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Martin James award-winning fisherman consultant,broadcaster,writer





  

09/11/2020 - A Good Mixed Bag

 

Today was a day made for angling, it’s what we called A roach fishers day” in the 50’s we would take a light meter reading, if we got a reading with Ilford FP 4 film at 125 ASA of F11 or better still F8 then the light level was ideal for roach fishing, today there was thick cloud, with no wind and very mild. The time was around 0800 hrs the river Ribble was flowing low and clear with no leaves to cause a problem , on checking the water temperature I got a reading of 50 degrees F, which was very pleasing.

I had with me two red gentles, a pint of hemp and some brown crumb. The first job was to make up a bowl of ground bait which consisted of brown crumb packed with hemp, fifteen minutes later I felt the mix was just right for my requirements. With chair and bag over my shoulder, my Efgeeco bucket given to me by my friend Paul Elliott to replace my old one that was of no more use, containing my bowl of ground bait, a box of corn and gentles in one hand, my landing net rod rest and rod in the other hand.

I headed off to the bottom of the beat where a side stream flowed in.I used my Abbey 12 foot match rod with my 1939 aerial made for me by Leszek, what an excellent piece of engineering it is, I chose one of Russ Shaws balsa float taking 4AAA shot and 1 BB shot, I caught grayling and chub both averaging around the pound mark, also lots of dace around 8 ounces, I even had a roach, the first I have seen on this stretch for over 30 years, which is encouraging. I probably ended up with around 30 lbs of fish, but that is guesswork.

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Martin James Fishing
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