Leaderboard

Heading over the channel for the first time in a couple of months. A group of us are going for a mates 50 th , we had to change the venue from the original one booked, But I think to a man we are all more than happy where we've ended up . With the whole lake booked an only ten of us fishing , there will be plenty of opportunity to move or head off stalking etc . Really need to start thinking about getting bait sorted etc as it will soon be August.

WOW!!! wot an ugly beard,, GET IT OFF. the little ladies is much neater

Will do mate 😎

That looks epic! Will we have the pleasure of a write up (on the fishing) after your trip?

Read Yonnys advice! Essential part of my kit! Tripods are 1000’s times better than a bank stick. I use up to 3 external flashes but only for really special fish. I am generally happy with one external mounted on the camera. The in built will also be ok

!6th-23rd June. Rushes Lake, Vire en Champgne, Sarthe. 13 days and counting...……... Ian

If you zoomed out the top section will be in shot ... Look at the state of that brickwork shocking ...

Some years ago I took the notion that I would like to catch a truly wild trout on the fly, but not just any trout. I wanted to catch one of the big fish eating trout that are often called Ferox. One wind swept day at the end of March found me in a large traditionally clinker built boat slowly meandering around a huge sheet of Inland water with its multitude of islands. When I say huge I mean huge by UK standards, 25 miles long and some ten miles wide is big by anyones standard. On one side of the boat there was a downrigger, set to troll a fish bait at great depth, but it was only there as a teaser to try and get the fish interested and never meant to catch the fish. My fishing gear was used on the opposite side of the boat, this consisted of a very large and heavy brass tube fly, some 3inch long dressed in black, yellow and silver sporting a rather large treble hook, attached to my 10ft nylon leader , a 30 yard weight forward 12 weight ultrafast sink line and 150 yards of backing line filled my reel, a 16' double handed Salmon fly rod completed to outfit and it was gear I was very used to using, however I normal used it for casting on some great Salmon rivers. This time I was simply casting the fly out behind the boat and pulling the backing of the reel as fast as I could allowing the whole lot to sink into the depths, some 90-130 feet down and when it touched down I reeled in some ten feet of backing before gently working the fly sink and draw. Every now and then I would let line out to check the depth or reel in some to shallow up, strange how ones heart would skip a beat every time it touched bottom! We had been at this for some 4 hours, all the time getting soaked by the constant waves crashing over the side of the boat, when the down rigger released, I franticly worked the fly to no avail, that was the total excitement that day, some would say I should have had hooks in the bait!. Dawn the following day saw us on the loch in the boat again on a rolling 3ft wave with perfect overcast and very cold conditions.' Fishing in 30-40 ft of water produced 2 small jack pike, so after lunch we moved back into deeper water. At 2.30pm I was watching the fish finder/ depth sounder when I could clearly see a fish come up ten feet or so and start moving back and fourth at the back of the trolled fish, it was clearly a big fish and I worked my fly with a little more effort whilst still watching the sounder. The fish vanished of the screen for a minute or so and then it happened, the line simply felt different, I lifted hard and there was a resistance like a wet rag, I started hand lining to get the rag in the boat, about half way up the rag woke up and took all my gained line back, that was its only good run, it was then simply a matter of getting it back 130+feet . The fish was slid over the net and its beauty was there for me to behold in-between its mad slapping about and to realise a dream, a double figure wild brown on the fly, it was just over 10lbs and was slipped back carefully to hopefully live the rest of its life in piece. The memory of that trout and the 3 that followed will live with me to my dying day, no more or less than any other of my red letter captures over the years, captures that make life truly worth living.

heres a quick bit of relevant trivia for ya, the largest UK loch caught pike ever recorded was weighed in at 77lb and measured 7ft long and although this is almost double the current record (T Morgan in 1947 lomond) of 47lb 11oz it was never declared as such, well not in 1777 anyway just shows, if they were there then what class of fish could be hiding in the loch's now.