Practice sessions (Coventry canal).

I had a spare session on my hands so I headed to the Coventry Canal to try and keep abreast of the ever changing fishscape ready for any new year matches and I was about to find out that although winter is mild this year, the fish are beginning to get into winter quarters.

Venue = Coventry canal - 5hrs

Halfway through this session I got the impression I was being watched even though I was all alone. As you do, I had nervous look round the trees lining both banks of the canal only to see this staring at me from behind. I don't mind admitting the sight of this eerie black silhouette got the old ticker thumping and it took me a few moments to comprehend it wasn't some giant demon hound eyeing its next meal but was instead a black pony!

Total =170cm

Now this session has me wondering if fish populations move or if the topography of the surrounding area combined with the weather is the major factor on fish feeding. You see I worked a very large section of canal that had a month or so ago been very productive, only to catch nothing. Then after getting super mobile and working lots of water and catching only a single oversized jack pike, I located loads of feeding fish in a very sheltered section of canal. Now I can't figure if that previously encountered population of perch has moved into this sheltered section or if there are fish in both areas and only the ones in the sheltered area were feeding.

Half frozen success and river zip.

I can remember my first ever cast of a rod when I was about twelve years old; it was on a tuning circle on the Coventry canal on a summer day. This session lasted all of half an hour as I was so keen to get fishing that I hurriedly set up (which in retrospect took twenty five minutes) and then prepared to make my first cast, took aim and let rip sending the float all of five feet. The wiry line on my cheap Argos reel though carried on spilling from my spool onto the floor. My reaction to this was to flick over the bale arm and reel frantically thus causing my first ever cast to become my first ever tangle, which sent me home in tears to try and get my mum to untangle the mess (she never did).

My recollection of this traumatic moment has been caused by me having received a bait caster set up for xmas from JB. For quite some time I've been considering one to use with heavier lures and so when asked what I wanted by way of gifts I opted for an ABU combo to began my journey to pro Bass angler.
So it was that as soon as I could get out with it I found myself walking towards a lake with this sparkling outfit all spooled up with brand new braid, after watching several Youtube videos to educate myself on using a baitcaster.

It actually went very well apart from I'd chosen a freezing cold day for my first outing with it. I did as instructed and using a heavier lure with the magnetic brake system and cast control set a bit on the hard side, went about gently building my confidence with small casts first and it worked, apart from the water freezing in the guides as I reeled the lures in. After a good hour messing around firing different lures out across the lake I was looking like a seasoned pro and now all I wanted was to score a hit on my new toy.

Having already cast various lures I knew where I had to go to get a hit. Having fished this particular lake many times I know the pike have a deep love for hitting white Lake fork frog lures mid water in the shallow depth. I like to fish them on wide gape worm hooks so as they ride through any of the many snags in the clear water, but after setting one up I quickly realised that the lure, although heavy, was a bit on the light side for this outfit. After struggling on for a while and only scoring one jack on the new outfit I opted to head back to the car to get a lighter 7-25g outfit which I knew could punch these frogs right over the lake and increase my range by 100%+

On this second lighter set up I soon got into the fish with pike practically coming to the surface to hit the lures, even though half the lake was cover in ice. I love fishing this shallow water in the winter as the clear water gives you a great view as pike come after the lures. Sometimes all you see is a flash of gills as they engulf the lure and other times you can spot a dark missile tracking the lure, it's great fun.

Even in the cold the hits are violent and legs are quite often ripped off by attacking pike.

With half the water under a lid of ice I had limited options and after scratching a pair of average sized fish from some swims I wouldn't normally bother with, I left the lake intending to plunder the river Avon with my new outfit.

A short car journey later I was on a section of the Avon that in the summer fishes amazingly well for zander. Using 10gram jig heads and various shads I can normally rely on this area for a few hard hits. My romance with the baitcaster continued as before and the lures were flying over the river. The fish though were nowhere to be seen and very perplexed I gave up after fishing every spot along the stretch.

Practice sessions (GU)

I am endeavouring to keep practicing as if I were fishing Light lure matches for a couple of reasons; firstly although there are no matches yet on the horizon, I want to stay sharp for when they start and secondly it's a great way to scope out new sections of canal for potential specimen hunting trips over the closed season. With both the aforementioned reasons in mind I dropped onto a new section of the Grand Union canal over the holidays to test the waters.

Venue = Grand Union - 5hrs

It was evident from very early on that the perch were not going to play ball and I suspect the reason was the clarity. A few days of rain and the warm temps, combined with the agricultural nature of the surrounding area and still active boating population had turned the canal to the consistency of butter nut squash soup. Literally a few croutons, a swirl of yoghurt and it would have looked the part.

