Practice sessions (Coventry)

I reckon every lure angler in the country has been waiting for the predators to get out of their spawning funk which seems rather prolonged this year by the up and down weather. I for one have really been looking forward to them getting back on the feed as I have recently freshened up my lure selection with an injection of custom lures from John Maher @ J.M Soft Baits and I have been gagging to throw them at some proper hungry fish. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think that custom lures would be within my grasp until one of my fellow England CRT team members put me in touch with John who has produced for me a whole load of Grubby shads in special colours that look amazing and just have to catch fish!

With the upcoming League competition section now out of bounds for a pre-match rest I opted to stick on the Coventry but have a practice for the up coming Romanian Angling Associations spring predator race which I intend to fish in a few weeks time. This seemed the perfect opportunity to road test Mr Mahers handy work..

Venue = Coventry canal @ Hawksbury

Total = 277cm

Well it turned out to be one of those sessions where you drive home looking like you've taken some kind of smile inducing drug. From the outset I knew it was going to be a good session. I arrived early and the water was in perfect condition. I was instantly into fish with an early zander which I followed up with a hard fighting spawned out perch. Things though were going to go from good to brilliant quickly when I moved into an area I rarely fish. On my second cast I watched as the lure dropped through the layers in the deeper than average area. Suddenly the drooping line tightened and I reactively struck into a big fish which after a suitably epic fight turned out to be chunky 65cm zed. The zeds were back on the feed in a big way and after following up the big one with another chunky 52cm zed I plundered the shoals of little zeds where I could find them All in all it was a great practice session and the mixture of species, large and small fish was very pleasing to see and really left me feeling very buoyant for the upcoming matches.