After a few days of our visit to Japan we had seen a taster of Tokyo and Osaka and the main culture shock apart from the obvious language and alphabet barrier was the noise. For somewhere with so little pollution anywhere in the form of litter and smog etc. The has amount of human introduced noise is outstanding.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad point although it may first sound like it 😀.

Close your eyes and: Being in Japan is like being in a fair ground or amusement park.

The buses, trains, trams, shops, toilets, doors even the little wagon the guy who picks up rubbish pushed around are all playing some kind of child-like jingle.

Continue reading “What they don’t tell you about Japan, blog 1. Noise”

I used to think if you want to catch fish, you want deeper water…….. But the most productive fresh water spots I have found tend to be those that are almost swamplike. Shallow ugly spoilt wastelands! Might be just me…..

I started freshwater fishing in late 2016 with a few blanks in the river Thames. In 2017 shortly after renewing my licence I found a small tributary where I could see fish rising and taking flies on the surface. To me they looked like mullet (seagarer st heart 😎) but I was soon informed they were in fact chub.

Continue reading “Wastelands……. Or a chance for something different?”

Fishing is predictably unpredictable.
I love catching fish, I love catching new species even more but sometimes you just have to target what you think is there in front of you, even if its not what you are really after. But then sometimes you have to throw it all out the window and ride the wave of luck that comes in.

Continue reading “A flash of silver. Another Catch and Cook story”

So Owen has talked about fishing for squid for ages. Constantly reminding me that I said we would try for them one day (In my head, I meant from a boat).

Then on my way to Devon (Plymouth), I put a message on a Facebook group asking if there were anything showing in numbers such as garfish or squid having seen catch reports of both over the previous weekends I’d not been able to get to the coast.

Continue reading “Another alien? A catch and cook story.”

Dilemma or what. One if my big targets for 2018 was a bigger species count. Yet 9 months in I’m not doing well at all. And to make it worse, when I have had the opportunities to fish, well I can’t stop concentrating on the first fish I catch even if it’s one I don’t need to up my tally.

Since the freshwater season started for me in June, I have only targetted perch so far and every time I go back to my local canal, I can’t resist fishing ultra light and putting my lures in the margins that look perchy. Learning about these fish and the different styles of lure they will take in different ways is addictive.

As for saltwater……Absolute pollocks haha. My early sessions were taken over by herring fever. Those little shiny critters fight so hard for their size it’s makes them too much darn fun to switch off them once you find them. 2 sessions in I’d had loads of herring and several small pollock as bycatch. The simplicity of using a small jig head close to the surface and the visual takes followed by a hard dive really gets the fishing cogs in my brain going into overdrive.

When Simon from Osborne and Cragg (my favourite tackle shop in opened a species comp me and Owen had a session where we tried a few rockpools etc for some mini species, but even that day we spent half the day catching common blennies just because their aggression made it so much fun. We ended up hardly catching any other species.

My mackerel sessions this year were really pollock sessions as each time I went I hooked up a pollock within 2 to 3 casts and then started concentrating on them as no one around seemed to be having a lot of success on the mackerel.

So how do I switch of when catching fish and target something else?

If you want to find out more about catching UK fish on lures, I strongly recommend you try this great book here which provides info on everything you might want to know about lure fishing in the UK and how to catch a huge variety of species

This weekend past my lovely ‘wife to be’ was away for the day with the car. So it was time for a very local jaunt to a favourite fishing spot of ours. Devils Point, and more specifically A mark we call ‘Wrasse Rock’.

I invited my future brother in law along to join me and Owen on our mini adventure.

On route we came up with some rules for a mini competition with points being awarded in the following categories:

1. Most fish caught
2. Most species of fish caught
3. Longest individual fish
4. Overall total length of fish caught in the session.

In my head, I was going to take all four categories comfortably and the overall win based on my experience and previous performances.

Once we arrived at Devils point, we slipped the poorly placed Harris fencing and made our way down towards the eroding steps far to the right of the rocky outcrops that join the beach and the popular platforms. The first tactic was going to be rockpools. I set up 3 rods with identical splitshot rigs tipped with gulp sandworm. Before I had even finished setting up the 3rd for for myself beginners luck was striking (literally) and Greg was making some victorious sounds as he brought in the first fish of the day. A 15cm Corkwing Wrasse.

Whilst I had advised him to target the rockpools he had ignored me completely and gone straight to a ledge with deeper water much to his glory. The ledge had a deep pool just under it at the end of a gulley and was the perfect lurking spot for any potential predators.

Once setup I jumped straight to targeting my favourite pool and very quickly struck into a 12cm Shanny/Common Blenny. But before I could enjoy the moment Greg was in again and lifting his second Corkwing, this time 16cm in length. Owen assisted Greg, whilst the I uncooked my Blenny. I tried to get a good photo but the little begger had other ideas and decided to have a bite on my hand as per the above picture. Once he let go I placed him back into the pool he came from.

Owen was shouting regularly as he was hooking his own gobies and blennnies before dropping them back into the pool they came from. He hasn’t quite got the nack of setting the hookhold needed to land them. I was soon feeling for him though as I had a prod around a pool I know to be very productive and failed to hook up properly on 4 different fish. 3 blennies and a rock goby. All missed opportunities. I moved to fish alongside Greg who was having more luck landing a 12cm Pollack followed by more corkwings before he moved to the pool I had just failed in. I landed a nice little ballan wrasse after adding a second split shot to get my rig down faster and took the lead with 18cm for longest fish.

But I was falling behind in total fish and total length and Owen hadn’t got a fish on at all yet to challenge. Greg was running away with it.

