Down the hill round the corner and back up again.

I fear my finale at Napton may have been over dramatized in my mind. You see the way I kind of saw it was like the ending of some cheesy nineties movie, where upon beating all odds I had succeeded and was now walking away into the sunset having won the heart of the beautiful love interest with my dry wit and steely good looks. It was in reality me having caught the crucian after spending an inordinately large amount of time sitting next to a lake where I had over many months chucked in more sweet corn and ground bait than I feel comfortable admitting to. All that aside I had to walk away down the hill back into the valley of normality as I had practically given zero attention to the river and quite frankly risked missing an entire season on the Avon.

Honestly I don't think I had missed much by the general whining I had seen on social media about the lack of water. One thing I had read far too often, much to my chagrin, was how many top level barbel chappies were condemning other anglers for barbel fishing in the heat wave and making it very clear that barbel were unable to deal with the stresses of being caught in such conditions. Now I know these people only had fish safety in mind and good on them for sticking with their conviction, but the question that came to my mind re this was, what makes barbel special? Surely any species be it barbel, gudgeon or chub that is used to existing in highly oxygenated water is not going to appreciate getting caught in the heat. I suppose the answer to that is simple now I am reading it back and that is that they only care about barbel and all other species are merely pests to them.

Anyway on the subject of barbel I did find myself back on the river. ONCE THE HEATWAVE HAD ABATED, fishing for barbel. With the temperature down and a bit of extra water in the river I headed up to Barford to see if those hard fighting berties had come onto the feed. Joyfully they had and not long after settling into a favourite spot I got exactly the sort of bite I was after. Straight away I knew I was into a barbel but during the fight it steadily grew smaller and smaller until I landed a perfect miniature barbel of not even two pounds...

I couldn't quite believe it at first as I have rarely seen these youngsters before and the average of this area of river is generally 4-10lb in weight. Would you believe that on my second cast the PVA bag must have barely melted before bang, I was into another and then another straight after that! Things actually seem to looking good for this stretch of river with a few young healthy fish coming through the ranks for the future.

I returned to the river a few days later to search for the rumoured big preds that hide in the slack shady water on one of the sections I fish. Again and again I hear of this area producing big zander but after searching round all last winter I am none the wiser of the location of these phantom fish. Hence I wondered if I might be able to pin some locations down by mooching round with a lure rod in the summer. The cut and thrust of this endeavor was that none of the water I expected contained seemingly any predators. By chance I gave some of the faster swims a go and instantly was rewarded by a super charged little pike nearly ripping the rod out of my hand as it tore into my savage jerk bait that wobbled across the current.

I was really starting to feel the river now and I took the opportunity to search out a new section of the Upper Avon I had been tipped off about. Not wanting to go into specifics I have been told something very rare indeed swims in this secluded area high up the Avon. It's a rumour I have heard a few times from different sources, but all these rumours share a similar location and this was where I headed for a few hours one night a while ago. It turned out to be a cracking little secret gem where no one seems to fish; given its difficult access and it's that lack of attention, it could be the sanctuary of a real treasure. On this first foray though all I could catch were chub. The smallest being mere ounces and the largest maybe three-four pounds in weight.

That little bit of river has captured my attention and the possibility of what it holds make certain I will return to try again and again on its deserted banks. The weather though tells me the rivers are still way off their best and the conditions are more conducive to tench fishing, and the thought of what seemed to be big tench rolling at Napton drew me back. Really I didn't want to go back quite so soon but what I had seen was too good of an opportunity to turn down. Over my many hours lingering on the banks staring at floats bobbing in the edge I have watched some of the carp lads baiting their little hearts out. I have witnessed this so much in fact that I can now distinguish between brands of spods/spobs just from the sound they make flying through the air. But one spot that two or three of the syndicate members are baiting has become very obvious to me and time and time again I have watched big tench rolling over this spot. So armed with a couple of one and three quarter pound Avon style rods, as it is quite a chuck, and a marker rod, I went to have a lookie loo at what was attracting all this attention.