Total = 142cm

In retrospect I worked the smaller lures for far too long at the start of this session under the deluded impression that it was just a case of locating fish. Once it had dawned on me to fish bigger, brighter lures close to the cover, most of the session had passed. But once I made the change to fishing an 8cm Realistic shad split tail gudgeon in the gaudy yellow/pink pattern I call rhubarb and custard I was finally in contact with some fish. For all my hard work and some results by way of better quality fish, I wouldn't say I had located any focal points that would warrant a follow up specimen trip, as the fish were randomly here and there and could quite likely not be in these spots on a return trip.

Yearly Itch.

Me and the lower Itchen fishery are by now old friends. Frankly I know this bit of the Itchen better than I know many parts of my local river Avon and I now when I go find myself looking for really different targets. Initially when I first made this pilgrimage with Good old Keith 'jobbers' Jobling and old Jeff 'man' Hatt all those years ago my target fish was out and out grayling as prior to that I had only caught one. A few hundred down the line and unless they're big I ain't bothered and so I find myself more focused on trying to catch fish like dace or that giant gudgeon that haunts my dreams. Thus after an easy journey south with Mick Newey in the driving seat, I ventured off onto the feeder streams searching for dace whilst Mick went off to plunder the main river.

From the off it was obvious the grayling were for once not having it. As an example my personal best catch for the first hour on the Lower Itchen fishery was over thirty grayling, whereas on this trip I landed merely two grayling in the first hour. I fished just about every decent run over the first four hours of the day with little more to show for my efforts than a small grayling, a better fish and a chub that got away after it dived deep into a bed of rushes and I was unable to extract it.

With no luck on the feeder stream I slipped back on the main beat to check out a few holding spots where I'd spotted dace before. With dull skies overhead even my brilliant Fortis polaroids were struggling to help me pick out any fish in the clear shallow water so I concluded to trust fate and after feeding maggots for a while began trotting the runs quickly as the speed of the water seemed faster than ever. Two or three trots down the run something powerful sank my float as it raced amongst the flowing weeds beds and now I was stood atop a croy with my fifteen foot float rod hooped right over as fish used the flow, to its advantage. After the culprit ripped the swim apart and I faffed around trying to haul it up the flow Mick helpfully stepped in downstream to bundle a chunky brown trout into the net below me.

After that initial one, the trout flood gates seemed to open and in every swim I cast into the first thing the find my hook bait was another trout. The little buggers were ruining every swim I fished and on several occasions I saw grayling scattering from all the fuss. Not that it mattered because we practically had the beat to ourselves and through the morning we worked down following the twists and turns of the river fishing any likely looking swims.

One of my highlights of the trip had to be whilst playing a trout in a deep bend swim. The fish was making a bit of monkey of me in the pacey water. I repeatedly worked it upstream again and again in the gin clear water until a third party a entered the fray. Out of the depths rose a big old Itchen pike attracted by the battle and it had half a mind to have a pop at the trout on my line and I had half a mind to let it. I think on this occasion curiosity was what drew it near rather than viscous hunger as after thrashing straight past its nose the pike sank back to the depths. Luckily my net seemed a better option than the pikes teeth and the trout soon gave up and freely posed for its picture before being released in the gravelly shallows. 

All to soon the day got away from us and with barely a few hours light left before we had to away back north both myself and Mick opted to dig in with the feeders and see what the static baits could do. On the penultimate swims Mick caught a whopping bream from a deep bend swim. Fishing above him I managed three nibbles and a large snag which snapped me off.

My final swim produced a decent run of below average grayling for me but not the roach or chub I was hoping for. Mick however had disappeared and it took me a while to locate him fishing below the weir at the bottom of the fishery. I have to say what he angled after would have made any anglers eyes bulge clean out their heads. He had located a shoal of roach tight too his own bank which he pointed out to me in the half light. What I saw was wondrous...the smallest fish were pound plus fish and the biggest was easily over two and here they were just feet away holding off the flow no bother by a thing. I hung round as Mick tried his best to catch one of those amazing roach but sadly it was not to be as they were never going to feed. Once again even though I have become very blase about the Lower Itchen fishery it has pulled something amazing out of the bag and of course I will be back again.

New spots and night pike.

Happy New year to any long time followers and I hope you had great holiday and made much merry. Luckily for me I have been fishing quite a lot over the last few weeks leading up to the holidays and thus I have much to catch up on over the next few write ups. My camera phones picture gallery reminds me of all the sessions I've been on and about the furthest one back was a investigation adventure.

