Andy Spreadbury's Fishing Blog

Friday, 16th. November Preparations for the next session I’d already started to think about what I might do for the next session at the end of the last one. A plough through my diaries (which go back to 1978!) reminded me of several stories which had valuable lessons learnt and which I had completely forgotten about. There were two in particular which guide my thoughts now: Back in the mists of time when dinosaurs roamed the earth (1986 to be precise) I was fishing Bysing Wood, Faversham where I had done extremely well, catching over a hundred fish in a season (and in one memorable year, nearly twice that number). In those days, a twenty-pound fish was a real result and were few and far between in any twelve month period. It was a heavily fished water then and had seen some of the best anglers this country has ever produced - Fred Wilton (developing his HNV baits), Gerry Savage, Bob Morris (who became the first angler to officially record a hundred ‘doubles’ in one seas...

Notes from my Diary:......... Thursday, 8th.November Giving some thought to feature-finding and I think there is a definite technique to it on The Back Lake. I don’t think the technique will work in all situations because it is dependent on the sharply variable shape of the bottom - in this case, the very steeply rising ‘humps’ which are characteristic of the ‘eggbox’ my pals described. Because the bottom rises so sharply (and then goes down again) it is possible to feel these humps when drawing the lead back (whether it be marker or rig lead). This is the familiar ‘jaggedy-jag’ you get on the rod-tip, or as ’T’ calls them “the knobbly-bits”. We reckoned that the hump was at 7 wraps; this was determined by over-casting a random distance, gradually drawing back and ‘feeling’ the bottom until there was a ‘jaggedy-jag’ on the rod-tip. This indicated the beginning of the slope; popping the marker float up we found about nine feet so this meant the hump was three feet shal...

Monday, 28th.October I got a call from an old friend - ’T’ who had been reading the Blog. “I see you’re fishing The Back Lake. How’re you getting on?” I explained that I’d only just started fishing it but I could do with a little help. ’T’ offered the advice that the bottom contours were basically an ‘egg box’ and that he had done well by concentrating on the shallow areas in open water quoting eight feet as the sort of depth I should be looking for. Moreover, he gave me the location of a spot in the very swim I had fished. My baits had been no-where near it. Resolved to try and find it next time I fished it. Wednesday, 31st.October ‘M’ called last night - he’d also seen the Blog and asked how I was getting on. As I said in my writings, my confidence is pretty low at the moment and I’d appreciate any tips on fishing the place. ‘M’ more or less confirmed what ’T’ had said, describing the undulating nature of the bottom and suggesting the ‘shelves’ were the best places to ...