My fishing history.

Hello all.

Hopefully this will be as brief as I can make it.

I first went fishing with my Dad when I was 7 on the Sankey Canal in Warrington, needless to say I did not catch anything. After numerous days out, mainly spent mucking about and climbing trees I caught my first fish, a perch from the Bridgewater Canal, near Houghs Bridge at Walton.

When I was 12 we moved house, which had ponds just around the corner. These were run by Penketh and Old Hall AS (POHAS) in Warrington and from then on I spent as much free time as possible fishing on the ponds. I was also a member of Warrington AA and would go to the Bridgewater Canal, Grey Mist and Ackers Pit with my mates on our bikes.

In 1990 POHAS ran their first series of matches throughout the summer including coach trips and a couple of years after that a winter league started and a very healthy match fishing programme started. I must say the competitive nature of matches got me really focused. All I wanted to do was catch as many fish as possible and learn as much as possible. Each year I got better and better and started to make a big impression on the league table and started to win trophies. By the mid 90's I was doing really well and the club had some really good anglers involved. This was the basis for my match fishing, I really enjoyed it, trying my best to beat the other competitors. I would try to get as much info about venues and tactics so I could plan what to do for the upcoming matches, just to be that bit more prepared than everyone else

Eventually I got to the point where I was winning a lot of matches and the overall leagues etc. At this point after finishing university and getting settled in a job I started to fish open matches and trying to compete against more experienced anglers, which I really enjoyed. Around this time the commerical fisheries were becoming very popular and people started to drift away from canal and river matches. A turning point came during a POHAS winter league match on the Bridgewater Canal in 2000. I think 1 person caught a fish. So after that the club booked matches on commerical fisheries through winter instead of having all matches on the canal. The change was fantastic everyone caught fish most of the time and the winning weights were much higher.

Once I gained more experience on commerical fisheries I started to fish open matches at places like Brookside and moving onto Cudmore. Once I got used to the level of fishing required and getting tackle and tactics correct I started to win some money, not regular but certainly enough to realise I was doing ok. My highlight came in 2005 when myself and Ian Armstrong qualified for the Maver Pairs Final at Larford Lakes after fishing at Cudmore. Larford was great, I did not catch a fantastic weight and I felt out of place against all the top names in match fishing, but everyone was friendly and it was a great experience. I just bottled it a bit.

The past 12 months have been completely different. In May I was asked to join Warrington Anglers team to fish a leauge on Cudmore and The River Weaver. At the time I was looking to do something different with my fishing, as I was not enjoying myself very much and felt I needed a new challenge. This also led to fishing the Division 1 National on canals around Stafford. This was a great privelige and experience and thankfully I did not make an idiot of myself on the day finishing with 49 points out of a possible 69 and second best points scorer in the team. After this we compteted in the Mid Cheshire Winter League, again personally not doing very well.

So I come full circle and I am back fishing rivers and canals again. I must admit that I have found it difficult, it is like learning all over again. I have to make a decision to either carry on or go back to commerical fisheries. At the moment I am going to wait until the end of winter to decide.

All I will say is that I would not swap any of it for anything, so far I have had a wonderful time and had a great laugh no matter what was caught.

So that is a briefish fishing history. Even writing this brought back some good memories.