PROSPECTS for the next few weeks are nothing less than excellent, and all you pleasure anglers must take full advantage while you can.

I know the weather has been less than kind of late, but it remains unseasonably warm and that is most significant. The fish are more active than usual for the time of year and, with natural food becoming more scarce, the bait on your hook becomes very attractive indeed.

The fish know that winter is just around the corner. It is essential for them to feed heavily in order to put on weight to see them through the hard times. Provided you find where the fish are holding you will have no problems in catching.

All waters show a great improvement about now. In fact autumn has been my favourite season for as long as I can remember. The only trouble I have is deciding which venue to fish, for they're all so attractive.

Autumn catches of bream from local stillwaters can be excellent while temperatures remain high. Despite the breezy conditions which often prevail in the Autumn, bream continue to feed heavily in shallow water - especially when that wind is in the south.

My best bags of roach, though not necessarily the the heaviest individual fish, have always come in the autumn, occasionally from stretches of canal but more often from larger waters and, in the now distant past, from the Ribble.

There remain roach in the Ribble, but in many less numbers than in those days. There are some big ones too, with Church Deeps at Preston a favourite haunt, but not enough to warrant being a specific target.

That, these days, is generally reserved for barbel, certainly in the autumn. Chub definitely must take a back seat for the time being as barbel appear ravenous, and easier to tempt than at any other time of the year.

You will catch them on the float, but leger is the top method. Flavoured luncheon meat and, after a flood, lobworm, are the top baits.

If you do fancy a big Ribble roach, and they are pristine fish, then try breadflake on the hook with liquidised bread in a feeder. There's no need to fish too fine nor to use baits very small. You must remember these are big fish - and you might even latch onto a big chub or barbel which you want to land.

Caster is definitely the top roach bait for the canal locally. With there now being so many skimmer bream present however, more action is often had with a groundbait and maggot approach.

For those bigger stillwater bream however, like those in Foulridge Res, you must not go after them without plenty of redworms (those you collect from muck heaps)! If you can get enough to chop up for your feeder then so much the better, but you must have them for the hook.

I like to use the worm with a caster, and with caster in the feed also. Those you put in the feed must of course, be sinkers - so separate them. Don't waste the floaters though, crush them and mix into the groundbait at the start.

I suspect there will be plenty of redworms and casters in evidence at the final National Championship of the season today. It is the premier event on the match calendar, being the First Division, and is taking place on Somerset's huge Huntspill, where a big bream weight will definitely win it.

The venue really doesn't suit teams from the North West and it is no surprise that Todmorden AS do not figure high on the bookies favourites list. Nevertheless, with plenty of small fish to go for, their chances of retaining their status must be reasonable - let you know next week.

Staying with matchfishing, the most popular Irish week of the year saw plenty of local anglers in action. The King of Clubs was on in Co Cavan and a flooded River Shannon hosted the Banagher Festival. Lough Mucknow, at Castleblaney, welcomed the Monaghan Paris event, and it was this one which saw local heroes take the honours.

A strong contingent from the Nelson/Colne area always tackles this one and, this year, they found ideal conditions and loads of roach waiting. Five to seven metre whips were the order of the day with up to 12 pints of caster being fed per session (yes 12).

Dave Wells, from Nelson, despite fishing under the Tri-Cast Calder banner, won the individual honours, and £750, with only seven penalty points and a four-day total of 92kg of roach.

That's a great average of almost 50lbs of roach a match for Dave - with his best day's weight being 64lbs. That wasn't the best weight of an event which saw over 10,000lbs of roach landed by the 64 anglers. That honour fell to Dave's workmate and Tri-Cast colleague John Townend who put almost 70lbs on the scales on day four.

Tri-cast Calder provided the top pair in Dave Finnegan and Steve Allinson. Dave Wells and his partner John Hannah (from Wolverhampton)? were second.

There was one outstanding catch at Banagher, where all angler struggled with high water levels. Chorley angler Paul Bottomley eclipsed the event record with 167lbs of bream from the hot peg at Bullock Island.

That was more than double the previous best weight but, with points not weight deciding the overall winner, it wasn't enough. Fletcher Engineering-backed Paul finished fourth - adding only 30lbs to his weight in the next two days.

I know you may have been blown off the canal last week. You may also have been half drowned on a rapidly ring river in midweek. As a result you may have caught little and don't feel like going out again. If that's the case just think - the first frost is just around the corner and can you afford to miss out?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.