I am constantly looking for fresh spots on the midland canal network for the off season when I become pretty much totally focused on canal fishing for zander. As I was driving to another fishing spot on a far away lake I passed over a section of canal which peaked my attention. A bit of research confirmed no discernible ownership and soon enough I dropped by for a proper bit of investigation.

Rather than plonk myself down in one spot I opted to rove around with a lure set-up to try and pinpoint any holding areas. By doing this you never really catch loads of fish, but it does reveal any obvious better areas. At first I thought I'd struck gold when I hooked into a hard fighting fish on a heavily structured bank. It turned out to be a nice perch of 30cm or so. Sadly it was only a speck of gold as I worked the whole area hard with the captured perch retained in the net, hoping to find any shoal mates but in the end concluded it to be a single fish or I had spooked a shoal away.

Bar a few more random small perch caught of obvious features the morning went by very quietly until I randomly discovered a shoal of small zander in the most featureless area I have ever seen. Normally I like the heavy bank side cover sort of areas for zeds but these were right out in the open on a section of hard bank canal with no cover at all, in a raised section. Honestly I'd have missed them if I weren't working the drop with a lure as I walked slowly down the tow path. The first fish was a high thirty centimetre fish as was the one that got off after it.

After working further up I turned back for a second pass which provoked a few more plucks and a second fish over thirty centimetres. Should I have been in a match or practising for one I would have dug in a worked some different methods to ring out as many fish as I could from this bland area but I was investigating a stretch, not just this one spot, so I moved on.

The only other noteworthy action came towards the end of this foray when I got spanked by some monster I suspect was a pike but hope was a perch. I got a really hard hit as I worked a bank side reed bed. The clutch was singing and the super light rod buckled over worryingly as the beast shot across the canal. A single change of direction and the fish was gone, sending my lure flying through the air.
I wasn't a great recce in my opinion but considering the conditions all round of late I might have been over critical of my returns. I think this new stretch warrants some more investigation once the weather warms a little and the preds get moving a bit more.

Night pike

Myself and my old friend Andy Lewis find it hard to get together to fish nowadays. He's got a boy and I've got a boy and both do plenty of extracurricular activities which means that although we both get out to fish it's hard to line both our times up. But wanting to spend some time with my old mate we both worked extra hard to line up a session to go and fish a quite section of the Avon I personally hadn't fished before.

Not knowing the stretch we were about to fish I brought tackle to flexible on target species. Andy was out for a barbel or chub in the fast water below the weir and had pitched up in likely looking spot. The still calm water above the weir appealed to me as I'd seen several small fish topping and I had it in mind that they might be shoaled up here. If the prey fish were as I suspected shoaled up then the predators wouldn't be far away and I happened to have a lure outfit in my quiver just in case. So as Andy waited for the witching hour downstream I began to work the water above the weir. I'd only made a few casts before I got hit by a small jack close to some rushes.

Having bought some barbel and chub gear with me it seemed like I should have at least a few casts and after priming up swim in the eddy of the weir I snuck in place a bait close to the bank. Embarrassingly I sat on this cast for half and hour until the light died away. Thinking a recast was in order I reeled in to find I had my rig in a very bad snag the whole time and was promptly snapped off. Unwilling to start again I decided my time might be better served trying to fulfill a long time ambition to catch a pike on  a lure in the dark.

The bank side above the weir was civilized enough for me to not fall in and so I set up a 15cm fox pearl spikey shad on a 10g jig head and began punching it out into the dark. It's quite odd lure fishing in the dark as with your sight being limited your other sense become heightened and thus you seem to focus on the sensations coming back up the braided line through the rod. You can literally feel every bump on the lure and every movement of the vibrating tail; it was bizarre and it almost has me thinking I should close my eyes once I've cast out a lure during the day. BANG! I instantly felt the pike rip into the lure and it shake its head three or four times as the hook point bit home. My heart was racing, I've caught hundreds of fish in the dark but this was my first pike and it was scrapping hard out in the pitch black. Once in the net it was revealed to not be the biggest pike I've had but honestly, I was so happy with the capture on a lure in the dark, it really made this session a special one.

LACC pairs open and a epiphany.

I was a little late deciding to enter this event and after making my mind up that I wanted to fish it I initially struggled to find a partner. It wasn't until I made an appeal to the chaps on the CRT England Facebook page that I finally found one in Ian Whittaker, and am I ever glad he stepped in. I'd met Ian previously on a Tusses match and at the CRT event and from what I had seen he was a methodical and competent, accurate lure angler with a fair bit of experience on the water. Little did I know that not only was he going to prove to be a brilliant partner but he was also going to change the way I thought about canal lure fishing all round...

