Just thinking about it, if we were to adopt the International match rule regarding the maximum length of a pole (13m), would it even up the playing field on matches?

If you have to fish at 16m to be competitive, is the angler who can't afford a top-end pole at a disadvantage when it comes to holding 16m of carbon for five/six hours.?

I've gone through several boxes of old papers/cuttings and this is what I have; Enjoy!

Watching a barbel fishing video earlier, the guy lands a decent double and proceeds to plant his lips on its slimy face. There’s no end of celebrity anglers that do the same, Ali Hamidi and Dean Macey come to mind but there’s plenty more. Do they do this just for the camera? Or is this actually something people do?

While fish slime has potential for the future development of antibiotics, you’re not going to get any benefits from having some in your gob. There’s probably all sorts of nasty things living on our fish

Have you ever kissed a fish? Did you like it?

I’ve done a fair bit of river fishing over the years but I’m looking for some guidance / inspiration about how to properly approach my local stretch of river.

Almost daily I fish the River Medway on the stretch from Moncktons Lane to Allington lock with a short pole and it’s really prolific for roach, perch, bleak, dace & gudgeon and I know it has good bream stocks too. I’ve had a session on the bomb and began picking up some small bream quite quickly before a paddle board race mucked up the swim.

The lock is an immense automated barrier that separates the freshwater Medway from the tidal saltwater Medway and also has alongside it a canal style lock for allowing boat passage in & out.

Even during a 30min session the river can go from the ‘natural‘ left-right flow to stationary to right-left reverse flow and back again and depending on how the river is running from rain the natural...

Hey All,

Had an issue recently on a quiet lake day fishery, two fishermen friends making loads of noise throughout the day. Constantly chatting loudly, they were getting on a bit so maybe a slightly deaf, swearing every other sentence. I normally fish with my kids so glad they weren't with me. it's was f***ing this, c**t this,.through the day.
They were shouting,whilstling, clapping at any birds that came near their floats. I heard burping and farting, yes farting.
I was about 100 yds from them. never have I heard such anti social fisherman. I had to put on my ear plugs and listen to a podcast, When I did remove them I could hear these two instantly. was relentless. I was tempted to have a word but kept my ear plugs in.

what would you have done in my situation?

So as the title suggests, this was my first trip to the Trent in search of my first river barbel.
Opted for the bdaas stretch in fiskerton which is day ticket. Arrived in the village with my mate around 6:30 and was on the bank not long after. We had a walk up and down and both decided to fish peg 41. Lovely wide open peg. Gravelly bottom. Perfect. Set both my rods up the night before (impatient) and mixed my groundbait up.
Right hand rod was my upstream feeder rig with 4ft hooklength and hemp, caster and mixed pellet sizes before an 8mm dynamite garlic pellet on the hair. Before actually fishing I put out 4 feeders worth of bait to get a decent carpet of offerings out there. Then cast out and set the timer for 20 mins.
The left hand rod was a lead gripper rod with some squid and garlic paste pushed in and matching 14mm boilie on the hair. I had been told to use smaller baits...