Effective vulgarity wins over artistic romance for me.

I suppose that right now I should be regaling a tale extolling the virtues of fishing a pristine chalk stream using a beautifully crafted centrepin reel and of how the line flows from the spool like silk, before my vintage style hand made topper float is pulled from sight by a lady of the stream. But I can't! I simply can't, as the truth is I tried to fulfill this romantic notion that I had created in my head and failed dismally. It wasn't that I didn't try and it wasn't that the fish weren't there, because they were. It is just a simple case of I am no trotter! and the worst of it is that I have the technique and the skills to send a float sailing down stream smooth as I like.The bare fact is that after very little trying on my part and only a few finger sized fish, I discarded the artistic and embraced the vulgar. Within an hour of arriving on the river Itchen my float rod was set aside and a forty two gram block end feeder crashed into these hallowed waters shattering the tranquility forever.

By playing to my strengths and fishing a way I felt more comfortable I turned what I felt was going to be a bad morning on its head instantly. I picked a swim no angler trotting in their right mind would fish, loaded an almost gross feeder full of wriggling goodness and let rip. Straight away dividends was paid; every cast the tip rattled round attached to one of the hordes of grayling nailed to the opposite bank.

I think to say the water was shallow and clear was an understatement. As I was fishing a deeper gully on the exit of a bend far across the river, I had a huge shallow mound no more than a foot deep which extended so far from the bank that I reckon not many anglers would have bothered with this one. But temptingly all across the shallows if you looked hard enough you could see small to medium sized grayling holding in indents and behind patches of weed.

I  was happily enjoying regular sport from grayling, but  I knew it was only a matter of time before another interloper shoved in, so I wasn't disappointed when I struck and something silver shot from the depths like a cruise missile. Every time I see this happen I am always amazed. Trout anglers pay a fortune and invest huge amounts of time to chase sea trout on rivers throughout Wales and the South, often failing to catch one for huge amounts of time, and here I am lobbing maggots out wholesale and the damn things can't get enough. Six of these deranged fish took my baits in the first swim alone and everyone made such a fuss it was unreal.

"The worst day on the Itchen is like the day of a lifetime on any other river" someone said to me the other night regarding this river and he is exactly right. This was exactly why we upped sticks and left an area that was producing constant bites and insane amounts of fish. We hadn't travelled all this way to just catch loads of average sized grayling and a few sea trout. We wanted to catch something special and with the Itchen setting such a high bar for what is special, it was a case of getting onto the area that is capable of producing such a fish.

With that in mind we dropped down to fish the gin clear run off the weir pool. I have fished this area a few times before and have only ever caught trout and grayling, but I do know from other sources that it contains some very special fish. Though what I already knew hardly prepared me for what I saw. At the tail of the run where the bottom shallowed towards the surface, a shoal of two to three pound chub hung in the flow. Two to three pound chub aren't that special you will think, and you're right, but they provided a handy point of reference against which to size the other inhabitants of this area.  One of those monster chub looked to be at least twice as big as the little two-pounder, so was maybe five to six pounds. The other one was markedly bigger than the other! So conservatively could have been seven plus even in late summer condition and it wasn't even the chub which were that shocking, it was the roach.

Three roach all over two pounds repeatedly circled along a very specific route, stopping behind various clumps of weed to rest intermittently. At first I thought they were immature bream like the ones that were hanging out in a slack upstream but soon enough their red fins became obvious and they morphed into roach. It was Andy that bagged this swim and as we watched the roach and chub, two huge koi carp rose from the weeds to make our eyes bulge even more. Not wanting to possibly detract from what Andy hoped to do I headed off above the weir to fish what I consider to be both the best and worse swim on the entire fishery.

The M27 swim is where the oasis-like feel of the Itchen and reality collide. It is by my own admission the noisiest swim I have fished ever. The east bound carriageway thunders constantly over the river on the fish-able side and between the sounds of wailing engines and truck sidings flapping in the wind, you can barely hear yourself think. Add to that the fact that every truck that passes by quite literally shakes the ground for hundreds of feet and you have a very strange experience involving a beautifully river and the UK transport network.

Though as bad a place as it is, there is no doubt that it is a fish magnet. My theory is that the constant thunder of traffic, shelter of concrete and deep run all serve to make a very safe haven for resting salmon and shoals of everything alike. Once ensconced the feeder was dutifully filled and swung into the flow. The first fish to oblige were just mediocre grayling, but soon enough the tip hoofed round and a real dirty fighter was on the line.

