Andy Spreadbury's Fishing Blog

* Lockdown * ‘Carp Puddles’ - Cash Cows or Legitimate Carp Venues? Like everybody else at the moment I am prevented from going fishing so I’m having to amuse myself with digging the garden, trips to the supermarket, and watching day-time ‘telly. I’ve also been forward planning however and I’m putting in place various tackle replacements and new rigs ready to go when the time arrives when I can finally get out and give it a go. One of the other things I’ve been looking at is new venues. I used to fish in France two or three times a year although latterly this has been reduced to an annual trip and for the past three or four years, not at all. I’m getting very long in the tooth these days and prefer the security of homeland fishing rather than the riskier fishing abroad. Car breakdowns, accidents, and tackle losses are just a few of the potential horrors that can happen abroad and my fear of something occurring has sometimes outweighed the pleasure that these trips prov...

* Lockdown * Bough Beech - Reflections On A Story of Failure I got a ticket for Bough Beech Reservoir in the Spring of 2018. It was a fill-in year really. I had been on the waiting list for years for a ‘Snodland’ club water and needed somewhere to fish while I was waiting to get to the top of the waiting list and so the reservoir was very much my number two choice of venue. I knew there were big fish in there, this being a pre-requisite of venue choice. Since my good friend Phil Baker had had a forty-pounder it fitted the bill perfectly! I knew from the very outset however that I was probably ‘biting off more than I could chew’. Bough Beech was the most wonderful place to fish in terms of isolation and 'wildness'. You could be literally miles away from the nearest human being and this in itself presented risks. If you got into trouble, injured, or some other problem you were largely on your own. Every syndicate member however had a telephone number printed ...

* Lockdown Special - Update * If you read my latest Blog you will know it detailed my attempts at selecting a new line for my reels. I did a Selection Matrix with a set of five criteria: The Fox Exocet narrowly edged it by virtue of the fact I scored it better on strength. As I described in the text, the strength test was conducted by tying a Figure-of-Eight loop in the end of the line and pulling it between my (gloved) hand and a puller tool in an attempt at breaking it. This test was repeated five times and resulted in one failure for the Fox and two for the Shimano - hence the Fox narrowly squeaked it by one failure to two and scored the point shown in the Table. Thinking about the fact I had any failures at all, this demonstrated an inconsistency in my testing method. Perhaps I managed to pull a little harder on the three occasions the knot failed? I didn’t think this was the case as my hardest pull - was exactly that - as hard as I was able to pull! I thus reasoned...

* LOCKDOWN SPECIAL * Line Tests We’re all in the same boat at the moment… Prevented from going fishing by the need to stay at home because of measures imposed by the government to control the spread of the Coronovirus, ‘Covid-19’. And quite rightly to; people are dying out there. In their thousands… The innocuous pastime of fishing seems a trivial activity compared to the struggles of those trying to breathe in Intensive Care Departments of our hospitals; what compares with the ultimate Fight For Life in these circumstances? It seems crass to even discuss Fishing at a time like this. But we must all carry on and do what we must to preserve life and limb and sanity during this Global Pandemic and if discussing Fishing gets us through this then so be it. One of the things I’ve needed to do for some time is change the line on my reels. I’ve had very good wear from the ‘Gardner GT-HD’ for almost a year now and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. I first saw ...