Free Lure with Every Beer! Well Sort Of.

I'm off to south west France in a couple of weeks so I’ve been getting my fishing kit together.
I’m been hoping to spin for trout while I’m there. So I bought some new 5-10g (quarter ounce) lures and was about to buy some spinning blades too when I remembered bottle cap lures. I'd seen these things in action as a kid, and like so much stuff you can make at home for nix, they match the stuff you can buy bite for bite and you get the added satisfaction that only home made kit brings.
Best of all they are very easy to make. OK. Correction they really are very very easy to make.
First the hard bit - drinking the beers. Mission accomplished.
Then retrieve the caps from the recycling bin - you and I would call it interference (or sabotage) Mrs SBW calls it tidying up.
Use a nail to make two holes in the cap, near-ish to the edge, exactly where depends on the size of split rings you have to hand.
Fit split rings
There are two (or more) schools of thought as to what shape to make the lure
A. a tunnel or shell shape that creates turbulence and bubbles as you pull the lure through the water.
B. a Z shape, which will act as a propeller as it moves through the water.
Now for the technical bit: ring one gets a swivel, ring two gets a hook.
Jobs a good 'un.

Beer-Fishing-Recycling. It's All Good

I though I’d have quick look online, in case anyone had really innovated with a 17 bend design, and boy did I get a shock.
People actually buy them!! They pay $30 for Six -THAT'S $5 EACH!!
Only in real life - you couldn't make this stuff up!!!
A guy has set himself up in business selling them. Shrewdly exploiting the brand loyalty many of us feel towards our favourite brewski he sells them by beer brand.
I can't see the fish thinking 'oh no I’m a brand X fish, I’d never bite for brand Y'. But people just ain’t that smart.
He's also tried to play the recycling card, but missed the point by packaging each lure in it's own plastic and card display pack. Hmmm.

Give a man a fish he eats for a day.
Teach him to fish and he sits in a boat drinking beer all day.
Bushwacker.

Mud Larks of Deptford

Mud Lark - ‘A fellow who goes about by the waterside picking up coals, nails, or other articles in the mud.’
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - 1811

On its southern bank, were it meets the Ravensbourne, the river Thames has a natural dry-dock, known as Deptford Creek.
On Sunday afternoon in response to claims of a ‘spawning ground for Flounder’ and ‘squillions of Mitten Crabs’ your pal the Bushwacker and accomplice Deej joined the Creekside Centre’s snappily named ‘Spring/Summer Low-Tide Walk Programme.’
And big fun it was too.
We were issued with thigh waders and broomsticks to use for wading poles and for nearly two hours we were led up-river toward Lewisham.
There were many signs of life, not all of it the stuff vandals leave behind. Between the shopping trolleys and torn down road signs Nature has reasserted herself, the guys who led the walk must have pointed out 25-30 different plants that had self-seeded in the creek and on its walls. Nothing was introduced by the regeneration project; everything there has arrived under its own steam.

The Creekside was the site of many a slaughter house in the century before last, (Tanners Hill is just round the corner) and the sawn bones of cows, sheep and horses poke out of the mud here and there. The Creek was also the launch dock for many a colonial endeavour / piratical raiding party and handmade shipwrights nails litter the site. We had a great time poking around in the mud. Just in case any of the group forgot we were in ‘sarf larn-den’ the guides told us how one school trip to the creek was enlivened by one of the kids finding a handgun sticking out of the mud.

After a few moments to get your eye in, looking through Polaroid sunglasses there are loads of juvenile Flounder in the crystal-clear water and the cast-off shells of Mitten crabs are everywhere. The water must be in good health as Mirror carp, Tench, Trout and Eels have all been caught in the creek.
The chaps showed us how to ‘kick sample’ the bottom, collecting up slit in a white observation tray, we could see hundreds of aquatic creatures swimming about. Londoners are habitually sceptical about the quality of the water in the Thames and its tributaries, but after seeing just how much is living in it I started to believe the guys claim that the Thames is the cleanest metropolitan river in europe.
Would you Adam an Eve it, me old china?

£5 very well spent – if you’re in the area, you gottta go!

"Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts.
So long as we are dirty, we are pure".
Charles Dudley Warner 1800's

creekside centre

Get stuck in
Bushwacker.

Dr. Lure Fishing

Dr Mike Ladle is probably the leading British authority on lure fishing in the salt for Sea Bass (like Stripers in the USA / AKA Suzuki in Japan) and in freshwater for Pike and Carp. He is often credited with kick starting the popularity of salt-water fly fishing in the UK.
Lure fishing with 20-30 pound braid, he takes a stand against the super light tackle idiocy that claims to ‘give the fish a chance’ pointing out that this is actually giving the fish a chance to swim off with a lure in its mouth.
Unlike the fishing journalists in fishing magazines he has no agenda to keep advertisers sweet and sell you new gear. His approach is based on having a small amount of inexpensive gear and large amount of understanding of fish behaviour. His book Operation Sea Angler is free to read online, and his blog is informative as he puts a lot of time into keeping up to date with the latest findings from marine biologists across the world.
Doc Ladle uses his blog to promote his range of DVDs detailing the tactics he uses to fish in the Caribbean. What he doesn’t mention is that he’s also the designer of the SureSpin range of rods – including the highly rated 4SureSpin travel rod. I use Shimano STC myself, but next time it’s a 4SureSpin for sure (!).
One of the good guys check him out
Bushwacker

http://www.mikeladle.com/osa.html

Doc Ladle is asking the UK's fisherfolk to sign this petition to Increase the MLS for Bass to 45cm for commercial and recreational anglers. A very good idea. Please help.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BassMLS/