Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

Freshwater Fishing

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over several years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. As you see I also add the odd piece from my friends and correspondents if I've not been doing much. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff).

Seatrout , perch and mullet.

The rivers are fining down nicely after the recent heavy rain so I thought I'd have an hour's spinning for seatrout yesterday evening. I began at the downstream end of the stretch and fished a No 4, silver Mepps. The reason I'm not fishing my usual little Rapala is that there is more weed growth than in recent years. This means that the only way to manage any decent length of retrieve is to cast upstream and wind back down. If I do this the Mepps not only pushes the weed away but it tends to slide between the streamers rather than catching up on them. Of course it's necessary to wind quite quickly so that the blade will spin and the lure stays off the river bed but this isn't a problem as any chasing fish is also going with the current. These days with the use of braid (I'm using Nanofil at the moment) there's no 'line twist' problem even fishing with a fast spinning lure.

It started off pretty slowly and I had no bites for perhaps ten minutes then I saw a boil close in under my bank. I cast straight up along the bank and for once, despite the strong breeze, avoided my line catching on bankside vegetation. About half-way back I felt a pluck and found myself attached to a small, wriggling fish which turned out to be a perch. I'm sure it wasn't the fish which had made the disturbance but I took its picture and returned it before making the same cast again. This time I had a stronger pull but missed it - perhaps it was the fish I'd seen? I plodded on upstream and for another fifteen minutes but there was no further sign of life other than a group of sika deer which galloped away through the nettles. I was beginning to think that it might be 'one of those sessions' when I had a good bite and after a bit of a struggle landed a decent seatrout of about three pounds. Phew! It's always a relief to get a fish, particularly when it's been a bit on the slow side.

To cut a long story short I landed three more trout/seatrout in the next half hour. Two of them were in the three quarter pound-one pound class and one was tiny. Anyway, despite not catching any monster fish it was a very pleasant session and perhaps the perch bodes well for the opening of the coarse fishing season in mid-June. In the course of fishing I also had a number of follows (but not takes) from thinlipped mullet so I must get hold of a few ragworms and dig out my 'baited spinners'.

If you have any comments or questions about fish, methods, tactics or 'what have you!' get in touch with me by sending an E-MAIL to - docladle@hotmail.com

The little perch didn't mind a big spinner.

The best of my seatrout, a fine plump fish.

A smaller trout.

...and another.