Tony Grigorjevs

Roach are one of the most popular coarse fish in the UK and rightly so, they feed all year round and can offer prolific sport if you visit the right venues. In this guide we have compiled some of the best venues where the roach action is sensational and you can expect a great days fishing if you get your tactics right.

When thinking of places to fish, town centers and urbanised areas may not be the first locations that come to mind, but they can offer surprisingly prolific sport. With fish in our rivers facing pressures from predation, urban areas often provide a sanctuary where higher levels of human activity tend to keep predators at bay.

One of the best canal anglers in the land proved he is also a dab hand at other sports as he beat a current world champion at their own game.

Contrary to popular belief, fishing for F1s is far from easy, especially as the temperature starts to drop.

There's something entrancing about spending time by running waters. While there is serenity to be found in the stillness of many beautiful lakes and ponds, these days, as winter firmly takes hold, I’m called away from the crucians, tench and carp that I pursue in the summer months by a siren who occupies more turbulent waters – the lady of the stream: the grayling.

Even in the depths of winter, I always like to feed a bit of bait because at least then I’m actually doing something to pull fish into the swim. That said, lashing loads in will cause any fish that happen to be in the area to head for quieter waters, so when I’m feeding in the cold it’s all about tiny amounts of bait.

On these narrow strips of water, the fish have very little space to push out into, so they back off into empty swims that are out of reach, and don’t return. This is especially the case when there is lots of room on the lake and nothing in terms of features in your swim to hold them, or that they can hide under.

Winter has arrived, and we’ve received the first hard frosts of the year. In my experience, this is a great time to target specimen stillwater roach. There are plenty of open access venues that offer fantastic fishing and the chance of a special redfin over the magic 2lb mark.

We’ve all used supermarket baits at some time or another, be it sweetcorn, luncheon meat, bread, mackerel or dog biscuits, but there are loads of other baits on those shelves that will catch plenty of fish.

There are a lot of match venues in the UK where hand-sized skimmers live alongside their bigger brothers and sisters, and there is certainly a knack to catching this bigger stamp of bream.