Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

I'm going fishing with my son Richard for a week so no updates during the second week in April. When we get back there may be a few fish to show (I hope!).

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FISHING ARCHIVE and TACK-TICS pages. The former now extends back as a record of four years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish (I'll put the freshwater stuff on once this is up to date). I keep adding to it and to the tactics pages which are mostly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science. The Fishing Archive is effectively my diary and will still take me a little time to bring up to date but often several pages are added in the space of a week.

29 March 2005.

Close seasons.

I'm an all round angler, in other words I enjoy fishing for anything that swims. I suppose that, in view of this, you might expect me not to be too bothered about close seasons. However, a few years ago I was involved in a government committee that was reviewing freshwater fisheries and it was soon apparent that views on the subject of close seasons were strongly polarised. This made me think about my position on the matter and I decided that in general I was against them.

Of course there are lots of arguments in both directions but since it was, long ago, decided that there was no good rationale for a close season on still waters, it seemed to me that there could be no real reason for a close season on rivers. The conservation argument (nesting birds etc.) does not stand up to scrutiny. If I wanted to disturb nesting birds I would take the dog for a walk - and that's not banned. The 'giving the river/fish a rest' argument is also weak because, if I want to, I can fish more or less all the year round provided I have a salmon licence and target salmon and trout during the coarse fish close period. On the whole coarse anglers do much less walking about and arm waving than their salmonid cousins.

Anyway - enough of my hobby horses. Just before the end of the coarse fishing I went after pike with my pal Nigel. As it turned out it was not a good day but we did manage one or two modest fish between us. After March 15 I had to turn to lakes. Many of my local 'club lakes' also happen to have a coarse fish close season (usually imposed to avoid the supposed irrational wrath of landowners) but there are a few in which I can try for carp. My first session was a non-fishing look-see and I saw nothing. The second time I took a rod and after a long wait (two hours is a hell of a long time for me to fish) managed a nice looking but not too big carp. Still it was may first of the year so I was reasonably happy.

Nigel's pike.

Carping.!

A modest carp.