One year on...

Well, that went quickly! This week it will be a year since I took up fishing. After a slow start, the momentum picked up in the second half of the year and now, although by no means an expert, I think I can take my stabilisers off and stop calling myself an absolute beginner.

I can now fish confidently and have even participated in a couple of matches. my best weight being last time when I caught 27lb. Okay not a huge amount but much more than I had expected.

I have been making my own boilies and groundbait. I 'designed' a spoof groundbait mix that I called Two Dog groundbait as a bit of a joke. Used as a method feeder mix it seems to have out-performed anything else I have used and my blog post that gives the recipe has had more hits than any other post by miles! Looks like the joke is on me.

Here I am, a few months off the big six-o, and I have found a new pastime that is consuming all my spare time. I though I was past the point where I could find this sort of enthusiasm for something new. I'm not .

Thanks for the all help that members of this forum have given me over the past year, here's to the next one!

Ralph.

Glad that you've found the number one pastime, even if you left it a little late!

May you have many more years on the bank

Stu

fishplate42 said:

Well, that went quickly! This week it will be a year since I took up fishing....

Click to expand...

Happy (Fishing) Birthday Ralph,
Well done - both for the fishing and the blogs!
Glad you've had a good'un.
Tight Lines :thumbs:

Bet when you started you didn't realise just how much gear you "need":wh
Glad you're enjoying fishing

When I first started I thought I would have a rod and tackle, a net and box of bait. I also thought I would get bored after a few hours...

...How wrong can I be? A twelve hour session is not long enough and I have several rods and piles of associated miscellany. I had no idea just how many forms of fishing there are or just how much discussion is based around bait.

I have got interested in experimenting with bait and had good results. I enjoy it all and have even entered into the dark world of Match Fishing, something I never though I would do in a million years!

Bottom line is I can't understand why I had not taken it up before.

Ralph.

Congratulations Ralph. I've enjoyed reading your blogs over the last year, your enthusiasm for fishing really shines through. You're now well and truly.. addicted (refuses to make generic fishing pun).

All the best in the next year. The great thing is there's still an absolute ton of methods, baits, venues and species you haven't yet experienced. Angling has so much variety to keep it interesting. So keep asking and keep learning and I'm sure you'll have even more fun. :thumbs:

Thanks for all the kind words. It was exactly a year to the day, yesterday, that I started the blog and my interest in fishing. To mark the occasion I found a never before published picture of the second fish I ever caught. The first was of similar size and the other two I caught that day were also similar. No wonder I wanted more.

Ralph.