Introduction.

My first venture into the world of blogging, here goes......

After a fifteen year break I returned to angling in July 2006, I've dabbled with sea fishing , but blanked every trip, I am trying to get to grips with fly fishing for trout and I fully intended to just coarse fish for pleasure, but after a few months the competitive urge returned. I resumed my match career in Dec 06, starting with the Xmas match at Trinity Waters, coming third - well pleased with that.

The fishing scene has changed so much in that fifteen year break, I was used to fishing bronze maggot for chub and roach, worm and caster for bream and carp were them big lumps that we very rarely hooked and virtually never landed.

I still enjoy fishing the natural venues, using maggot, caster and punch as baits, but to get back into the match arena, its been necessary to learn a lot of new tactics, baits and getting to grips with the line and hook sizes used nowdays.

Last year saw me return to team fishing, fishing for Sensas Thyers, I managed a couple of wins, on commercial and natural venues, quite a few placings and a second place in the Huntspill championships (fishing the waggler, with about 18lb of roach, hybrids, perch and skimmers).

Towards the end of the year and at the start of this, my results dropped off considerably - it was my wife who commented - "you seem to prepare so much now, when you just went and kept it simple, you we're doing better". This got me thinking, was I over complicating things for myself, taking too many baits, fishing too many lines, too many methods, I think the answer was yes.

So far the last couple of months, I've tried to set out with only one or two strategy's and it seems to be paying off.