Midlands Rivers in top form!

But it's the form of the midlands rivers that are making the most headlines, as some exceptional catches are being taking from the popular day ticket stretches, especially to anglers timing their fishing trips to coincide with falling water levels after each flood.

The day ticket stretches around Ironbridge, Bridgnorth, Bewdley and Stourport, have provided roach to 2lb, perch to 3lb and barbel to 14lb.

On the Severn and Avon, traditional running water tactics of running a stickfloat through close in, with bronze maggots are taking large catches of roach, while chopped worms are taking those bigger perch from beneath overhanging trees and bushes, along the bank.

Most of the specimen barbel are still falling to halibut pellets on the hook, although a few bigger fish have recently been taken on spicy flavoured boilies.

Once the flood and high water conditions subside and the water clears, both the Severn and Avon are ideal roving rivers for pike, a rod, a reel, a landing net and a rucksack, are all that's needed for some top pike sport, try dropping a spinner or plug into all the likely looking spots as you walk along.

Decathlon Angler of the Month

The biggest selling point to the sport of angling is that it can be enjoyed by people from all walks of life, age or sex, there simply is no better sport where everyone that participates can do so on equal terms, even given ill health or disability, any angler can enjoy a successful days fishing, its no wonder angling is the most popular participant sport, in the UK.

So this months Decathlon Angler of the Month award goes to a lady angler Pat Kavanagh from Stourbridge, who competing in a recent Veterans match at Ockeridge Pool, weighed in 23-8-0 and beat the male competitors on the day, no mean feat given the competitive nature of these over 65 year old, veterans matches.

On the previous match at Woodland View, Pat finished second with 27-12-0.

So Pat is the Christmas Decathlon Angler of the month and all she has to do is take a copy of this article into the Decathlon store at the Merry Hill Centre, to claim her Geologic Reel prize.

Martin Hall 2lb River Roach

I get a lot of emails and phone calls from anglers across the area with pictures of exceptional fish of all species. This year alone I have taken or seen pictures of pike to 30lb, barbel to 16lb, perch to 4lb, bream to 15lb and chub to 7lb and each one of those captures represented a fish of a lifetime for those anglers.

The size of true specimens of each particular species vary from region to region throughout the UK, but only one species has a benchmark that is absolute throughout the country, a 2lb roach is still the pinnacle of a coarse anglers ambitions, as this most delicate of species do not attain that magical figure easily and are nowadays more likely to come from stillwaters than rivers, a 2lb roach from a stillwater is an exceptional capture, but a 2lb roach from a river, is a fish of many anglers dreams.

Martin Hall from Dudley earlier this year was featured displaying roach above the magical 2lb mark from Himley Hall and to top an exceptional angling year for the Russell Hall based angler, he's bettered that by catching a 2lb specimen from the River Severn at Worcester, taking a unique double in 12 months that anglers have spent whole lifetimes trying to achieve, Christmas certainly came early, for one Black Country angler!

Christmas help for anglers partners

With just 10 days to go to Christmas, I've started dropping hints, leaving angling magazines open at certain pages with no luck, so now I've resorted to writing a top five wanted' items in this column, in the hope that someone takes the hint on at least one of these items.

Might be an idea to leave this page open on your computer, if like me you would fancy any of the following.

* Drennan 13ft Series 7 Carp Waggler Rod * Shimano Stradic 4000 GTM-RB Reel.

* Preston Innovations Onbox 4 drawer seat box.

* Korum Accessory Chair.