Setting The Bar High (but not too high!)

I like targets, having something to aim for helps to keep my mind focused, the tricky bit is setting them at the right level, too high and they risk being unachievable, too low and there's little or no sense of achievement in meeting them.

As it is I enjoy my fishing the old fashioned way using simple tackle, traditional baits and on venues that keep travelling time and costs to a minimum, which means restricting the waters I'll be targeting to those controlled by the club I belong to. Thankfully though my club, the Civil Service Angling Society (CSAS) have the rights to some great stretches of the Thames and a good mix of lakes, all within easy reach of home.

My starting point was the CSAS club handbook, which has a section detailing specimen weights for each water and it's these I first considered before eventually scaling all of them down to weights that are challenging but achievable nonetheless. One added bonus of setting them this way was that it's given me a good idea of which waters each species target is likely to come from, Bream from the Thames at Windsor for example and Crucian Carp from the lake at East Whipley.

With targets set the one thing left was the timescale and as some of the CSAS waters are open all year round I finally settled on from now until March 15th 2015, the end of next season.

It won't be easy but working towards each of the targets I've set myself is going to improve my fishing considerably and more importantly it's going to be great fun!