Features

We're all aware of those rare individuals who have an affinity with dogs and horses but I knew a fella who had an uncanny understanding of chub.

Simon Pettit had never lived up to the mild, thoughtful persona one might expect from one so named: 'Simon' had religious connotations while 'Pettit' was suggestive of shyness and diffidence, of a self-effacing individual at home with a reference book, a mug of tea and a chocolate hob-nob.

The heaviest carp I have caught to date went 27lb 6oz and was taken with enormous satisfaction on the simplest rig. We all will have seen various versions of what is shown and described here but, as far as I'm aware, it's never been popularized pictorially or in print. Certainly, I was very pleased with what I saw as my originality at the time.

Or I should say 'art in angling'

As a kid with the fishing bug I read an article about an angler in a far off place catching tarpon. I dared to dream and promised myself that one day I would catch one. It became a lifelong ambition that never left me. When I was much older, and having caught the Florida holiday bug, I thought I might just have a chance...

  Simms Fishing Products, the country’s only domestic wader manufacturer, shows the secret of making the best waders in the world. Simms recently released this...

Graham Elliott's excellent article 'Camping for Tench' rekindled my south-easterner's urge to get back onto a nice big pit with deep clear water and lots of luxuriant, bright-green weed! Such a water filled my eyes, my soul and my days for 17 years, a water many will know as Johnson's Lakes in New Hythe, Kent.

It feels like my feet have barely touched the ground since returning from my Australian trip in April. Once I had ploughed through the inevitable backlog of emails and got my diary into some sort of order in was clear that I was going to be on the road a fair bit over the next couple of months.

Well, the day was finally here. I had bid on a 48 hour session in deepest Kent to try and catch a monster tench.

I can barely believe it myself but I'm old enough to have witnessed the evolution of the electric bite alarm, though I came onto the scene shortly after the commercial production of Richard Walker's famous 'Heron'. As a kid, the very sight of this piece of fishing-wizardry - safely encased within a glass cabinet in my local tackle store - would have me near-salivating in anticipation of owning one when I got older and, hopefully, richer - they weren't cheap for a lad dependent on pocket-money.