ANOTHER wonderful warm week has ensured that you have been able to go fishing whenever you wanted and, what's more, be consistently successful.

Although the weather has been exceptional, including record temperatures for the time of year at 28C, the fishing has not been so exceptional. The commercial fisheries have, as you should expect, seen anglers filling their nets. Traditional venues have seen steady, not spectacular, sport.

With the forecast again excellent, you would be foolish not to take advantage if you can.

The rivers are, I'm sorry to say, desperately in need of a decent flush of fresh water. Nevertheless, even here catches have not been poor, with big fish in particular active during both early and late sessions.

Balderstone, Red Scar and Samlesbury have each been producing decent barbel and chub catches. No double figure whiskers reported, but you could reasonably expect fish to 8lbs from the best pegs. Chub exceeding 5lbs have been taken with, again, the angler prepared to fish very early or late most successful.

With loads of eels in the river no serious specimen angler is using maggots right now (that will come later). Flavoured luncheon meat is doing the trick, with Indian spice very successful for both species.

Top anglers at the moment are feeding the swim, through a feeder, with finely chopped meat in addition to hemp and casters. The chopping is best done in a liquidiser before you set off and, to get it into the swim quickly, can be put into an open end feeder plugged each end with groundbait. Finely chopped meat, in the same manner at home, is being used as loosefeed by float anglers. Hookbait is selected from the chopped meat, and a size 16 is the right hook. You must make sure you have selected a meat which sinks - some doesn't.

Dace will maybe surprise you but the target species here is chub. The bait is not particularly selective in terms of size (though you may get a big one) but it can be extremely productive.

The very same finely chopped meat (perhaps I should buy shares) is being used to both attract and catch carp. This applies to commercial fisheries and to canal pegs where you think you know carp will be present.

Again you may be in for a surprise, with skimmer bream seeming to like the meat. If it's carp you're after then you would be wise to fish with a decent sized piece of meat - perhaps flavoured. Indian spice can be good, but probably better will be something sweet or fishy (you can get it in a bottle from the shop).

I'm sure not one angler due to fish the forthcoming Fourth Division National Championship on the Rochdale Canal, will be without meat.

Having said that it was old-fashioned fish, roach, bream and perch which combined to produce the winning catch in the latest Todmorden AS Open.

Ninety-nine anglers fished the event and, even though there were no blanks recorded, many struggled. Not the winner though, who took a succession of a variety of fish from his aquarium peg outside the tackle shop at Durdale Basin. At the end, Todmorden club man Craig Haworth put a nice 15-4-4 on the scales.

I don't know how hard Craig worked for his fine weight, but clearly he worked twice as hard as was necessary. Runner-up Nigel Howells (Eclipse) had only an even 7lbs of caster caught roach and skimmer from peg 199.

Quite obviously, though there will be decent weights in the National and some big fish. Mr Average is going to score excellent team points for just 1lb of fish. I'm sure that bonus fish will be regarded as exactly that - for most of the anglers. Team fishing like this is far removed from ordinary open matches. It seems a contradiction to talk of tactics which will definitely not produce an individual winner, but that's exactly what team captains will have to do.

That applies to just about all the teams, though there will be anglers fishing with sufficient knowledge of the venue to know exactly which are potentially winning pegs, and exactly what they have to do. I'm sure team captains will give these anglers their heads and allow them to do exactly as they want - but these will not be team tactics.

It has become fairly clear over the past few weeks that the National Individual Champion will probably be pegged on Todmorden AS Water.

Hebden Bridge may, in the past, have been some people's choice - but not now.

Last Sunday's event, fished by 81 anglers, did nothing to make me change that view. Admittedly boat traffic will be less on the big day, but it won't make that much difference to most competitors. Red Acre remains a good stretch, and it was here that winner Stewart Ross, of Spenborough, took a single bream and a tench for 5-2-0.

Burnley angler Mick Cookson, a stalwart of Pendle Anglers and, in years gone by, of Burnley Centre NAA, has largely forsaken canal angling. He would catalogue a host of reasons behind a change to river fishing, such as boats, pedestrians, cyclist, groups of youngsters etc etc, all of which would seem reasonable.

Not so reasonable however, as the chance to catch hard fighting specimen fish such as the 7lbs bream he took from the River Swale at Topcliffe recently. Meat was the bait for the super fish, a personal best, and also for a nice 6lbs barbel.

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