Practice sessions (Coventry)

With little more than seven days to go before the LACC pairs match I really wanted to sharpen up. It's hard to explain this to non lure anglers but I will try my best to explain. Unlike say with float fishing where you watch a float in anticipation of some kind of movement that indicates a biting fish under it, with lure fishing and more specifically light lure fishing, you feel for the bite or hit. Now at its most savage a hit can mean the rod literally torn from your hands, but when the fish are not really in a very aggressive mood a hit can vary from a solid feeling, to a tug on the line, to the very extreme tiniest tap. As far as I can figure these tiny hits are quite often fish taking the lure into their mouth before spitting it out again, so striking at any suspicious tap can often result in a hooked fish. This is why sensitive rods and non stretch lines are vital to the capture of fish in this light lure world. But no matter how super sensitive your gear is, it means nothing if you're not dialed into hitting those tiny indications and by sharpening up I mean being on the ball and striking those tiny hits quickly enough to convert a half chance into a fish. Rather than use this practice opportunity to try and find fish I instead went to a known hotspot to try a tune up my reaction times.

Venue = Coventry canal - 4hrs

The canal when I walked down the tow path was a state and I very nearly turned tail and went to another venue as the entire surface for miles was littered with oak leaves. What stopped me was the thought if this canal was like it then any other would be as well and it could be that on the Grand union in a week's time I would have to compete with lots of leaf debris, so I pushed on and battled it out.

Total =181cm

This wasn't an easy session by any means. Literally I barely made any actual casts and in the end resorted to simply fishing under the rod tip down the edge as the floating leaves were ruining any casts I made. After covering quite a large section of canal with no results I found the fish tightly shoaled up and random section with no discernible features. I had to work very hard for 181cm of perch and small zander, though the capture of a 51cm jack pike was a very nice way to kick off the action especially on a super light 1-7gram outfit and 4lb line. The hardness of this session was almost a blessing as the lack of action really focused me on hitting every possible chance of a bite and literally I only lost one small zander and a tiny perch all morning.