All it took was a bit of walking out on the banks and few casts and I found a large clear spot in about ten feet of water. This was obviously what the carp lads were aiming for and it was more than likely that all the bait was not just attracting carp. For me though I didn't have time on this occasion to spend two hours filling it in with bait, so I instead went for a more opportunist approach and clipped up two method feeders at the distance and cast them onto the spot laden with fishy ground bait full of chopped 10mm boilies. Casting every fifteen minutes soon rang the dinner bell whilst tainting the swim with enough bait to interest fish whilst not pre occupying them with large amounts of food. I'd only made three casts before one of the buzzers sprang to life as a small tench made off with the bait.

A few casts later I got a big drop back which brought the left hand alarm stuttering to life. This wasn't a tench given by the lack of fight and I kind of hoped it was a huge roach. When it eventually surfaced I saw much to my suprise my first ever Napton bream. Literally in ten years plus I have never caught a single bream and here I was with very young looking four pounder.

Where there's one bream there's others and few casts later I second received a big drop back which saw me hooked into a much larger fish, and the dull heavy fight told me another bigger bream was on its way in. As per, the fight was nothing to write home about but once in the net this fish was special for a whole other reason. Literally this fish looked a hundred years old with nobbles front to back. It was lumpy and bumpy and very calm, like an OAP fish. In its hey day this must have been some fish and it certainly had to have been a double figure fish. Now though it had gone past its prime maybe ten years ago and was probably lingering on undisturbed in the depths waiting out its life munching softened boilies moaning to the skimmers about the war.

Although extremely happy to have firstly located some big bream in Napton for future reference I now find myself thinking are those big fish I have seen rolling on this spot the big tench I thought or a shoal of bream that I think is massive tench. I suppose it's just a case of fish and find out, mind that might have to wait as I broke one of my rod tips putting it back in the car after this session and replacing these rods is not a high priority right now so it will have to wait until funds dictate.

Catch up part 4 - A 16th weekend

A few years ago I had the insanely genius idea to avoid the rivers on the opening day of the season. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made as I ended up practically having Napton to myself and having a red letter day to boot. Ever since that day I have continued this avoidance of the hordes of anglers desperate for river glory and destined for trickling disappointment; instead I have bagged up on loads of cracking fish by slowly sauntering down to a lake whilst everyone else is succumbing to bleary eyed boredom of the river.

Unusually this 16th turned out to be a rather cloudy and chilly occasion round these parts. Normally it is bright sunshine wall to wall to get those barbel and chub scurrying for cover. I actually had to get my old hoody from the car boot to keep warm on the breezy Napton banks as I angled after another vintage crucian. The one great thing about this overcast and cutting breeze was that if I got into a decent and fish-able position the fish should feed for as long as I could keep them in the swim.

After pitching up in a swim with the wind on my back I deployed the weed rake to confirm the swim was clear enough to fish and went about setting up stall to keep under the wind and fish tight to a nearby reed bed. The rake always clouds up the swim nicely and in the clear waters of Napton this is like ringing the dinner bell. The roach were first on the scene and after a few annoying plucks I finally got a decent bite which resulted in me hooking the first of several nice roach between ten ounces and a pound.

I knew if the roach were that quick to arrive that the tench would soon arrive and when they did things really went off. The first fish got off but after quickly re-baited and getting back on the spot I was straight away into another tench which couldn't resist my sweetcorn hook bait sitting temptingly amongst the scattering of pellets and dusting of pungent ground bait. This fish gave me a right run around and quickly informed me of all the weed beds in proximity of the swim. Being careful and gently pulling it out of all of these weed beds soon saw me netting a stunning first tench of the day.

The tench kept coming all afternoon with the crazy smaller males charging here, there and everywhere and the much bigger and powerful females really pushing my gear to the limits as I tried to weave them in and out of the maze of weed beds along my bank. Most of them ended up in my net but a few managed to dive so deep in the weeds that all my tugging only served to pull the hook and leave the embedded tench to find their own way out.

