There are always regular discussions going on in the shop most weeks revolving around casting and the ability to chuck a lead as far as is humanly possible. Usually with customers requiring new tackle because they have read articles talking about fishing at extreme ranges with the latest rod or reel or even line which helps to increase casting distance. During one such chat a good friend and regular to the shop, Ian Moules was talking about the idea of having a casting lesson with one of `the main men' from the tournament casting  scene as he felt in would be extremely beneficial. Having always had a background in various sports throughout my life I have never been one to underestimate the power of some coaching and instantly offered to join him.

There are only a few anglers available to give lessons and Ian remembered reading one or two articles written by Terry Edmonds which had already improved  his casting with a couple of tips Terry had suggested in his features so he seemed the natural choice, also he is probably one of the best distance casting anglers in the country!

We met up with Terry at some massive shopping centre in Braintree, Essex (which the good lady instantly recognised, surprise, surprise) and proceeded to follow him to a large open field on the outskirts of Colchester.

Our morning started with two or three casts on our own rod and reel set-ups as we would normally use, so that Terry could asses us and see what kind of style and distance we could achieve prior to our re-education.

Ian and I both had fifteen pound line,shockleaders and a four ounce lead on which we proceeded to cast  towards some cones positioned on the other side of the forty acre+ field. Initially when Terry said we would use these cones Ian and I looked at each other with sheer horror, we could barely see them let alone cast any where near! Thankfully he meant that we would be using one each as an indication of where our lead had landed from the starting point which we were to measure with a measuring wheel. After a couple of goes Ian had recorded almost 110yds with mine just over 120 which we both felt was a pretty fair reflection on our current ability despite desperately trying not to look complete fools and sky one or crack off in front of an audience (you know what its usually like on the bank, if something goes wrong it always happens when you have an audience!)

Immediately Terry was beaming with confidence and said he would be able to help us improve considerably with only a couple of minor alterations to our technique. Personally my biggest mistake was that the length of my drop was too short.  I thought I had seen on a video some time ago that the drop from the tip to the lead should be approx a third of the length of the rod when in fact ideally should be the whole length of the tip section down to the spigot. This adjustment initially meant the first few casts went too high and therefore lost distance which with practice soon came right. I had always used a backward movement to help load the rod and also held the rod relatively low and close to my body. We were instructed on the art of first touching the lead on the floor followed by a very slight lift, then whilst holding the rod high in the air with both arms fully extended pulling down on the butt with as much speed as possible. This soon made vast improvements on both of our distances as Ian and I became more and more accustomed to the new style growing in confidence with every effort. Our distances increased almost with every go as minor tweaks were made with the culmination of using Terry’s 13ft rods with a braided shock leader and ten pound mono. Ian and I had both made huge improvements to 137yds and 178yds respectively and just a little shorter with our own original set-ups. The morning that we had spent with Terry was ore inspiring and absolutely fantastic. I cannot recommend Terry highly enough and if you have ever even half thought about it then you should definitely give him a call or contact him via e-mail, it is well worth every penny.

Many, many thanks to him the fish now have even less places to hide!

Telrck1@aol.com or 07747183486

When pike anglers think of the fens it would be fair to say that most would think of the fen drains. Built to drain the area into what we now know as the fens from the huge marsh that the area once was, the fen drains criss cross the area for many miles. Drains themselves vary greatly from the large windswept Relief channel to the tiny land drains that you could almost jump across.

All hold Pike and even the smallest of drains can hold some very large Pike.

But the fens are not entirely about the drains. There are large areas of gravel pits and clay pits and of course there is the Great Ouse system of rivers, all of which hold some very good Pike.
One of the most pleasing things about living and fishing in the fens is that you are never more than ten minutes away from a water that holds plenty of Pike.

In these articles I intend to look at some of the waters that most people will have heard of and how to go about fishing them. The best place to start the heart of Fenland; the Great Ouse River.

The Great Ouse is really in an upsurge at the moment, with the upper reaches always in the press for its huge Barbel, Perch and Chub. However for the Pike angler the lower reaches are the most renowned for its Pike and Zander angling.
The Great Ouse is really the heart of the fens as flowing into or out of the river are the Little Ouse, the Cam, the Old West, the Lark, the 100foot drain, the Relief channel, the Cut off channel and many small unnamed land drains.

The Great Ouse itself is a wide, slow moving, deep river. In normal conditions the main river as a whole is between 10 and fifteen feet deep with a slight brown tinge to it. However, in the winter after heavy rainfall the river quite often turns the colour of tea and can pull through at a frightening rate. I have been out on the river in a boat at this time of year and you must have an outboard engine, as you will take all day to row 100 yards against the current.

The tributaries of the Ouse differ on the whole from the Ouse in that they are generally shallower, in the case of the Little Ouse faster flowing and nowhere near as wide. Despite this some of the tributaries are even better than the main river.