This very long and lean chub did everything it could to get into every weed bed in the entire swim but patience wore it down and eventually it went into the net, where it did the oddest vibrating I have ever seen from a chub. That fish released upstream I again cast to the exact same spot and this time I never got the rods on the rest. If the bite was savage and sharp the fight was unbelievable. I at first thought I'd hooked another salmon but an amazing cartwheel jump revealed a big brown trout was the culprit.

After the trout the swim seemed to die a death, though this did coincide with the sun being at its highest. It was around then that I got the call from Andy who had been persevering with those infuriating chub and roach. He had on the float hooked and lost the biggest of all the chub in the weir run off. I know the feeling he just gone through only too well. You hook a huge fish in very pacey flow and the damn thing just holds flank on, with the whole pressure of the river on it before flicking its tail and sticking far too much strain on your very light outfit.

Not long after this I too dropped down to the weir and fished above him. Though honestly I should have known better with all the bream around in the swim. From the moment my rig went in those dammed bream knew the food was around. Their whole demeanor changed and I watched time and time again as they circled round my bait picking up freebies. It was not them that I wanted but the single large roach that had broken away from its companions and joined up with the bream. But that was never going to happen! The moment I looked away the rod was nearly wrenched into the river by a rather dozy bream. It was however very interesting to see what happened when the hooked fish panicked. The shoal broke up flying in all directions, only to reform and wait off down stream the roach included. By the time I had unhooked the bronze bugger and released it away from the swim, the damn things were back on the spot, head-down like nothing had happened.

By late afternoon I was done trying to avoid the bream whilst picking out a single roach and was a bit lost for what to do. I was tempted to fish the barbel swim but not having any gear suitable I gave it a miss. With only an hour or so left I decided to just return to the motorway swim and sit it out for another chub or a big roach on the bread feeder. Putting my bank sticks back in the previous holes I settled into the worn swim thinking it would just be a case of whiling away my last hour watching a motionless tip in a used up swim.

First cast the feeder touched down on hard bottom and I put the rod down. Moments later the tip slowly bent round as if a huge clump of loose weed had snagged on my line. Anyone who has ever fished a chalk stream will be familiar with the massive chunks of weed which randomly come down like icebergs through the day and dislodge your rigs constantly. Picking up the rod I gently began to haul back my rig only to find the weed hugging the bottom and moving up stream some serious intent. It was a little surprising that my weed clump had suddenly turned into a mystery fish. Having seen carp in this swim before and from it's laborious fight, I suspected I was about to get turned around and spanked when a carp woke up, but no it just plodded around until it saw a weed bed, where it dived straight towards. Even more surprising was the fact that could stop it and my five pound line held. Maybe it wasn't a carp after all. With no salmonid acrobatics and it being far too big for a roach, identification was simple. It was a chub and a good one at that judging from its length when it rolled on the surface. With nothing but clear water between me and it the result was a forgone conclusion. With another decent chub in my net is was made up but when I went to lift it over the reeds the net pole began bending worryingly and I soon found out why...

This chub was in a different league to the first. It was around the same length but with a head bigger than my fist, shoulders to match and it seemed twice as thick as the other one. I think the term I used to Andy when I gave him a call to come help photograph it was 'Goliath'. Seeing the size of it I was shocked to find it only weighed 5.7lb but like all the fish we had caught it was very lean and still in summer condition. 

From examining the fish we both agreed where it was lacking body mass was in its stomach. This one like the other had a lot of feeding to do before winter, which makes sense as for months now it had only been non nutritional fly anglers on the beat. Given the overall size of this chub I think realistically that it could easily pack on a pound to a pound and half before Christmas. Which could make its top end weight close if not seven pounds.

The pictures we took didn't really do the fish justice but that was down the fishes poor behaviour. I'd rested it for a good while before the photos as it seemed very dazed and that consideration came back to haunt me as you can see from my top behind the fish.

The chub was a fine way to end an already productive trip back to the Itchen, but I wont deny that the sight of those giant chalk stream roach is burnt into my mind and I still can't believe that neither of us came remotely close to hooking one. It is as I said before, the Itchen like many Southern chalk streams, set such high bars for what is a good fish that a fish of a lifetime back home is just an average fish on these wondrous rivers.

I nearly pooped myself.

