North of England river events
Myself and a few friends have been running monthly events fishing on rivers across the North of England and we're hoping to expand this in the new trout season. We would like to extend an invitation to anyone who might be interested in joining us.
The events are about getting to fish new waters, meet other anglers and have a bit of fun. Some of our members are skilled and experienced anglers, including a couple who have fished on the England rivers team. However, some are fairly new to river fishing. We are keen to get a mix of people involved as one of the aims is to share skills and experience.
We fish 3 hour sessions in the morning and afternoon, meeting at lunchtime for lunch and a chat about the fishing; then again at the end of the day. They are intended to be friendly and to encourage the exchange of information between experienced anglers and newcomers. As such I hope they will encourage people to become involved in river fishing. We are also planning a practice weekend in June on the Swale where we can spend some time coaching people. We're also planning a trip to the Czech Republic in the autumn. Our aim is to get a group of keen river anglers who can share experiences and develop their skills together.
We fish to a set of rules so that we can compare results. My background is partly in fisheries statistics and one aim of the events is to collect information on the catches as a way of surveying fish populations as a long term monitoring tool. In that sense they are a bit similar to some of the bird counts people might know about. There is enormous potential here that has not been developed and I feel this is something worthwhile for anglers to be involved in.
We call the events 'tests' as they are about testing the waters and also testing our skills. Essentially they are competitive, but they are based on rather different principles to formal competitions. We've been running them for a while now to iron out any problems and find they run very smoothly.
A lot of people have told us they don't like to participate in competitions as they find a lot of time is wasted in controlling and they want a full days fishing. We record the fish caught and where it was caught on digital cameras/ mobile phones so that we don't need controllers and also have a detailed record of catches. As a result we also get a full day's fishing.
A lot of people in the past have also complained about unfairness in the way competitions are organised. We use a loose interpretation of the FIPS Mouche rules that overcomes a lot of the problems with past rules. Mostly people are able to fish the way they usually do without any worries about complex rules.
We start from marked locations on a map and this avoids the usual mad scramble to get the best spot. However, we allow people to roam after that so people aren't stuck in a bad spot. This has proved quite successful over our practice tests.
If you are interested then send me a PM and I'll send more details nearer the time. I'm also happy to answer any questions or take aboard any suggestions.
There is no charge (other than the permit) and we don't expect everyone to fish every test. We want to get about 10 people at each event and if we have a larger pool of people that just fish one or two events then that is fine.
Our plan is to meet on the last Sunday of every month. The tentative schedule is as follows:
April – Derwent, Co. Durham, Derwent Angling Association.
May – Wharfe at Bolton Abbey
June – Swale at Reeth
July – Tees at Raby Estate,
Robert Brown
__________________
'If you're doing things the way you've always done them then you're probably doing them wrong'
Last edited by Imago; 09-02-2011 at 07:01 AM.
|
Linear Mode
