Good morning from a bright and sunny Foxford. The good weather continues as does the Covid 19 crisis. This is the first week where we have had to refuse anglers access to the shop and although they understand I don’t think they fully appreciate that we are not been rude but rather trying to do our bit to see that this comes to an end. We do hope these customers will return when things come back to normal.

We made a little video to demonstrate making a simple fishing rod. Something any adult can do with a young person which will pass an hour and perhaps give them an interest in something new. The sound is not great due to the camera man/DIRECTOR practicing social distancing :). In the preparation for the making of the video I discovered there’s not a straight stick within 2k of Foxford, just before some bright spark points it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzbHYQFh9DA&feature=youtu.be

Bellow is another little bit for our Junior/beginners. If you have some old spools of line lying about it would be nice to “donate” them now.

Hi again, hopefully you had a nice Easter and are enjoying the nice weather. The weather is a very big factor in fishing and anglers spend a lot of time trying to figure out what’s the best type of weather to catch fish in. If it’s very sunny the fish seem to hide in shady places. On windy days trout sometimes swim close to the lake shore where the wind is blowing onto. This is because the water is churned up and there’s lots of insects for the trout to eat. Sometimes it better not to worry about catching fish and just go fishing.

Did you make a fishing Rod? I tried and have made a little video , have a look at it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzbHYQFh9DA&feature=youtu.be

So we know we need a fishing rod and we need a fishing reel. We also know there’s several different types of rods and reel but we are going to start fishing  using a “Spinning Rod” and a “Fixed spool reel”

Can you remember the different parts of both? It sort of important for when we are learning how to ”set up” our gear and how to  “cast out”

Fishing Line

We will also need some fishing line. Fishing line is what we connect our bait to. There’s a lot of different lines available and most of them are ok to use. We will start of using Monofilament line, it’s still the most popular type. I bet ………………. Has plenty of spools of line that they can let you have some of and if not don’t panic its not very expensive.

The most important thing to learn is about “Breaking strain and diameter”

Breaking strain is how strong the line is and how much pressure it takes to break it.

Diameter is how thick the line is.

If you look on the side of a spool of fishing line you will usually see something like this

Breaking Strain 7kg

Dia 0.35mm

This tells us the breaking strain is 7 kg and the diameter is 0.35mm

Most fish are pretty smart and can see fishing line easily so the secret is to pick a fishing line that is pretty fine while still been strong enough that it will not break easily.

In general we try to pick a line that will be suitable for the fish we are after. For example

Trout: Breaking Strain 2 kg Dia 0.22mm

Salmon: Breaking Strain 7 kg Dia 0.35mm

Sharks : Braking Strain 77 kg Dia 0.70mm

These are just examples and may not be exact. Look at some old line spools and see the differences. Perhaps ask …………….. about them.

If you go to a fishing tackle shop to buy some fishing line ask the guys there to show you some different lines and explain the differences to you. They will be happy to do this and it’s a good way to learn.

OK, so that’s Rod, reel and line. Next week we will talk about putting it all together and setting up our rods.

How are your worms doing? Maybe you need to change the soil; the old stuff is good for gardening.  You could dig more

See can you spot a Hawthorn fly. They like to hang about around gorse bushes, are black in colour and the most noticeable thing about them is they have long dangly legs. Trout love them 🙂