Two or more years ago I witnessed the capture of a huge roach from one of my local club waters, and when I say huge roach, I mean a huuuge roach. The irony of  that capture was that I, the witness, was more excited about it that the captor.   

The chap who caught it, without being derogatory, was quite obviously a novice judging by the way he handled his gear, and  indeed what he was using to fish. But neither tackle or experience counted diddly squat in this instance as he had landed by chance the largest roach I have ever seen in the flesh. To compound the insanity of the situation even more he beached the poor thing onto a concrete bank before unhooking, flipping it back. Afterwards he turned and proclaimed to me, who I should say was standing agog wide eyed and slack jawed, that what he really wanted was one of the ten pound carp he'd seen drifting around under the surface.

The image of that gargantuan roach has been burned in my mind ever since and although I have not obsessed over it, it has remained high on my investigating list, which by the way is a considerable length. With the season gone and year round lakes now high on my agenda, I decided it was about time I went back and did some roach fishing at the site where I last saw that amazing fish.

Snitterfield reservoir can only be described as a bleak looking place on its best day. Keith summed it up very well while talking him the other day, when he said it was like fishing on the moon and he is right, it is like sitting on the edge of one of those giant lunar craters, as though filled with water. Other than its barren look this lakes distinctive feature is it's generous fish population; honestly on the right day this is the barrel referred to in the saying, 'shooting fish in a barrel'. I once arrived there at half nine with two pints of fresh maggots on a sunny day. By eleven thirty I was floater fishing for carp! not because I had seen any carp about, but rather to keep the boiling and voracious silvers of all sizes on the feed, I had used every grub in my bait tub in little over and hour and a half. 

Even in the dead of winter the roach feed hard, and plying a pint or so of fluro pinkies into the water can reward with very respectable nets of roach. So that was my plan for this trip. I knew the water would still be a long way off warming up, but hopefully the roach would still be in winter mode whilst the sun might be twanging at their appetites.

I can't deny thinking quite arrogantly to myself before I cast out 'are you ready for this' as I sat there looking out over the sheet of water. Turns out I was not ready for this, as what I was thinking what might happen did not;  there was no cue for my free offerings and after an hour I had scratched little more than two small roach. Fine lines, small hooks and clock work catapulting of small quantities of grubs was not doing the business at all. I searched all depths of the water in front of me from hard on the bottom all the way up to merely inches from the surface and found zip.

After a further hour of sticking it out, it had become plainly obvious it was either a case of no fish or no feed. So as I quite often do in situations like this, I made a move to the very opposite sort of swim to the one I had begun in, and in Snitterfield's case that means a swim that looks exactly the same at the opposite end of the lake. The move was fruitful to a certain extent but was my no means bountiful. In the new shallower area the water was obviously warmer but still not quie enough to spark the whole ecosystem off, and the result was just more small roach.

As I had right until dusk available I made the decision to stick it out and gamble that as sun dipped off the water and the skies darkened, maybe just maybe, a spell of heavy feeding might ensue. But it was way before this that the high light of the day occurred...

After loads of really poor bites where the black antenna of my crystal waggler never went fully below the surface, I watched another timid wobble suddenly just slide away confidently to my left. The strike was met with a fabulous hooping of carbon and vibrations being sent along the now tensioned line, that was the most glorious repetitive banging a roach angler could wish for. 

This was a decent fish and it was keeping very deep with some serious determination. Not daring to put too much pressure on the hair-like hook link I let the clutch loose and let the rod absorb the fishes power. Then when it first rolled I swear I nearly pooped myself instantly! It was huge, and more importantly it was silver. The net was in my hand from relatively early in the fight and I always knew I would take the slightest chance to net the fish. The head of the net was submerged ready so when I saw it roll again right over it, I automatically lifted.

After letting the bale arm off the now rested rod, I pulled the net towards me through the water before lifting it out. Even under the surface I could see the perfectly silver scales and just as I lifted it into the light the sun peeped out and caught that pearl stomach.

Can you imagine my disappointment when took my first glance at the huge roach of my dreams and saw this bastard half breed.

Yes my over romantic mind had convinced me in those moments of panic that what I was fighting was of course a thoroughbred roach, not a two pound, four ounce halfling. I was gutted to have made such a snap assumption, as I know only too well this lake has a very strong contingent of these hard fighting fish.

