Jan 09 Blog   All Hands To The Pumps   I went back to the Idle for a session imagining that it would be sock on. We’d had a bit of rain a few days previous, which in my warped way of thinking would have put a bit of extra warmth in the water. Of course I still spent ten minutes scraping ice of...

I’ve been a regular guest at the Caer Beris Manor in Mid Wales ever since it hosted the Angling Writers Association Awards dinner nearly ten years ago. It’s a fabulous country hotel in a spectacular setting, nestling in a loop of the River Irfon just up from its confluence with the Wye....

  In The Beginning Coarse Angler Magazine - May 1987 Bob Roberts didn’t seem to fit into the same mould somehow. Anyway, Colin mugged me, published my first article and awoke a desire to write. He continued to be my mentor right up until he passed away. In fact I was honoured to write the we...

The River Don Catchment – A New Kid On The Barbel Block The River Don doesn’t exactly leap to mind when folk start talking about ‘great’ barbel rivers or even Yorkshire barbel rivers, but it has a great deal more potential than you might imagine. Indeed the true potential has nowhere near b...

Chapter 4   The Moving Feeder   The following chapter is as fresh and as relevant today as it was on the day I wrote it. Few anglers have ever, or will ever, master this technique. It is a crying shame really because the technique because most cannot be bothered with the little bit of extra effort...

                Seeing as so many satisfied customers have seen fit to email Stu and me with their comments on our DVD it seems only fair that we share them with you. This is just some of the things that viewers have told us:    I have seen the DVD and it was brilliant, the whole atmosph...

Chapter 3   Static Feeder Techniques   Critical balance   Throughout this book you will find many references to the term ‘critical balance’, which relates to the amount of lead required for a swimfeeder or leger weight to hold its position against the flow of a river. Lead trim weights ar...

Bob Continues his tales from a very different era… A Dream Rod A pedantic reader might insist my first rod was the one I first fished with. In that case it was a split cane fly rod that had belonged to Ray’s dad. The first rod I actually caught a fish on belonged to Keith Gale but the f...

October Blog Well, I’ve survived another trip to India, but only just this time. I don’t know what it is about the place but it certainly brings out any ailments in me. I travelled to India with the tail end of a cold and I was pretty certain that it would clear up rapidly in the sunshine. After...

Alas as we get older we forget so much. Life is so rich and varied these days. We live in a world far removed from the one our grandparents knew in their childhood. I blame the sheer bombardment of information that rains down upon us. There can be no escape. Its as though we are fed intravenously b...