Romanian Angling Club UK spring predator race - Hawksbury junction

I was really looking forward to this match being put on by the Romanian Angling Club. Along with the Polish anglers I see regularly on the local lure circuit, the Romanians are brilliant lure anglers and therefore there is so much you can learn from fishing with and against them. Knowing how good they are I suspected that this match was going to a really competitive event but once again all the people involved were the most friendly bunch I have had the pleasure of fishing with.

My only concern was the late start of the match as I knew from previous visits that Hawksbury junction is getting very busy and once that boat traffic started thumping the fishing would only get harder. Luckily with all the rules covered and everyone registered the organizers let us off early and anglers shot off in every conceivable direction.

With competitors lining the banks as far as the eye could see my early priority was to try and find some space in which to fish. It was on my way to find said space that I happened on my friend Ian Whittaker, who was in the process of landing a large section of plywood that was easily over the 15cm limit but sadly not on the capture list for the day.

I had it in mind to try and get the pike box ticked as I theorized that that my best chance to do this was early on whilst the canal still had some clarity. For once I did the right thing and not long in I hooked a big pike which held deep in the deep water before turning and powering off, where upon my line parted. Knowing they were about, I quickly tackle up again and began searching; luckily I found a nice 51cm jack hiding under some lily pads. One cast of my J.M Soft baits grubby shads and it attacked.

From then on though things were very tough. As I expected the sheer volume of anglers was making things harder but by working some cover I routed out a pair of under sized perch which were both only just under the 15cm size limit. With the canal quickly coloured I began targeting known zander spots and a few in I hooked a nice little zander of 29cm.

With the hard work done I figured my best bet was to scale down and try to bag a perch over the size limit. If I could just get one I would get the 50cm bonus and then any other captures would be extras. I don't think I have ever worked so hard for a single small perch in my entire life. I switched to fishing the dropshot and micro lures down the edge and after a couple of timid attacks and walking an entire length of canal I found just what I was looking for hiding close to my own feet.

Total = 95cm + 50cm multi species bonus 145cm

After waiting round for the all the sheets to be handed in, the chaps from the club began calling out the winners. How gutted was I to miss out on 3rd place by a mere 2cm. I could have kicked myself as I spent the last hour fishing bigger lures whereas had I stuck with the dropshot I feel sure I could have scratched at least one more perch to push me into the top three. Oh well hind sight is a fine thing, but everyone including myself had a great time and its a match I will certainly look to fish in the future. Well done to the Romanian Angling Club UK for organizing such a great event.

Practice and Tusses Freestyle league round one.

Earlier on in the year when I first heard Tusses Lure Division would be running a league on my local waters I was very keen to take part. However it wasn't until I started looking at the calender and at the upcoming matches I wanted to fish combined with other fishing targets for the year that I concluded it was going to be too much of a commitment for me to make. But even though I was unable to commit I decided that I would still like to be involved even in a much smaller capacity if possible. So I put it out amongst the people I knew that were fishing that I would be more than happy to be a substitute if anyone needed one. Low and behold it turned out that Greg Bafia from Team Realistic shad was going to miss the first match and his partner, my old friend David Warren, soon asked me to fill in.

Considering I live very close to the stretch this first match was to be on I really don't fish it at all. This is largely to do with it being a bit of a rough urban stretch that is notoriously clear and snaggy. I have done a little bit though here and there and already knew this was by no means going to be an easy event. With little time available my only chance to get out for a practice was for a very short pre-work session the week before the match and surprisingly things went very well...

 Practice - 1 Hour Basin match stretch

65cm

30cm (est)

Total =95cm

The basin itself proved rather fruitless for me even though it did look good for a few hits, but it wasn't until I went walkies outside it that I found myself a couple of hungry predators. The first was a spawned out young female pike which I found lurking close to the edge and the second was a nice match sized zander which was lingering close to a brick wall. Ninety five centimetres in under and hour was a bit of a shock to be honest, but things would be very different in the match with thirty plus other lure anglers jockeying for position.

Tusses Freestyle League round one.

The morning of the match the car park on Leicester row near the basin was full of anglers when I arrived. I recognised most of them from various competitions and events and seeing them all, knowing this stretch to be a hard water thought this was going be a beast of an urban competition. Myself and David had already discussed a rough plan and after the complimentary bacon butties were eaten the event began with a staggered start. Even though we had drawn an early number we were the last team off as David was officiating and that meant we were the last ones away.

