Explosion Heats Up the Tees! Winning at Angling Participation by Dave Munt

Dave Munt is one of Angling Participation’s stalwarts. He’s been showing people how to fish for years and during that time has got hundreds of people fishing for the first time, or helped them get back into angling. This means that sometimes Dave’s love of match fishing takes second-place to his drive to boost angling’s numbers…

This year’s river fishing season has been hectic for me! On the work front I’ve been supporting angling participation events most weekends on my patch, the North East of England. This has restricted my local match fishing on the River Tees. However, despite not being great for my fishing time it did have its benefits on the social front as I’ve met and worked with some truly inspirational characters! For example, the boys and girls from Leazes Park Angling Association, who lease the fishing in the park lake that lies in the shadow of Newcastle United’s football ground.

This group of youngsters keep reminding me what makes people get into fishing in the first place. Their thirst for knowledge and ability to learn quickly means that there are some brilliant anglers in the making there, which is great news for the future of fishing.

Nature never stands still and rivers are always changing in part due to weather patterns and the effect on fish recruitment. It’s no wonder then, that an ever evolving cycle on flowing water makes for some unexpected angling results! This year on the middle Tees we’ve had an explosion of dace resulting in a number of match-winning 20lb weights. The largest of which was a brilliant autumn weight of 44lb.

One of the most memorable matches I fished this season took place on the hottest day recorded for years. The temperature was over 30c but the fish still fed and I finished up weighing in 17lb 12oz of dace. As match wins go it was hot, hard work because only alternating between whip, stick and waggler kept the fish coming…

Interestingly we know that with the arrival of autumn’s cooler weather, these same fish moved downstream to the lower reaches of the Tees and are now producing match wins from Yarm right through to Stockton. It just goes you can only catch what’s in front of you, so keep trying, and get out there – get fishing!

Dave Munt
Regional Officer for the Angling Trust, match and all-round angler.
@DavidMunt2
facebook.com/dave.munt.94

You can contact Dave about free fishing events that he runs which are funded by the Environment Agency, and funding for clubs and fisheries.

Don’t forget…
You’ve still got time to #GetOutThere and #GetFishing on rivers before the start of the close season from midnight on March 14th.

More end of the river season blogs:
Days of Dace… and other things! My winter on the river by Rob Hughes
Grubbing around for barbel… Trying something different by James Roche
Perchfection! The lure of a new challenge… by Dean Asplin