For the beginner to Zander angling you will be hard pushed to find a better starting river than the Old West. This river joins the main river at Earith and just past Stretham; it has a huge head of Zander of average size, but there are some better samples about. This river also fishes superbly for daytime Zander that can be somewhat of an enigma on other drains or rivers.
There are also some good Pike in the river although these are somewhat outnumbered by the Zander. Good areas to look for on this river are deeper areas as the river is on average about 5 to 6 feet deep, or areas where the fish can lie up out of the floods. Marinas boat turning areas or around the few bridges are all good areas to try on this river. The sport here can at times be truly spectacular, but thankfully for some reason this river gets overlooked in favour of its bigger Cousin.

To give you some idea of the sport you can have here, at the back end of last year in the space of two weekends me and my fishing friends took 52 Pike to 26lb and 14 Zander over 71b to 81b 8oz with plenty of schoolies. On no occasion did we have less than 10 Pike or Zander between us and twice we had over that each.

Best tactics here are leap frogging live and dead coarse baits, either legered or paternostered, until you find the fish and then sitting on the spot for a while. The fish in this river really tend to hold up together in numbers and at certain times of the year, there are areas where the fish hold up ready to spawn for several weeks, this is when the really big hits like the ones previously mentioned can be made.

Best baits here are Coarse baits either alive or dead, sea baits do take fish but you are really restricting yourself to Pike only and as previously mentioned there are loads of Zander present. For some reason lures are not very productive on this river, unlike the next tributary the river Cam. The Cam is almost the exact reverse of the Old West in that it is crammed full of Pike with a much smaller head of Zander.

Every method in the book works on this river, I have taken Pike on lives, dead baits, coarse and sea and lures. Ten or more Pike in a day is nothing unusual here and I have spent some enjoyable days here trotting livebaits, sink and drawing or lure fishing. Mobility will increase your catch rate greatly and it really is a good fun water. There are some nice Pike present, but you really need to get off the beaten path to find them, my personal best from the river came from a private marina and weighed 21lb 11 oz, however this was at the confluence of the Cam the Old West and the Ouse and anyone who knows the area will realise that, fishing is not exactly looked upon in a favorable light in that marina and indeed I had an 18lb 1oz next cast but did not manage many more before being thrown off the water! Really, I would recommend that the serious Pike angler looks elsewhere for twenty pounds plus fish, as they are rather thin on the ground.

The bonus for anglers who like to be more general in their predator fishing is that in the stretches of the Cam in Cambridge town centre there are a number of very large predatory Chub which have been taken to around 71b, quite often on sardines meant for Pike.

The little Ouse however is a much more realistic target for anglers looking for bigger Pike. Of all the rivers this one has given me my higher average size of Pike. The river is stacked with doubles around the 13 to 18lb mark, and there are plenty of smaller Pike as well. The river has also been rumored to have produced 30lb fish in the past. I have no personal confirmation of this but would not discount it.

The little Ouse is on the whole clear and with moderate pace in the lower reaches and quite quick in the upper reaches around Thetford. The river on the whole is quite shallow around 4 to 6 feet deep. I certainly know that there are twenty pounders present but have yet to contact one myself with my personal best topping out at 18lb 8oz. There are also a few Zander present, and there are some very good ones too. I have seen a confirmed fish just short of 15lb in the angling press, which although the river was never named I recognised the back ground as being my favorite swim on the river!

All baits work well here but lives do tend to produce a high percentage of small Pike. Sardines and Smelt are particularly effective as is sink and draw and lure fishing, although this does also attract a high percentage of Jacks.

The river Lark is another shallow river around 4 to 7 feet on average and is also quite clear apart from when the land drains pump in during the winter, when it goes a real chocolate brown. There are plenty of Pike present in the Lark but the average size is quite small with a double being a good fish, however there are always a few surprises which turn up every year. There are very few Zander present, probably due to the clear shallow water, but there is a large head of good Perch. 2lb plus fish are quite common and 4lb fish have been taken from certain areas. I have spent some time on the river this year in pursuit of these, and have found the best methods to be float fished lobworm or small paternostered live baits. So far the biggies have avoided me with 2lb 2oz the best so far, but I shall persevere!

Lure fishing is one of the most enjoyable methods to fish for the Pike on this river, with the Bomber Long a jointed minnow and the Creek Chub Pikie being particularly successful lures.
Lives and dead baits all work well but you need to keep on the move as the Pike are quite residential here and do not tend to move around much, a lot of this is due to the large head of Roach currently present, which are wide spread through out the river.

So what of the main river itself?
The lower reaches of the river, which are the main interest to the Pike angler have gone through somewhat of a change in the course of my lifetime. Ten to fifteen years ago the Ouse had the reputation of being one of the finest winter Roach venues in the country. I can well remember as a much younger angler sitting between anglers catching 30lb hags of Roach pulling out Schoolie Zander and Jack Pike one after another.