As predicted it was a torridly hard affair and we searched so much water in vain, catching very little for our efforts. The fish were very cagey all round; the few small perch we winkled out were really on the small side, the bigger ones near impossible to catch as they were still to spawn. My idea to gamble on taking a pike outfit turned out to be a bad decision as the only pike our team encountered came to David's rod, biting him off in an instant and as for my heavy rig, it pulled nothing but large branches out of the canal. Along with that pike bite off I had one better perch follow my lure right to the surface before turning off and we had handful of very unfruitful nibbles.

The saviour of our match had to be David's spectacular final capture where he dropped a lure straight onto what was obviously a nesting zander which in a savage act of defence tore into the lure and proceeded to jump out of the water like a tarpon. Once landed it was the most magnificent dark fish you're likely to see.

At 44cm this fish was very close to turning the biggest zed prize into a three way tie. Even missing out on that it still served to add vital species points to our score just before the sheets had to be handed in.

Total + species bonuses = 138cm  

1st place - Steve Wilson and Derek Homes (No wasps) = 277cm

2nd place - Phil Kenny and Jacob Stone (Bennett Pred pro team) = 258cm 

3rd place - Slawomir Mikolajczak and Daniel Osinski = 254cm

As for us... we were unlucky to finish in 11th place in this first match just outside the points. Literally one tiny perch could have made the difference for us in this one.

Personally I think I made a big mistake in taking along that second rod as I feel it distracted me far too much and should I have levelled that concentration on just fishing the light outfit I feel sure we could have added a couple of valuable fish to the score which may have made quite a difference to Team realistic shad rankings (Sorry David and Greg). However I already may have my opportunity at redemption in the Freestyle league after being recruited straight away to fill in for another team in round two - the all female Lure Witches team.

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.

Shun on.

I think I might be pissing in the wind... I may have hit a brick wall... and quite possibly find myself on the edge of failure. Anyone who has spent any time fishing for zander know they can be fickle buggers when they want and right now they want. I think it started just prior to zanderfeast 54 not long after Jeff Hatt sounded the horn of helms deep summoning us all to the dog shit laden banks of the canal.

Stupidly I thought this might be the right time to tally up my zander captures for the year which I have been keeping a rough note of as the months tick away. After initially adding up all the numbers and double checking a couple of times I came to a total of 197, which I was at first a bit disappointed by. But then I sat back and thought about the figures for a while, did a weird calculation (involving adding up sessions through the year and subtracting sessions on venues without zander and sessions not targeting them) and concluded that I have averaged 3.4 zander for every session where I could have caught them. Now, that might not seem a lot of zander per session but given there are blank sessions in there and that zander, as I recently said, have a habit of being a bit fickle, I reckon that average is pretty good in hindsight.

Averages aside, what's bugging me is the total, or more the three I may have caught but not recorded or the three I need to catch to round out 200 for the year. Now I worked this all out on the eve of zanderfeast 54 and really thought that I might have tucked away three measly zeds on a canal stuffed with them. Well, I didn't and neither did any of the locals; in fact only the visitors scored and they caught as nearly many pike as they did zander which shouldn't be the case on a water where zander out number pike 20-1. So I found myself still three zander adrift when I was guzzling down ale at the end of the zed moot.

A week later and now obsessed by catching three zander, I went back to the Coventry canal on a much warmer day only to find the recent rains were creeping into the canal at every entry point, turning it the colour of milky tea. Still though I was up for it as zander love a bit of colour and I was tooled up with lures, dead baits and even some worms for good luck

Turns out not only was I up for it, but the crayfish were too and the unseasonable warmth had kept them active enough to be a bit of a pest. In several spots my little float did that suspicious slow sinking before popping back up out of the water, and every time my dead roach bait came back looking like something with small claws had been picking away at it.

It seemed I might be reliant on fishing either worms or lures to try and scratch away at my target. Normally I would have total confidence in both methods to put a zander or two in hand, but the only type of fish with any inclination to consume anything were perch of about half a pound. I caught quite a lot of them over the few hours I was out and something seemed a bit strange about some of them. Many of the fish I caught had bloody marks on their sides and swollen vents, which made them look like they had been spawning, if that's possible at this time of year.

Sadly by the time I had to get off home all I had managed to land was a load more of these perch which all looked a bit sorry for themselves. Not one single tiny bit of zandery action came my way, not even a missed run. Now, I have never credited zander as being a particularly wily or clever fish, but it seems that one at least may have cottoned on to my intentions and passed the message round the rest, putting the shun on me and avoiding my baits at all cost. So I find myself with a month until the end of the year and I have suddenly set myself a last minute target to achieve and there is this little OCD part of me that won't happy until I have rounded out that number to 200.

