Fine Line

There is a glitch in my gudgeon fishing. The stick ‘n’ pin is normally set up in my office, I’ll occasionally think 'I fancy a gudgeon', grab the gear, tackle shop on route for half a pint of maggots (ones from the fridge out back - not the display models) and on to the river...

But the tackle shop has closed. A victim of Covid? Brexit?


It takes 24 hours to order maggots from Willy Worms - but I want to go now! Maggots are my go-to gudgeon bait - but bread will have to do. By the way; I’ve been told bread is a rubbish bait for barbel - all my barbel this year and most last year were caught on bread...

Barbel love bread. And gudgeon are pretty much mini barbel!


So on the river, half a bag of bread and... Boom - gudgeon first cast! Followed by a bit of a mixed bag; roach, chub, more gudgeon, ever-present barbel - even a rudd (which flicked out of my hand before the photo - not having much luck with photos recently).

Cracking couple of hours!