By Mike Harris.

DRIVING rain, northerly gales and grey sky, were conditions I was actually glad to avoid.

The sort of day when, if you braved the weather, you considered that you had really earned whatever fish you might catch and a couple of brave anglers got their just rewards.

Ken Davidson, from Rainham, went to a club water near Marden.

“I chose that particular lake because it has some big trees round it, and I thought I might be able to get out of the wind, and I managed to do just that, with some good cover behind me, and a patch of calm water in front of me, I just had the rain to contend with.

“Float fishing is my favourite method so I made up my 13 footer with 4lb line to a 3lb hook-link and a no.14 hook baited with three maggots, scattered in a few free offerings and began to fish about 8.30am.

“By 10am, I gave it up. The wind blowing across the lake had set up such a strong undertow that, although the water in front of me was relatively calm, the float kept dragging under. I tried coming up off the bottom, but that just made things worse with the float moving across the swim as though I was fishing a river.

“So I just dropped the float gear right in the edge to my left and got out my feeder rod.

“That was mush better, I could fish about 20 yards out with a maggot and sweetcorn cocktail on a no.12 hook.

“After an hour or so, the tip went round and I had my first fish of the day, a bream of just over 4lb. Two more bream of about the same size followed, then I had a quiet spell before my next bite, that was a trench of 5lb 8oz, then some roach around the 5 or 6oz mark. By 3pm, the sky was so dark and the rain so heavy that I began to think of going home. I began to wind in my float rod when I felt a pull on the line and wound in a perch of 14oz, which must have taken the bait as I reeled it in.

“I was waiting, hoping for a lull in the rain before I packed up the ledger rod, when the rod top went round and I was into something much better.

“I carefully played the fish for about five minutes and then lifted out a big tench on to the bank.

“It weighed 8lb 6oz, my personal best tench, so I finally went home, very wet but very happy.”

PAUL Whiting, from Rochester, was also out in horrendous conditions, he started fishing on the Friday night, on a lake at Snodland.

He was reasonably comfortable in his bivvy and wasn’t particularly bothered by the rain until, at 11am on Saturday, his bite alarm sounded and he was out of the bivvy, grabbing the rod, and found himself attached to a very unhappy fish which showed it’s displeasure by taking about 40 yards of line from the reel before burying itself in a bed of weed.

“I tried pulling from different angles” said Paul “but the fish wouldn’t come out so I put the rod back on the rest with the bale arm open to see if it would swim out on it’s own.

“After 15 minutes I began to think that I would have to pull for a break when the line started to come off the real. I let several metres go before I tightened up on the fish and with one great surging pull, it was clear, and into clear water where it began swimming from side to side, keeping close to the bottom and it must have been at least 10 minutes before I was able to get it to the net.

“It was a big mirror carp, almost a leather with just a few scales on each side, a fish I had never seen before. It weighed 34lb 6oz, in perfect condition and well worth the soaking I got while landing it.”

DEREK Mills had a good morning’s fishing. Float fishing with maggot and caster, he topped a good mixed bag with a tench of 6lb 4oz and a super perch weighing 4lb exactly.

“I never ever thought I would catch such a big perch” said Derek “When I first saw it in the water I thought it must be a record breaker, well it certainly broke my record anyway.”

MISTY mornings conjure up, for me, everything that is good about angling. Rivers and lakes have an air of mystery about them, the water looks full of potential, with fish, in the finest of condition, just waiting for me to put my bait in.

Then, as the mist slowly disappears, taking with it all my hopes and dreams, I settle down to the realities of angling as it truly is, a matter of out foxing cautious, suspicious, wild animal in a totally different environment from mine.

Sometimes I win, most times I lose, but I always go back again hoping that maybe today will be the day I do everything right and it will be a day to remember.

I have had a few of them and can still feel the amazing glow of satisfaction and pleasure when they happen.

So I can imagine just how good Peter Baker must have felt on his trip to the Medway at Fordcombe.

Peter, from Rochester, has spent many hours exploring the upper stretches of the Medway and has found, as I did a good few years ago, that the river can be utterly frustrating.

The main problem is fish location. There are so many possible holding spots that you just don’t know where to begin. When I first visited that part of the river. I was overwhelmed by it’s possibilities and spent five seasons fishing it two or three times every week, winter and summer, with no consistent success. I caught lots of small to medium sized chub but it was big roach and barbel that I was after and not to put too fine a point on it, I was a total failure! I even invited a friend of mine, an expert barbel fisherman on the Hampshire Avon and the Kennet, to come and have a look at it to see if he could give me some guidance. After walking only a couple of hundred yards of the bank he stopped and said “I give up. I’ve seen at least 20 spots, all of which or none of which could hold a barbel. If you want to fish here I wish you the best of luck, I’m going back to the Kennet.”

I persisted and I did have the odd good fish but I always thought they were more by luck than judgement and eventually turned to other rivers which were more easy to read and where I could catch more of the fish I was after.

After I had stopped fishing there, a group of erstwhile carp anglers spent a lot of time and effort heavily baiting a few areas and fishing them virtually full time and they caught some big barbel, in fact the British record at the time, came from there. But it wasn’t the sort of technique which appealed to me, and Peter is of the same mind.

