The giant Birmingham Angling Association have banned the use of livebaits on all of their waters.

There has been much discussion between anglers on the rights and wrongs of live-baiting.

In one of the angling weeklies and last Saturday’s Daily Star, Monty Finnemore, who is the manager at Predator Angling Centre in Kidlington, voiced his views on the matter.

Monty, who has fished for pike for more years than he would care to remember, feels that using livebaits is totally unnecessary and with the choice of deadbaits which are now around, he reckons your catch-rate should not drop.

Monty said: “I’d ban livebaiting tomorrow, if it was up to me. There’s no need to use live fish to catch pike.”

He feels there are not enough silver fish around to be used as bait, and also points to the fact that some anglers catch fish from one water and then use them on another, so possibly introducing disease`.

These are Monty’s views and not necessarily those of Predator Angling Centre.

l Tony Gee is hoping to form a list of all the largest species of fish caught from the River Thame over the years.

He showed me a photo of a Mr Buckingham, who was a member of Oxford Waltonians back in the 1940’s. He was holding a brace of roach weighing 3.5.0 caught from the Thame at Wheatley.

Anyone with information can email Tony on mail@acornangling.co.uk