Pike Trip to the Tardebigge Reservoir January 13th 2012 Having not fished much over the past few months, an opportunity arose to go Pike fishing with my work colleague Simon Morris to the Tardebigge Reservoir on Friday 13th (unlucky for some but hopefully not for me!). Having dusted off the Pike gear the night before, we came to work to grab some more essentials for our session and headed off just after 10am. Upon arrival I was greeted by a clear blue sky, stunning vi...

Chew Piking Once Again It was again the time of the year for the Chew Pike trials and after a very kind offer from a good friend Dean Fletcher I was once again on my way to Bristol full of anticipation and excitement. All the way in the car I was worrying about whether we would get the spot we wanted. I had fished one area previously and thought it had the potential to produce some of the bigger fish and once I had discussed this with Dean luckily he agreed.  I pulled thr...

After we had spent a few more days on the beach, recovering from our white knuckle safari, we had a half day booked with Steve to try to get Heather her first GT or Sailfish, so she was to stay in the seat until she had caught one or the other! Heather was struggling to stir from slumber when the alarm went off at 5 am, due in the main to her reluctance to part with a bottle of Rum, from which she was fuelling the most sinister Rum Punches in creation. I was far more sensi...

The period from mid January through until late March sees some of the best wreck fishing for pollack here in the UK with fish in excess of 20lbs possible. However this year also sees the added possibility of some very big cod being caught from the same wrecks with fish above 20lbs, and possibly even 30lbs achievable if you fish specifically for them. Also working in our favour this time is that the constant high winds throughout November and December mean that little offsh...

    As the longed-for Marlin appeared to be still largely absent from our fishing grounds, we decided to make the most of the huge variety of species available to target in this area of theIndian Ocean. So, we set off on our third fishing trip of our holiday with our sights now set firmly on doing some bait fishing for Red Snapper and Grouper, and maybe if things turned out well, for a big Tiger shark in the afternoon! This bait fishing sounded like ...

Just gotback from a quick weekend fishing at Fishabil Lake in France, Its very rare I go fishing in France for a short time but I had a good reason for this trip; as last month I received a text from Raphael who owns the lake telling me that hehas just changed the fishing manager from Starmer baits to a new one. So I decided to go across to have a look and help out with any work that neededdoing and of course get my rods out! The best thing about living in Cornwall is the fer...

Last Saturday was the awards night for the Shakespeare Oracle XT Severn salmon competition. The prizes were for the largest salmon caught and released from the Severn in 2011 and for the largest fish caught and released on the fly. The winner of the largest salmon prize was John Love with a fish of 29lbs 8ozs caught on a flying C. The fish was just one of five over 20lb caught and released by John this season. Here John receives his Oracle XT 15 fast action salmon fl...

I’m often asked exactly which mono line I use for fishing, but I can’t answer that specifically as I tend to choose different line for different types of fishing. In short, for me, there is no perfect all round line that covers every eventuality. That said some come close! When using mono on both shore and boat reels, I look for limited stretch, high knot strength, but a line that recovers quickly when pulling hard on big fish that suddenly turns direction creating partial...

Chris Povey from Pure Fishing recently got chance to spen a day on the water with the chaps from Veal Fishing Tackle Store. Here is his brief summing up of the day..... Hi Grant, The Veals fishing trip was very successful last Sunday. The bites were coming so fast that we had to wind in to have a sandwich, which is something I’ve never had to do on a boat before! The skipper of the boat, Dave Roberts’ who is regarded by most as the best in the U.K was a perfect host. W...

I recently received this short mail from an avid Shakespeare angler Martin Steggall....A double figure barbel is a superb fish and one of 14lb plus from the Thames is a fish of a lifetime . Our congratulations to Martin and a big thank you for choosing Shakespeare tackle. Please find attached photos of a 14lb 3oz barbel I caught in the River Thames earlier this year on an 11ft Shakespeare Xcede quivertip rod (rod now sadly deceased, I stupidly trod on it whilst play...