I have, for a while now, had a proud association with the excellent line manufacturer 'Ultima' who are taking the manufacture of fishing line to a whole new level of excellence.

I was recently pleased to find the post man at my door with a parcel from this great company and, having extensive experience of their excellent product, I eagerly opened the parcel to see what goodies awaited me. I was not disappointed. I was greeted by one of the latest additions to the 'Ultima' arsenal 'Ultima Power Carp'

The very next chance I had, I rushed of to my local lake to do battle with some carp! I tried the line both at close range which, as you know, is my personal speciality and at long range and found that it performed entirely as expected.

Knot strength, visibility in the water and the sheer confidence I felt in this line made for an excellent days fishing. The only problem really is that, when you test out 'Ultima' products, things can get very boring because you know that there is only one word you will be able to use to describe their performance! Excellent!

So it's always been my intention on this site to promote the cause of a less is more approach to this great sport of our's, recently I have stumbled upon, possibly, the single most exciting way to catch fish that there is. A method that takes the focus away from the masses of tackle and lands it firmly back in the realms of angler skill!

I am talking about, what I can only call, single handed angling. My tool of choice is a greys G-Light spin rod. Designed for sea trout on lures this enables the angler to get into all those tight nooks and crannies and actually hunt for fish.

An 11lb carp virtually bent it in half but there was still enough power in reserve to battle the fish away from a nasty snag! Try it, you'll like it!

I'll report more about this new approach in future articles but, in the mean time, crack out that spinning rod in the back of your shed and go catch some monsters!

Easy peasy, about sums up the capture of tench and bream this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking the task of capturing these fish lightly, but the fish (particularly the tench) seemed suicidal today and the simple reason for this I think can be summed up in one word. 'Preparation'.

Several days of regularly feeding a very promising swim meant that I managed to fluke the tench out of an obviously fish filled swim within ten seconds of starting to fish.

Having set up a very simple feeder/float rig, I noticed that the line was wrapped around the tip of the rod. I dropped my rig into the water complete with artificial sweet corn bait and sorted out the tangle.

Upon completion, I was annoyed, to say the least, when I discovered that I had snagged the bottom... At least that's what I thought had happened but when the bottom decided to swim off across the pond, my annoyance turned to shock!

A lovely little girl tench was my reward for not fishing at all really, as you will see from the image above, she was a pretty young thing and it was a joy to have her visit me on the bank. Very next cast and a lovely bream of around 4lb joined her!

In all, a good day, and the tench and bream section of my species hunt completed! I can concentrate now on improving on the size of the specimens and, a little later in the month, doing a little fly fishing for carp!

Those readers of Midland Angler amongst you will see my latest article, in which I lament the poor start to this species quest! I am guessing that there will be a whole different tone in my next piece.

Every now and again I go out for what I call a practise session. Currently I am trying to catch a good bream and a good tench for my on going species hunt.

Since I have a couple of months to do it in, I decided I would leave the camera at home... Big mistake! After about three tiny roach, I struck at what, at first glance, looked like one of the tiny knocks I had been getting off the roach.

This time however, the line didn't move. At first I thought I had caught the bottom until, that is, it began swimming off. Not the greatest of fights (they never are with bream) but a huge fish was landed!

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't have the camera, at a tad under 10lb, it was my personal best (for those who read my stuff, it's a bit of a theme for me, catching big fish when no one is around. At least this time I had a few passing golfers to witness my achievement).

The good news is that I now know that there are big fish in the pond, just like there were last year when I took the photo above (he's about 4.5lb).

So I am very confident that this particular challenge will be substantially easier than the whole roach thing turned out to be!

The angling god that is Keith Arthur has, very kindly, given me the chance to do what I love the most... Talk about fishing! I've recorded a little piece for his show which, I am told, is due to be broadcast on his show on Saturday (7.4.2007).

Because such things always result in a big spike of visitors to this site I thought I would take the opportunity to point out some of the features of this available to you and, hopefully, get you using them. My main dream for this web page is that it will develop into a great online angling community based around the ideal of minimalist angling.

So, Please! Whilst you're here, go and post something in the forum, or stop by for a chat in the live chat facility on this site! Please, also, take the time to sponsor me in my year long quest to use my angling to raise funds for Birmingham Children's Hospital. You can use the online sponsorship form which is fully secure and is as easy as buying your tackle on line!

I'm going to be out fishing when the broadcast is on the air but I intend to be on line at 9:00pm tonight (7.4.2007) so if you want to say hi, talk about your fishing, or just pop by out of curiosity, meet me in the chat room tonight!

Just click on the blue text to go to each section or use any of the other liks on this page!