Although it was not the wonder roach I saw that day it was still a nice fish to catch on a awkwardly fishing day. The capture of this and many others over the years has raised a small amount of doubt in my mind about whether the fish I saw caught on that day might have been a hybrid, BUT I can see it perfectly in my mind right now as type this and I am convinced it was one hundred percent a roach. All I have to do is buy all the maggots in Warwickshire, catch a few hundred thousand fish from Snitters and I should be able to find it.

Oh that will be a unicorn then!

I fished next to a patch of wild sown daffodils the other day. That might not seem especially poignant, but I can assure you that it is! As only last week I sat fished next to the very same patch of wild sown daffodils. Fishing in that same spot on two occasions lead me to the very realisation that made this innocuous patch of flowers poignant, and what that poignant realisation was was: in the period of supposedly one spring week those daffodils had not grown so much as a millimetre. I could have put a ruler next to them and taken a picture on both visits and quite honestly I would of had a perfect and impossible spot the difference competition ready made. There had been zero progression on their part whatsoever. No height, no width and certainly no marked movement towards flowering. Their yellow treasure remained hidden within.

One thing that had changed though over the past week was the colour of the canal. It had gone from a nice hint of greenish brown to muddy flood water brown, and now resembled the colour of my Gran's tea. I am not exactly sure where it is, but I suspect somewhere not too far from where I was fishing there must be a brook or stream that spews filthy flood water into this canal when rain falls, and the river rises and ruins the fishing something terrible.

A month or so ago I walked away from this section of canal when it was like this but after last weeks superlative performance, I really thought that even in these terrible conditions the perch would still be in the mood for a feed. I stuck with it and confidently feed the nearside shelf with a slightly more potent mix of freebies than normal to help the fish locate my bait.

Turned out my confidence was ill founded and the perch were in no mood to feed at all. Whether they weren't able to detect my bait due to the turgid water or whether they were just off the feed I did not know, but after two hours my new handmade float had not ventured below the surface once.

When you find yourself in the situation when you have had no action and have resigned yourself to the belief that you will encounter no action, when something does happen you automatically think it is not say a bite, but is instead something else like the wind, or tow, which is now moving your float.
That is exactly where my thoughts had gone when my float began a merry dance. Bites here consist constantly of bob and sink, not a pirouette and drift!  When a bite does not fit the norm I often worry that an early strike might ruin my only chance of the day. This case was no different as I delayed, rod in hand, waiting for something more extreme than a rotation. The moment it dipped even slightly I panicked and struck into a familiar weight but unfamiliar fight...

I could not truthfully estimate the number of perch I have caught on this stretch of canal. What I could say is that being that all related they generally look very similar and for the most part all fight in the same way. This as yet unseen fish was not fighting that way and was instead boring all over the swim quickly and violently. Amid the hordes of perch and zander I have caught over the years, two bream and one roach bream hybrid have been landed amoungst them. The latter of which was what I expected this would be when  flash of silver was sighted as it rolled just before it went in the net.
But how surprised was I when I opened the folds of the net to find no mangy hybrid but instead a perfect unicorn.

Rare mythical unicorn-like big roach are rumoured  to exist in this percidae dominated canal but until now I have never seen one. Once I thought I saw a shoal of small roach dappling the canal one summers night but I put that down as a mirage or a hallucination. Then out of the blue I go and catch a great big fat pristine one in the worst possible conditions.

The rumours now become even more pressing as this, my first roach caught here, weighed one pound five ounces and they are fabled to go grow right up to that most special of weights for roach, two pounds. Now with the general Jurassic nature of the perch round these parts I believe that maybe the roach that survive the hungry horde should be left with enough food to attain such weights, and seeing this fish just makes me believe it even more.

With that fish released far way from my swim and still in a state of  rutilus shock I cast out again only receive two more tepid and shy bites that never developed into anything. There was more than one roach there for sure but no more became confident enough to suck in the mess of lob worm I was presenting. And then it began to snow badly.

I have fished in a few snow showers before and this, like every other one I have not been prepared for, was punishing. Tucked under my brolly the air temperature plummeted as my umbrella became weighed down by the accumulating snow, and I began to shiver. Over the last few weeks my many layers of clothing have reduced here and there by one item at a time, and I was regretting discarding every one hunkered next to the cut.

The blizzard eventually stopped and for a while the sun showed its face long enough to melt any settled snow and for a single average perch  to show up, before I slipped off home with the thoughts of big roach to occupy my mind as I warmed by the fire.