As per normal it turned out to be another of those sessions where I probably didn't get within half a lake of the precious old crucian and thus it was filed away with the hundreds of other sessions just like it. I did end the session on a high by landing a large stunning female tench that was a decent step up in size from most of the fish I had caught so far this year. Her capture adds credence to my theory that the tench in Napton, though reduced in numbers, are becoming bigger.

Sooner or later I had to get down the river and after a reccy lure session along the Barford AA stretch of the Avon with a lure rod, I concluded that although low and clear there did seem to be fish holding in the faster oxygenated water. So the night after the day before I returned armed with a barbel rod and a bucket full of fishy bait to hopefully garner myself a bite or two. With the conditions being sunny and the river very clear I guessed things were going to be hard and that any decent fish would more than likely being hanging out in any cover they could find. This in mind I pitched up in a swim with plenty of beds of streaming weed thinking this was my best chance of teasing out a few fish in such dire conditions.

After watching for a while through polarized eyes I started to see the occasional dark shape drift from one weed bed to another. With as little disturbance as possible I dropped my rig along with a golf ball sized PVA bag of freebies in between two weed beds where I thought I stood a chance of extracting a hooked fish. I was kind of thinking I would have to wait for a bite and I went about busying myself making a few more PVA bags of pellets. I'd barely got half way through the second one when the rod which was trapped between my legs pulled hard over and the butt was pivoted up in my nether regions. In the panic the bucket of pellets went flying, my tube of PVA stocking fell precariously close to the river and a small yet pungent pot of bait glug was spilled on my lap as I tried to get the rod butt out of my groin.

From the savagery of the initial bite I was under the impression I had by sheer luck hooked a early season barbel, but it turned out to be a chub who did an amazing impression of a barbel. It turned out to be quite a nice chub in reality...

My luck however was seemingly spent on that first chub as for a lot of interest from the first fishes shoal mates I suspect, I received no more savage bites on this first river outing. Though for the records purposes I will mark this single fish session as a total success as there's been plenty of early session sessions when I have had the dreaded blank. Thinking back now the capture of that single chub, after spotting several drifting around deep in the cover on a sunny day when not a lot was doing, seem aptly pure to me.

.

Back at that itch once again.

What is there to blog about the lower Itchen fishery that hasn't already been blogged? It is almost a right of passage for any Midland blogger to make pilgrimage there, as we come from one of the places in the UK with no genuine access to grayling. Go west into Wales and there's grayling, go North and there's grayling and if you go South and there shit loads of grayling. So I suppose it makes sense that those of us from the grayling void would want to go to the best place to catch a grayling and thus fly South in the winter to do so.

Not wanting to recount exactly blow for blow such an epic voyage I think this time the pictures will have to recount  much of this trip as not only do I not want to bore any readers with every tiny detail, but also I can barely remember everything as the day was so busy. Needless to say it began with an awfully early start in Coventry when I awoke prior to my alarm going off at four am and looked out of my window to see a light scattering of snow dusting my street. This winter theme was to dominate the day ahead. After thawing the car and making the trip over to my companion for the day, Mick's, house we whizzed through the traffic to arrive at the river not that long after the sun came up.

As both myself and Mick were of the same mindset to make as much of our day as possible we both agreed that we would please ourselves on this session and just link up for a spot of lunch around midday when Mick had promised a steaming hot lunch to power us through the day.

Being as it was freezing and that truthfully I quickly get bored of it, I opted to begin by trotting on the upper reaches to get the monkey off my back and bag a grayling on the float before pulling out my favoured feeder gear and smashing the place to bits.

First blood on the pin was beautiful grayling from a side stream.

Next bite came of course from a trout, albeit a good one.

