Phil Young

Started fishing at about 11 or 12 at Halton Resevoir nr Wendover catching roach and the occasional perch, Joined Leighton buzzard angling club aged 22 or 23 and served on committee and as water bailiff for 16 years. Fished the Thames weirpools for a number of years, targeting barbel and large bream, Drifted into open matches quite late in life, really just to see how I got on, I put myself somewhere below the stars, but on parr with the majority, I have a pick up now & then which keeps me going, when I stop enjoying it I will stop!

If I get to a water & its a likely option to fish up, I will set up three rigs to cover my depth options. As a rule, all will be on 0.18 Silstar straight through to a 16 kamasan B911 - keeping everything simple is key

The first will be on a Mick Wilkinson pea float which is like a very dumpy dibber with a thick wire stem which is set to fish at 1 foot or less.

The second will be a Mick Wilkinson up camo pattern again this has a wire stem and a short bristle. Its very stable from the second it hits the water size 0.1, set to fish 18 inches to 2 feet

The third is a 0.2 Mick Wilkinson up camo set to fish 2 to 3 feet deep,I will start of feeding 6 to 10 4mm sinkers ( straight from the bag ) every 20 seconds and look to fish the deeper rig to start, once fish arrive and I start catching. Its a case of rotating rigs until you find which gives the best catch rate, bait is normaly a 6mm. Ready hooker in either natural or liver, if I am being ragged off by small fish I will change to a 6mm hard banded pellet, if I am missing loads of bites I hair rig the pellet.

By adjusting the amount and frequency of feed I will (hopefully) arrive at the optimum feed to fish ratio.

Tight Lines, Madd