Then just to take the piss. Greg landed one of the blennies that had taunted me moments before.

I decided to go for broke and try something completely different.

I offered to change everyone’s rigs but Owen and Greg were keen to carry on so I tied on a metal jig for myself and began to cast in hope of a garfish to propel me into the lead for total length. I had a good 20 casts or so and did have 2 solid hits but no hook up.

During this time Owen moved into Greg’s lucky hole and opened his account for the day with a Blenny.

We started discussing a move to ‘Wrasse Rock’ but just before Greg pulled out another Corkwing and at 18cm took the lead in all 4 categories.

Wrasse Rock didn’t disappoint, Owen managed to catch a corkwing and Greg had several more fish and extended his leads. He was having a red letter day considering his lack of experience. He was catching pollock and corkwings in turn on a dropshot rig.

I had a corkwings also taking my species tally to 3 and levelling with Greg. I tried for a pollock which is usually my most common species but I just couldn’t find one at all.

But the real highlight for me was my final fish of the day which was a 22cm ballan allowing me at least 1 victory with the longest fish and a share of the most species prize with Greg with 3 each.

If you want to find out more about catching UK fish on lures, I strongly recommend you try this great book here which provides info on everything you might want to know about lure fishing in the UK and how to catch a huge variety of species

What does #footballscominghome mean to You?

Everyone seems to know the score, they’ve seen it all before.

My prediction (dream) before the world cup started was that England could reach the final but would be beaten by a Brazil/France team which seemed to have plenty of talent to spare should we come up against them. Winning the tournament just wasn’t even a consideration.

At some point England’s gonna throw it away, gonna blow it away.

As the group stages unfolded and it became clear that Gareth Southgate had setup his team to play for a loss in the final group game against Belgium and that the road to a potential final had smaller bumps along the way than say playing a series of teams from Japan, Brazil, Argentina, France, Mexico etc. My opinion that England could reach the final changed somewhat to dare I even say confidence? I even stated that as well as getting to the final I didn’t think Harry Kane would be caught up in the race for the golden boot.

Then watching from behind the couch as Eric Dier converted his penalty past the Columbians for some sweet justice after the brutality they had put his team mates through during the 120 minutes of game time gave me even more belief, that if we can ride those kind if storms and grind out a result. We could Perhaps, Possibly, Just Maybe, do it against a bigger name from the other side of the draw if and when the time came.

Now the wave is easy to ride when we appear to be flying high but all waves crash down or fizzle out eventually so by boarding the bandwagon with status’ and tweets of ironic arrogance, confidence and outright belief are we kidding ourselves? Or just enjoying the journey? Are we indeed totally Deluded?

And all those oh so nears…….wear you down, through the years.

As a 30 year old, I’m too young to remember Sir Bobby Robson’s nearly men of Italia 90 who came so close to reaching a world cup final and lost to Germany in the famous semi final game in Turin. So remembering countless early exits, penalty nightmares, red cards, and even out and out embarrasments can we be blamed for grabbing this glimmer of hope. For riding the wave for as long as possible to see if England can hit the sunny shores of England standing as champions of the world? Or even if when the wave fizzles out once more will it leave us with fond memories of a time we could be proud of our team, the way they performed on and off the pitch and always remember that Gareth Southgate lead a team of young inexperienced players with little expectation on their shoulders to (at least) a World Cup Semi-Final.

30 years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming……

So call me deluded if you want, but every ounce of me as an England fan wants to strap myself in and enjoy the ride. Boast about our chances, brag that it’s already in the bag and enjoy the world cup fever whilst we have it.

I know that was then but it could be again.

Our brothers and sisters to the north of us in Scotland can believe they have had the last laugh if and when we bow out, but we have had plenty more than them along the way.

Every time I get into debate with them they moan about a ‘1966’ we apparently bang on about (not that I ever hear it mentioned outside of the media).

I wasn’t born in 1966. So I can’t remember it, and therefore can’t enjoy it. So whilst ‘winning it’ would be great, just performing as well as they have so far and re lighting the fire of belief in the hearts of so many is what it really means to bring football home.

What I have loved most about this tournament is discussing games with my Welsh/Irish colleagues who are supporting England in their own teams absences and I want the boys to win it for them too.

My 11 year old told me before the World Cup started that he wasn’t going to watch because England are rubbish. ‘We can’t even beat Iceland’ he said. Since then he has somehow found himself watching every England game and telling me how he felt through watching penalties and winning and how he hopes we can go on and win.

That’s #FootballComingHome.

I’ve been writing this as I walk through the streets of London to work and I’ve seen flags in cars and in windows, Football shirts worm under high vis and over school shirts, heard radios blasting ‘three lions on a shirt’ with the windows down.

A country torn right down the middle with political differences are united in supporting this team, counting down the hours to kick off.

There are more beers, cokes, cider, wine in more fridges across this country than ever before just waiting to be enjoyed during a 90 minute window where anything can happen…..

And maybe just maybe we get to go again on Sunday.

My prediction now is that England can beat Croatia and give us all a party (win or lose) on Sunday. We can be proud of what the team and their humble manager achieved and enjoy a spectacle.

Either way……

It’s definately coming home!

Friday night finally came around again, it hadn’t rained all week and as I walked through the door after work the future Mrs Russell was halfway through a movie I had no interest in watching.

What a shame, I gùess I’ll have to go fishing…..

Packing light once again I was ready to really try and up my count of perch per session after my 2 sets of 2 so far this season.

Continue reading “Oh wait….. that’s not a perch!!!! My Magic Lure strikes again.”