The LACC pairs open is arguably becoming one of the best canal events in the country. Not only do the LACC run a superb event but it attracts loads of great lure anglers from up and down the country and this was very evident when I looked around the hordes of anglers tackling up for what was to be a very competitive event. If haven't built up a proper picture of the field of this event already I should make it clear that some of the best canal light lure anglers were there and of them many were proper specialists that do this week in and week out. This was going to be hard...very hard.

As we touched base with friends enjoying the inclusive bacon butty and cup of tea, we nattered loose plans for the day ahead. I'd located Ian getting ready and we quickly ran over our idea of what to do. Ian, having much more experience of this stretch than I, suggested we head to a section that had produced for him in the past where we could work our way along to try and locate fish.

Registration done we all stood listening to the expectations of the organizers before being released at ten second intervals. This staggered kick off was intended to stop a melee ensuing at the start of the match. The conception and realization of this were two totally different things and even under the instructions that there was to be no running, the actual fact was that there was plenty of unsavory jockeying for position as at least two thirds of the competitors were heading the same way down a narrow tow path. Eventually the hordes thinned out as anglers stopped at spots they fancied and soon enough we to came to the area where Ian thought we should begin.

The fishing for our pair went very well considering my poor start. Whether nerves or my unfamiliarity was effecting my performance I couldn't say, but initially I struggled to settle and thus switched from lure to lure and from method to method trying to get that key and settling first pluck.

The epiphany
Literally I had gone through a very large part of my go to lure fishing armoury and had not had a single dink, pluck or enquiry. Ian, on the other hand had lost one zander and landed two perch as he covered the water. It was at this point that Ian stepped in to get me dialled in for the sake of our team. As he ran through exactly what he was doing that was making all the difference and showed me it working in the clear water it was like a switch had been thrown in my mind. I am by my own admission an aggressive angler in many of the facets of my fishing and obviously to me now I was being very aggressive in how I was fishing lures. Ian on the other hand was being very subtle and this subtly was inclining fish that would not go near my aggressively fished lures to strike. The epiphany that struck me was how many opportunities I had probably missed in some amazing spots by being too aggressive and how many times had I been on fish and just assumed they wouldn't feed, when in actual fact they would have taken if it weren't for the fact I was being too aggressive!

To say the change was dramatic was an understatement. Matching the method and the way it was fished quickly brought me into the foray and in no time at all we had gone from a few fish on our score sheet to having a full quota of zander and most of the perch. With both of us working close together we quickly pinned down some shoals of small zander and worked them into a frenzy where they were chasing our lures right up to the surface and snatching them before we could recast.

By 11am we had the full quota for both the perch and zander and a rough tally had us just over two meters. Therefore we were both in agreement that as we needed to just up-grade, we should up-scale our tactics. This actually worked and intermittently as we worked along the tow path we found and caught fish here and there, upgrading our scores by a couple of centimeters. The one concern for us both was or lack of any decent sized zander. Our perch average was as we expected 25+, but the zander were a bit on the small side with most of them being around 25-30cm. If we were in a unlimited competition we would have been in heaven as we were throwing back small zander at an alarming rate as they were not big enough to improve our score.

With so many anglers battering the water senseless I suppose there had to be a point where the pressure took its toll and the latter few hours of the match the whole water seemed to shut off; it kind of makes sense with so many chaps stomping up and down the tow path, lots of yelling and coloured lures flying here there and everywhere. In the later stages we scratched a few perch here and there but our morning's scores were ultimately our best and we hoped it would be enough to get us up into the top half of the rankings.

In the end the finish was tight and the four best perch and four best zander limits did as it was probably intended and stopped any one team from running away with the lead. The top eighteen teams scored over two meters and in the end mine and Ian's team, 'Nothing to see here', placed 13th overall with some great teams above and below us.

I have thought about our performance again and again and truthfully I wouldn't change a thing about it. We caught fish and filled the quotas! I suppose our main problem was the lack of length in the zander we caught, but you can't always chose the fish you catch. We did lose a decent fish each which might have made some difference, but I reckon nether would have jumped us into a placing position.

This turned out to be a really enjoyable well run event by the LACC and one I am penciling in on next year's calendar already. If it keeps growing in popularity and size it should quickly become the premier open event in the UK for canal lure fishing and the organizers should be very happy with what they have done.

Really, I have to end this write up by thanking Ian. You were an amazing partner for this event and the thing's I learnt from fishing with you will have further reaching effects than you will ever know. You have actually changed how I perceive predators feeding and hopefully this will help me in any future competitive endeavors and certainly will help chasing specimens in the future. If ever you need a partner for anything you know how to contact me and thanks again mate.

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.