands B63 3RY.

Shakespeare RA20Steve Bown, 32 Saxonwood Road, CheswickGreen, Shirley, Solihull, West Mids. B90 4JN.Email: ra20shakespeare@btinternet.comWebsite: pac20shakespeare.blogspot.com

Walsall RA37 Gloucester RA41(Both Vacant)

Thames Gateway RA19Steve Gould, 52 Coptefield Drive, Belvedere, KentDA17 5RL. Email: Esoxlucius1964@aol.comWebsite: pacregion19@aol.comthamesgatewaypac.blogspot.com/

SOUTHWESTLiaison OfficerPete Austin, 1 The Myrtles, North End, Creech St.Michaels, Taunton, Somerset TA3 5AD.Tel: 01823 444116. Email:Levelspiker@aol.com

Somerset Levels RA12Pete Austin, 1 The Myrtles, North End, Creech St.Michaels, Taunton, Somerset TA3 5AD.Tel: 01823 444116. Email:Levelspiker@aol.comJoint RO: Mick Saunders,113 Hamilton Road,Taunton, Somerset,TA12EP. E: Pikemad@aol.com

Bristol RA25Martyn Cattermole, Wentworth, 53 South ViewCrescent, Coalpit Heath, Bristol BS36 2LR.Mob: 07785946266.Email: martyn.cattermole@googlemail.com

Devon RA13 Plymouth RA36W. Cornwall RA81 (All vacant)

SOUTHWEST SCOTLANDLiaison OfficerScott Davidson, 7 Old Glasgow Road, Kilwinning,Ayrshire KA13 7QJ. Tel: 01294 542843.Mobile: 07886 435139.Email: ayrshirepikeangler@hotmail.co.uk

Ayrshire RA52Scott Davidson, 7 Old Glasgow Road, Kilwinning,Ayrshire KA13 7QJ. Tel: 01294 542843.Mobile: 07886 435139.Email: ayrshirepikeangler@hotmail.co.ukJoint RO: Dave Morris, 7 Trabboch Avenue,Drongan, Ayrshire KA6 7DR. Tel: 07960 368053.email: davemorris62@aol.com

Castle Douglas & Kirkcudbright RA61 (Vacant)

Newton Stewart RA57Duncan Vincent, Galloway Angling Centre,87 Queen Street, Newton Stewart DG8 6JR.

CENTRAL SCOTLANDLiaison OfficerJohn Oliver, Flat 1 Left, 91 Fotheringay Road,Pollockshields, Glasgow G41 4LH.Tel: 07764 635206.

Clydebank RA58Jonathan Sykes, 3 Watt Place, Milngavie,Glasgow G62 7LQ. Tel: 0141 9567742.Email: ycfcpike@hotmail.com

North Lanarkshire RA93Sandy Mackie, 2 Raeburn Walk, Bellshill,North Lanarkshire, Scotland ML4 1ILH.Tel: 0771 7175353.Email:sandymackie@blueyonder.co.uk

PACRegionalAssociationsAnd LiaisonOfficers-RegionalOrganisers...............................................................................................................................................

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NORTHERN SCOTLANDLiaison OfficersRab Hay, 15 Elizabeth Street, Nairn. Tel: 01667456506. Mob: 07766 439860.Email: helenandrab@talktalk.netJoint LO: Micky Jones, 17 Miller Street, InvernessIV2 3ND. Tel: 01463 712591.Email:esoxness@hotmail.co.uk

Inverness RA74 (Highlands RA54 Elgin RA75)Rab Hay, 15 Elizabeth Street, Nairn. Tel: 01667456506. Mob: 07766 439860.Email: helenandrab@talktalk.netJoint RO: Micky Jones, 17 Miller Street, InvernessIV2 3ND. Tel: 01463 712591.Email:esoxness@hotmail.co.uk

Aberdeen RA76Jim Horsburgh, 66 Harlaw Road, Inveruie,Aberdeenshire AB51 4TB. Tel: 01467 622381.

WALESLiaison Officer (Vacant)North Wales South Wales RA10 (Vacant)

NORTHERN IRELANDLiaison OfficerGeorge Higgins, 201 Lower Braniel Road,Belfast BT5 7NP.

Northern Ireland RA43 (Vacant)

NEW: Northern Ireland (South) RA111Robbie Marsh, 21 Springdale Cresent, Kilkeel,BT34 4XY. Mob: 07727044623.Email: marshpike@aol.comWebsite: pikemania.co.uk/home.html

PAC Affiliate OrganisationsIrish Pike Society (IPS)Contact: Ian Forde, No.4 Effernoc Manor, Trim,County Meath, S Ireland. Web: irishpikesociety.com

Angling TrustContact: Mike Heylin, 41 Crofts Path, HemelHempstead HP3 8HB. Web: anglingtrust.net

Pike Flyfishing Association (PFFA)Chairman: Peter Jones, 28 Crown Avenue,Holbeach St. Marks, Spalding, Lincs. PE12 8EU.Email: pffachairman@btinternet.com Web: pffa.co.uk

Pike Anglers Alliance for Scotland (PAAS)General Secretary: Joe Toner.Email: gensec@esoxecosse.comWeb: esoxecosse.com

Note: Will all RO’s and LO’s please check theirdetails with care. Any alterations please contactSteve Ormrod asap at: predhunter.o@virgin.netIf any RO’s want to advertise their meetingsevents on the PAC website regional events page,contact Dave Lumb at: webmaster@pacgb.com

What’sHappeningAtYourPACRegion?Send your reports to Neville Fickling at:thetackleshop@btconnect.comPL124 deadline for submissions: Mar. 27th 2009.