“I didn’t want to fish the hot spots and catch barbel which had been caught lots of times before, I wanted to feel that I had done it all myself if I ever caught one of the big fish, so I tended to fish spots where nobody else fished, and, of course, I paid the price!

In three seasons, concentrating on the wider parts of the river I had a couple of barbel of 6 or 7lb and about a million chub. Not a good result, so I sat down to think of how I might change my approach and hopefully my luck.

“I had found several small areas where the bed of the river was gravel, rather than the usual clay and had fished them regularly without success, but I felt sure that the barbel must visit those areas at some times but because they were so shallow it was difficult fishing.

“In September I decided on a radical change - I would fish on these patches of gravel, but now I would do it in the dark.

“It took me three or four weeks before I became used to moving around the river bank in the dark and began to feel that I was fishing with a chance.

“Two weeks ago I hooked a big fish but lost it through trying to land it too quickly and pulling the hook out.

“Last week I went back to the same spot, waited until 9pm then lowered a big lob worm carefully onto the gravel. After about half an hour I felt a pull on the line and struck into what felt like an express train.

“In shallow water big barbel put up one hell of a fight and for the next five or six minutes I had no idea where the fish was, only that it was still, thankfully, on the end of my line!

“I resolved that, this time, I would be patient and not try to rush it to the net so I just kept a constant pressure on the fish and let it do its own thing.

“Very gradually it became weaker and I was able to begin to take charge and eventually I felt confident enough to switch on my torch and guide it into the landing net.

“It was a magnificent fish, bigger than I could have ever hoped for and in perfect autumn condition.

“I laid it in the weigh sling and carefully lifted it and watched the scales record its weight at 13lb 6oz.

“This was almost double the size of my previous best barbel and was a dream come true”.

THERE can be very few anglers who have not experienced the frustrating and dispiriting situation of finding themselves in a swim next to another angler who is catching fish and insists on giving a running commentary on the whole affair.

It is particularly galling when the angler in question has a friend who is fishing a few swims away, because he now has to turn up the volume to keep his mate up to date and consequently everyone else on the lake too.

“Hey Dave, just had a blindin’ roach on maggot, must go at least a pound.”

Dave answers with a barely audible grunt.

Couple of minutes later, “Dave, just had another one, took it on the drop!”

Then at regular intervals, “They really want it today Dave.” “Getting one a chuck down here mate.” “Just had a couple on pellet Dave”, and so on until everyone in earshot, especially if they are not catching fish, would willingly throw him and all his fish into the lake!

Tony Austen, from Chatham, was blessed with one such angler when he fished a day ticket water near to Canterbury.

“This bloke was driving me mad” said Tony “Not only did he go on about every fish he caught, he even told everybody when he had a bite and when he missed a fish.

“After putting up with it for a couple of hours I simply had to move before I went along the bank and punched him!

“I went on to a different lake, far enough away to be out of earshot and had a fair bag of fish up to 4pm when it was almost too dark to see the float. I thought I would have one more cast, put two fresh maggots on the hook and dropped it in, just five or six feet from the bank.

“After a few minutes the float disappeared and I was into a good fish. My initial thoughts were that it was a small carp and, with only a 16 hook on, I played it very gently for about five minutes before it was ready for the net.

“Then that small carp suddenly turned into a very big perch.

“I know there have been quite a few big perch caught recently, but its never happened to me before, and I was, to say the least, very impressed!

“It weighed 4lb exactly and I couldn’t wait, as I made my way back to the car park, to tell mouth almighty, what I’d caught, but unfortunately he’d already gone home, so I phoned my wife instead, and she wasn’t impressed at all!”

CYRIL Johnson, from Rochester, is one of the old-school of pike-anglers who insists that the best way to catch a pike is first to catch a roach, then use the roach as bait to catch a pike.

“I always think that a live fish is what the pike will eat naturally and I can’t see any point in doing anything else.”

I can see why Cyril thinks that way, my problem is that it usually takes me so long to catch a roach that I’ve got no time to fish for pike. So when I go piking I take a few sprats, just in case.

But Cyril’s system came up trumps with a super brace of pike.

From a deep, close-in swim on a gravel pit at Snodland he took one 21lb 4oz and a second weighing 18lb, both of then on live roach baits.

NIGEL Harrington, from Rainham, took a chance and went to the Medway above Tonbridge and found an eddy on the inside of a bend in the river where he thought he might get a fish.

“It was a matter of keeping everything simple” said Nigel “So I made up a 6lb line straight through to a no8 hook with a 1oz bomb on the line 12 inches from the hook. Bait was lob worm and the method was to cast out and let the flow push the bait down into the eddy.

“It wasn’t easy fishing but I managed to get five chub out of the swim, two of them were over 4lb so I think I made the right decision.”

PETER Brooker, from Chatham, took advantage of the local wildlife when he fished the Medway at Tonbridge. “I wanted to get out before the cold snap began and I was lucky enough to find a few worms and slugs on the bank. Maggots were no good, neither was sweetcorn, but using worm I had three chub of over 3lb and two over 4lb on big black slugs