God, I hope I can do it for the sake of my own sanity...

Forgotten features.

At a quarter to eight I opened my crusty eyes and reached for my next to useless mobile phone. Even though it was quite light by now the sight of the glaring screen forced my eyelids back down. After scrolling through the various screens I arrived at the alarms page to see all the helpful little green alarm clock shaped symbols which indicated a set alarm still staring back at me. This must be the thirtieth damn time this has happened and maybe the fifth when I was meant to be going fishing. If I was drunk and didn't actually need the stupid thing I would have throw it in a rage across the room.

It was strange though that this should happen on this morning, as the night before I had said to JB that I hadn't made my mind up where to go as yet and intended to do so in the morning. Now I found myself lying under a warm duvet pondering where I should go with three hours scratched off my session. Turns out the noise of me thinking roused my other half, who after repositioning herself, chatted to me in sleepy tones. In these situations I am never normally that receptive to suggestions, but when JB suggested maybe I should just head to a nearby canal I remembered I have for the longest time intended to scout out a section of cut I haven't fished in years.

I was generally quite upbeat and excited even though I was on my way to a bit of a back up session. This canal when I fished it years ago really had its poignant moments and I was hoping it would once again live up to my expectations, then seeing it again the banks held a forgotten familiarity. It might have been bit of a gamble but I intended again fish the drop shot rig and walk the worm around so as I could cover maximum ground, mapping the topography of the bottom for future reference if I was going to return.

My starting point was going to be a spot that always produced some nice perch. Disappointingly the old tree that used to hang low over the cut was long gone and with it the perch that resided in its shade. There was still plenty of far bank cover though and two hours were easily consumed bouncing baits back and forth all over the canal. I couldn't buy a bite for love nor money until I arrived opposite an odd feature on the far bank. First cast at it and a few flicks of the rod and I felt something snatch at the worm which was followed by the rod bending over. After zipping around in the muddy water, a small zander of two pounds thrashed shaking it's head angrily into my net. I was sure there would be others around so rather than mess around I slipped the little zed back away from where I was fishing and quickly cast again. But that was it for that spot, even after thrashing the surface into a foam I could buy another bite.

If I thought that first feature was odd the second one I found could only be described as rare as hen's teeth. In all my years of lingering on canals I have never seen such a prominent, attractive and yet probably over looked feature as this. It's rare that I am one hundred percent convinced that will catch in a spot, sure I like to think I can spot a good swim, but I am never totally convinced. Yet here I was looking at this one, knowing that it would produce.

I picked the biggest, juiciest worm out of the tub, hooked it up and swung it out across the canal. That first retrieve revealed a clean and smooth run back to the bank. The second confirmed fish were present and the on the third a small vicious zander mullered the worm.

After releasing that first fish and going in again I couldn't seem to go wrong wherever I cast. There were perch and small zander all over the area and every cast I could feel them nipping at my worm as it danced enticingly among them, until one engulfed the whole bait and the rod juddered over. It was great fun just catching all those little predators, but as always I soon enough I began to wonder where the bigger ones might be.

In an hour or more of fishing I had figured there was a central concentration of fish in front of the feature, so it wasn't too much to theorize that any bigger predators might be close by but not in the shoal. So I began casting around the hot spot looking for something a bit bigger. Low and behold I was proved right when I felt a really hard hit shoot back up the tight line. The rod instantly bent and the clutch gave line straight away. I have already noted whilst walking the worm that you seem to get a harder fight out of zander when they have actively hit a moving target. This fish was really giving it some and when I saw a flash of white under a big boil I thought I had contacted with the mother of all canal zander. The fight though soon became far to protracted for any zander no matter how aggressive a fish it could be. Then when it came up again I saw a different tail to that of a zander and the mystery was solved.

Twice the long lean little pike tail walked as I got it close to the net. It even thrashed on the surface with it's mouth wide open a few times before it went in the net. Then once in the net it was like a timid little kitten and just lay there looking meek. I have to say that I have never seen such an immaculate canal pike ever; it was literally perfect from head to tail.

After that I knew it was time to leave, but I know I will be going back that spot as soon as reasonably possible, as after seeing what is attracted to that very rare feature and knowing what fish this canal contains, I suspect there is something very, very special that at least visits this spot now and again.

I felt a bit stupid walking back to the car as I've known of this places existence for donkeys years and for one reason or another I've never been back to check it out. Now I am kicking myself for not following my instincts and going back sooner to rediscover this forgotten feature.