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Do we sometimes overcomplicate things on the bank? Andy May thinks so…


Well, at last things are looking up on the weather situation, these last two weeks have been miserable to say the least but it hasn’t been anything like as bad as it was last year or the year before, thank god!

As I write this I am contemplating either going to catch some chub and grayling and maybe a barbel on my local river Dane, or going and having a practice on Moreton fisheries in Congleton for an upcoming bream/skimmer feature....hmmmm.

These decisions are really hard sometimes you know!  Ha-ha, it may seem as though I have agreat job in being an angling coach, but, believe me it can get quite difficult this time of year, so that is why I have these hard decisions to make!  No, thats all rubbish I have the best job in the world!
My Dad, a very accomplished angler, said something very interesting to me last week whilst we were both pleasure fishing.

He said: “I can’t pleasure fish anymore.”

I didnt know what he meant at first but then I started analysing what I was doing and what he had said made perfect sense. We were fishing a small farm pond with a decent head of rudd, skimmers, carp, tench and perch but here I was an hour into my session and I’d only had two bites, where as my dad, 2 pegs away, was catching fish after fish.  I got up off my box and went to see what my dad was doing so differently.

That’swhen he said about pleasure fishing and match fishing being completely different. “You can?t pleasure fish anymore because you can?trelax,” he said. And, he was absolutely right!

I can?tremember the last time I went pleasure fishing on commercials! I’m out on the bank two or three times a week pleasure fishing on rivers at this time of year but never on stillwaters where I fish the same as I would do on a typical commercial match!

I had 4 different swims on the go feeding bits of bait into all of them every few minutes and it never even entered my head the fact that I wasn?t trying to catch as much as possible.

To me it was just natural and I wanted to catch everything swimming so I was laying out what I thought were all the traps possible to catch fish and it was completely wrong.

My dad simply had oneswim and one rig on the go where he was feeding tiny amounts - a really simple set up of a long line between pole tip and float because of the clear water, a rig with a bulk and one tiny dropper and a light hook length with a small hook, and he was catching loads.  I went back to my swim where I shook my head straight away and his words to me really did sink in.

I had three top kits set-up for every eventuality, back shots on all rigs, precise droppers and light hooks and lines and 3 or 4 different tubs of bait, pellets for across, a tiny amount of ground bait and maggots and pinkies.

The difference between our two set-ups was amazing, I really had overcomplicated everything and was fishing just as I would a match, rather than fishing as I would have done a few years ago.
Have a think about that next time you’re out pleasure fishing; it certainly made me stop and think!  Ha-ha, not really my dad was on a shedful....simple as that..!