Jan 8, 2026 · 3 hr 2 min · 15 segments
Kim Milsom breaks his silence in this exclusive interview. One of the world's most respected anglers reveals the truth behind his decision to leave fishing 25 years ago, sharing a story never told…
Matt GodfreyHostTobyHost
your practicing like Kim like obviously you took it very very seriously with what you're saying there, but I mean, tell me a little bit about the Gloucester Canal and what that taught you about fishing, because it's a venue we still fish now.
What did it teach you? What did you learn on the Gloucester that were really significant? It must have been quite a few things from that venue.
You learn whether you need to fish over depth or dead depth or what you're going to do.
It taught you things, a lot of the Gloucester sloping and you learned that you never feed past where your float's gonna be, you feed short of it so that any food moves down to where you're fishing.
It taught me, You don't wanna just put all your eggs in one basket and fish one line.
One of the big things I learned is that when you're competing, you typically fish two lines.
You don't wanna fragment the fish all over the place, but two lines, feed them both and work between them and never, fish a line out when you're catching fish on a line as they start to slow up and it gets harder don't stay there leave it alone because if you've caught too many out of a shoal and they're getting wary leave the last few there let them get confident and attract their mates in then go back to fish for them i'd have people who just didn't understand it they say you were catching on the feeder but you've stopped and gone on the pole you'd have caught so much more if you carried on the feeder you're catching skimmers you only caught roach on the pole They just didn't understand by resting it, you went back out and caught skimmers again and you'd caught roach on the pole and you've just won the match with a mixed bag.
And they haven't because they stayed on the feeder and they only caught half as much as you because they caught all the fish, scared the others off.
they hadn't rested it resting a peg feeding it giving the fish confidence being in touch with what's happening really thinking about it understanding how fish feed i used to keep an aquarium with things like gudgeoning roach in it and watch them feed honestly you learn all sorts of things what what did you do with that where was it just in the house i just kept an aquarium in the house and had some proper fish in it.
But things like Gudgeon, which everyone thinks are just bottom feeding fish, they would usually intercept the food before it hit the bottom.
Like if I was Gudgeon fishing, because you've got to catch lots of them and you want to see the bites quickly i'd have a quite a short hook length with a number 13 shot on it that which you could see land on a very fine bristle and if they were feeding really well and you were fishing dead depth for gudgeon i'd actually slide the number 13 shot right down so it was touching the hook and when they're feeding well in intercepting the bait on the way down you knew the rhythm of the float settling and then the 13 landing.
your practicing like Kim like obviously you took it very very seriously with what you're saying there, but I mean, tell me a little bit about the Gloucester Canal and what that taught you about fishing, because it's a venue we still fish now.
What did it teach you? What did you learn on the Gloucester that were really significant? It must have been quite a few things from that venue.
You learn whether you need to fish over depth or dead depth or what you're going to do.
It taught you things, a lot of the Gloucester sloping and you learned that you never feed past where your float's gonna be, you feed short of it so that any food moves down to where you're fishing.
It taught me, You don't wanna just put all your eggs in one basket and fish one line.
One of the big things I learned is that when you're competing, you typically fish two lines.
You don't wanna fragment the fish all over the place, but two lines, feed them both and work between them and never, fish a line out when you're catching fish on a line as they start to slow up and it gets harder don't stay there leave it alone because if you've caught too many out of a shoal and they're getting wary leave the last few there let them get confident and attract their mates in then go back to fish for them i'd have people who just didn't understand it they say you were catching on the feeder but you've stopped and gone on the pole you'd have caught so much more if you carried on the feeder you're catching skimmers you only caught roach on the pole They just didn't understand by resting it, you went back out and caught skimmers again and you'd caught roach on the pole and you've just won the match with a mixed bag.
And they haven't because they stayed on the feeder and they only caught half as much as you because they caught all the fish, scared the others off.
they hadn't rested it resting a peg feeding it giving the fish confidence being in touch with what's happening really thinking about it understanding how fish feed i used to keep an aquarium with things like gudgeoning roach in it and watch them feed honestly you learn all sorts of things what what did you do with that where was it just in the house i just kept an aquarium in the house and had some proper fish in it.
But things like Gudgeon, which everyone thinks are just bottom feeding fish, they would usually intercept the food before it hit the bottom.
Like if I was Gudgeon fishing, because you've got to catch lots of them and you want to see the bites quickly i'd have a quite a short hook length with a number 13 shot on it that which you could see land on a very fine bristle and if they were feeding really well and you were fishing dead depth for gudgeon i'd actually slide the number 13 shot right down so it was touching the hook and when they're feeding well in intercepting the bait on the way down you knew the rhythm of the float settling and then the 13 landing.
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