Hello and welcome to my monthly feature on Bankside’s new look website! As this is the first instalment in the series I thought I’d better start by giving you a bit of an introduction about me, my angling and what I’m planning to include in this article! Here we go then…!

I found it pretty hard going to be honest, I remember having a little 4lb fish first cast on my first trip, thinking “this is easy!” and then blanked for the next 2 months! I’d always been a still water angler and I really struggled to get my head around the Severn, it just looked like a huge, featureless expanse of water to me and I nearly gave up! But then my next fish tipped the scales at 13lb 2oz, which is still my PB and since then I’ve been obsessed with the Barbel! That fish was a total fluke but to me that’s the appeal of fishing the rivers-you never know whats going to turn up next, which is what drives me on when I’m standing in a foot of floodwater at five in the morning!

WINTER DAYS SESSIONS: PART 1

Ask any carp angler which two months of the year they are least likely to go angling in, and you can more or less guarantee that January and February will be mentioned the most. I’m the first to agree that it’s hardly the most inspiring period in the carp fishing calendar, with many anglers either hanging up their rods or switching their attentions to other more co-operative species, such as chub and pike. However, it’s not all doom and gloom on the carp side of things. Pick the right water and they are still catchable, and what’s more, you don’t need to spend long periods on the bank to be in with a chance. Long sessions in the winter can be a pretty dour affair, and although I do know a few anglers who actually prefer to fish in the winter, I know a lot more whose carp fishing trips through the colder weather can be counted on one hand....