Nowadays there are fewer Roach in the river but the other species have come through to replace them. Small skimmer Bream are now prolific with small Roach still common. Ruffe and Gudgeon also seem to be making something of a comeback along with of more interest to the predator angler, Perch. This last winter I have had a bit of a Perch head on and have spent some time fishing for the growing Ouse population. While the fish of the upper reaches are not present a-3lb fish is now realistic with 2lb fish turning up quite regularly. These have turned up regularly while live baiting for Pike with my fishing partner Richard Scott taking the best that I have seen at 2lb l0oz on a skimmer live bait meant for Pike or Zander.

Swimfeedering chopped worm with lobs on the hook has been the most successful method for me, as lives tend to get grabbed by the large head of jack Pike. The best areas that I have found for the Ouse Perch has been at the bottom of the shelf of the river around derelict boats. If there are underwater lilies (cabbages) present so much the better.

Pike and Zander populations in the Ouse have always been good and this is still very much the case. The strange thing that I have always found with the Ouse is that you tend to have a Pike day or a Zander day. I have rarely from the main part of the river had a day when I have caught roughly the same amount of both species; usually from day to day one species will prevail.

The size of the Pike and Zander present in the Ouse does however seem to have dipped somewhat in the last ten years. An Ouse twenty pounder is quite a rare beast these days, but they are still around, but if you really want to maximise your chances of a better than average Pike or Zander, then get off the beaten track more and try the more neglected areas of the river.

Unfortunately the main reasons why these areas are neglected is because access is mainly via some very long walks from the more popular areas. But the walk quite often pays off. Good areas on the Ouse to try are around the bridges, drain confluences, marinas, bends and boat moorings. It also pays to study the match reports for the river as the prey fish can become rather localised on the river in the depths of winter.

The town centre at Ely and around Littleport are both regularly good winter areas, but local advice is always the best bet, so try asking in the local tackle shops as to which pegs or areas are producing Roach and Bream. As for the actual fishing of the river, The Ouse has a pronounced shelves running along the near and far banks, and both the Pike and Zander regularly patrol these. These are always the prime areas to place baits, but ignore the centre of the river at your peril. Although the middle can be very slow for Pike, plenty of Zander patrol the centre of the river and for them it is always worthwhile to place a bait there.

The standard tactics that I would use for the Ouse are to place a patemostered livebait along the near shelf, a deadbait to the far shelf and a legered livebait down the middle. As previously mentioned the river tends to have one species days and it is quite often like that with bait choice also, some day's deads will outscore lives and vice-versa.

Sea baits are always rather hit and miss in my experience of the Ouse. Nine times out of ten I have found that coarse baits will be far more productive.

You may notice that I have made no mention of lure angling on the river. Unfortunately I have found the lure angling on the Ouse to be spectacularly useless. Although there are fish taken every year on lures the shelves that are so successful for bait fishing make lure angling unproductive. To prevent your lure snagging up on the near shelf you have to reel the lure up in the water and over the heads of the fish that you are looking to catch. I am sure that the lure fanatics are going to detail some lures that could be worked along the shelf and if they do then please let me know as I would like to catch some fish from the Ouse on lures!

There is equal value to be had on the Ouse for both the mobile angler and the more static. The fish (perch excepted) tend to be very nomadic and runs can occur all day from one swim as new fish move through. Plenty of fish can also be taken leapfrogging, but this can be difficult around the more popular areas, which can also be said for boat fishing.

Trolling the river with livebaits is still rather in its infancy for me as a method on the Ouse but first attempts have been encouraging. However some of the better areas tend to be through Ely town centre and these can be difficult to troll as there are far too many other anglers around to allow long trolls before the rods have to be brought in. The Ouse also has a habit of throwing up the odd surprise. Around the St Ives, Godmanchester and St Neots area there are some nice Chub and every year a few mid twenty Catfish are starting to show up. Zander or Carp anglers fishing livebaits or fishmeal boilies at night mainly take these. I would not really consider these a realistic target as they are few and far between at the moment, but maybe in the future the Ouse will have a healthy Wels population which would throw the NRA into fits of convulsion, but would be extremely exciting for the resident predator anglers! With the weights obtained in mainland European River systems what size could an Ouse Catfish obtain?

So that covers the Ouse and its tributary rivers, in my next article I will cover the three big names that are linked to the Ouse, namely the Relief Channel, the Cut off Channel and Roswell pits.

Mark Barrett

Mark offers guided trips, so if you fancy a go at some of these pike and zander yourself, give him a call on 07960 533392

Mark with a 15lb 12oz Old West Pike

Mark with a 12lb 1oz Ouse Zander