The Thinking Tackle Podcast.

Welcome to the Thinking Tackle Podcast.

Now, if you haven't already, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

Now, it is my very great pleasure to be joined by a good friend of mine, and I have to say, although he's too modest to admit it, one of the very best anglers that I know personally.

Joe Forrester, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Rich.

Now, I obviously know a lot about your fishing over the last, you know,

we've known each other for getting on for 15 years.

Yeah, maybe over, maybe more than 15 years.

And it would be probably a little bit more now. But, and over that time, you know, your fishing has been always, it's always impressed me.

You've done it unlimited time. You've had more time in recent years. But I do want to go back a little bit

further to start with. And the thing that's always fascinated me with you is how serious you seem to be as an

angler from quite an early age. And I want to talk about the time that you spent on the river

near your home, which is in sort of Oxfordshire, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Abandon,

which is on the River Thames. So it was a mile bike ride. I used to get every single day. Really? I mean, you could have taken an easy option, Joe. You could have gone to any number of, you know, Milton Pools or somewhere with lots of carp in. But you chose to go to the river. Yeah. I mean, we did used to go to sort of like linear fisheries and stuff like that. But obviously we didn't have money or anything. my mum would drop us off like for a couple of nights every summer holidays or every school holidays. But apart from that, the only place I could go, having a bike as transport, was a few local lakes that had not much in or all the River Thames. I mean, that is, and it's serious fishing. You're not going to, as a youngster, you're not going to get a lot of encouragement on the Thames, are you? Oh no, no, no. I was well out of my death. It's like, yeah, didn't ever hardly see a carp. But I didn't just cartfish. I did everything. Like, one week I decided to go cart fishing. and the next week I'll be pike fishing and I'd have a feeder rod out brain fishing,

perch fishing pike.

Right.

It just... I fancied doing at the time. What you might consider, like a proper apprenticeship? Yeah, yeah, yeah, did everything, yeah. You also caught big barbill because it was around that, was it around that sort of time that the guy Robert caught his Thames record from that sort of area. Yeah, no, the barble were a lot later. I didn't ever tried to catch barbill as a kid but failed miserably. Yeah, they weren't until... We've got a big one there. We'll come back to that maybe. Yeah, that was a lot later on, really. That was probably 15 years ago now. That's gnarly, isn't it? Is that old gnarly? it is yeah yeah Darth court is well didn't me yeah yeah that's a big that's a real big

and 15 years ago now but yeah that's gnarly isn't it's that old gnarly it is yeah yeah yeah

that's a big that's a real big and and but actually the for instance there were huge

barble and big carp all through that bit of river that you had access to yeah yeah the

carp round my way were they were incredible where do you they came from? I think they've been there naturally.

...