After an hour trotting a few winding swims I finally worked my way down to an area I really fancied chucking feeders full of maggots into. Having already caught fifteen or more grayling up to a pound and a half I hoped to possible winkle out some of the other coarse species in a deep bend. So I put away the float gear and got on with the vulgarity of plying copious amounts of maggots into this sacred water. After relentless amounts of small grayling the trout arrived, though their identities as always confuse me.

Brown trout?

Sea trout?

Mick eventually passed by wrapped up against the freezing wind and much to his credit continued successfully trotting plenty of fish out of swims which I can honestly say I would have passed by, thinking them too shallow to fish.

With lunch time approaching and having caught an entire lifetimes worth of small grayling I opted to move back upstream towards the car and lunch. On the way down I had spotted an interesting looking side stream that entered the main river I quite liked the look of. The straight deep run directly above the junction looked prime for possible dace action so I ditched all but my float rod at the car and crossed a rather rickety bridge to access the run... my effort was rewarded...

My best grayling of the day at 1.10lb

Mick lived up to his promise and around lunch time the scent of frying onions began to drift over the fields through the chilly wind towards me. Sadly at the time this delectable scent was reaching my nostrils I was engaged in trying to untangle the line from the back of my centre pin after I had foolishly not engaged the ratchet having caught a fish. Ultimately the line was ruined and the bloody ratchet system collapsed and ended my trotting for the day.

A wonderful sight for a cold and hungry angler after a mornings fishing.

My afternoons plan was simple. Drop right down river to target a swim I have fished every visit to try and catch a decent chub or even a big roach which inhabit the lower reaches of the fishery. Luckily Mick had something similar in mind and so after loading up the car we made the savage journey down the heavily rutted road towards the weir at the bottom of the stretch to get as much fishing in as we could before the light went in a few hours time.

As per normal the maggot feeder drew copious amount of small grayling onto the line I was casting on and I hoped that all the action would sooner or later get the attention of the chub. In the end all I could catch was grayling all afternoon right up until my maggots ran out and I switched to the bread feeder with a pinch of flake as bait. My first cast and the tip wrenched round and I was attached to something good...

A rather fresh sea trout, I think?

The dark was soon upon us and after trying for so long I held out well on into dark for the rod to show any signs the chub might be about. Not long before I had to be packing up I detected a slight nod of the white rod tip in the dark. Moments later I was hooked into a very hard fighting fish which kept low in the water. After a hard fight unable to see anything the fish eventually came to the surface and a big set of white rubbery lips could be seen at the end of my net.

4.10lb of mint Itchen gold

Not long after I landed it Mick turned up and helped me take picture in the dark using an amazingly bright light. Happy with my last cast chub, we packed up and headed off to the local pub for some warmth, a drink and well deserved meal.

Sassy sargents and river crocs.

Being on a new stretch of the Warks Avon this year has been amazing so far. So many of my angling buddies recommended this club to me the over past few years, only for me to never follow their advice and truthfully I could kick myself for waiting so long to get on it. The Barbel fishing when the conditions have been right has been amazing and the few chub I've caught has me almost willing the freezing winter upon us. It's the predators I have on my mind right now, specifically the question of whether there are any big perch lingering around in the slacks of the weirs or quiet backwaters.

So the other day I headed off into a freezing morning to fish lobworms in the deep waters I hoped might hold a big perch or two. Overnight rain made me hedge my bets and take along some stinky flavored meat to fish on a barbel rod as well, just in case. After a quick cast on a deep swim on the way up to weir to see if a big old chub might be tempted to take a single offering which I rolled into a snaggy hidy hole, I went off to my main target area, the weir at the top of the stretch.

Surprisingly although I have chucked all sorts of lures into this weir I have never actually caught a single perch so far. The lobworms I had brought along though I felt sure would root out something with stripes and whilst doing that I planned to put out a big smelly bait right into the head of the weir thinking maybe a chub, barbel or even carp might find it.

The perch weren't hard to find and not long after casting the split worm hook bait into an eddy over the other side the rod tip started to rattle as small perch homed in on the bait. At least ten small perch grabbed the bait and got hooked before finally a bigger example of 1.6lb found the worm to tempting and pulled the rod tip right over.

The meat rod did one single bite all morning, which was a sitter of a bite I still can't quite believe I didn't hook up on. I am not a massive fan of upstream ledgering and I think that went against me in this case. I know you're technically meant to wait for a drop back of the rod tip. On this occasion, the rod tip jerked forward and for a moment I hesitated to hit the bite and in doing so missed it. 

Once the sun really got up into the sky the perch bites justs dried up. I had anticipated this might happen and already had plan B ready to go by way of a bag of dead baits in my rucksack. Soon enough I made my way back down towards the backwater which was almost static and looked certain to hold some predators like pike and hopefully perch.

With the banks lined with cover the swim I decided to fish had to hold a few predators and after a mooch around, I soon found a croc holding motionless near some snags...

I couldn't find any perch at all in this deeper static water, but the pike were like buses and after waiting for a little over twenty minutes, two came along one after another. The first was a small jack of maybe three pounds which I left in the net waiting for a picture whilst I recast another roach dead bait into the far margin. As I was setting up the camera the rod was away again and bigger and much more spritely pike ripped around the swim. With no choice but to try and net the fish with a fish already in the net, I went for it. The first pike though was having none of it and shot out of the net at the first opportunity and denied me a brace shot.

The next and final pike encounter of the session came as I searched the cover for a perch. After covering every bit of cover or snag in the entire swim with a popped up lobworm bait, I finally cast it to the last bit of cover on the right-hand side of my own bank. I'd barely had time to tighten down onto the lead before the rod whacked over. Lord above I wanted it to be a perch as it felt big, but I suspected I was into a chub. That was until it powerfully surged off just like a pike and I realised this was going to be one of those fights that might end badly for me with me four-pound line. I did my very best letting the fish get away with anything it wanted on a lightly set clutch. Ultimately it was on a matter of time before the fish inevitably turned onto that light line with its sharp teeth, which it did leaving my line flowing in the wind and me packing up to go home.

Christmas catch up.

I always find myself trying to catch up in the New year with my blog. What with working in an industry that relies on the holiday season and having a large family, my time becomes rather constrained over the holidays. As I am a true angling addict and cannot not go fishing it's all other non necessary time consuming actives that pay the price and blogging is in there with them. 

Anyway the holiday season has finally passed away into the memories along with 2016. Looking back through last year's posts I quickly concluded that I had a decent year all things considered and judging from the photos I caught a lot more pike, zander and perch than I can remember doing. In catching all those predators my affinity and love of lure fishing has grown along with my knowledge and ability. Literally ten years ago I would have never conceived becoming such an avid fake flinger. A year of repetitive casting though has been peppered by a few memorable sessions using other techniques that have paid dividends in years gone by, inspiring me for the coming year. Carp of both the crucian and king varieties weigh heavy on my mind in these young cold months when so many plans are conceived and so ideas that have been shelved away for too long will get dusted off later in the year.

Back to catching up and I did actually do some fishing over the holidays. From what I remember the first was a relatively successful micro-fishing session on the Coventry canal. It was successful as all I caught were micro fish and quite a lot of them. The whole idea of using these tiny lures to search out every nook and cranny on a canal is novel enough, but seeing how deadly the method is proves exactly why this is such a fast growing fun area of fishing in the UK.

I absolutely love these tiny Allure creature baits by Crazy fish. Through the session I fished both drop shot and on jig heads all around any structure I could find and they always seem to find small pods of fish and persuade them into attacking.

My next outing I went chub fishing... Yes you heard that right I went chub fishing, quiver tip rod, bread and all chub fishing. With only a few hours of daylight left one spare afternoon I grabbed my newly assembled short session kit and nipped to an old stomping ground high up the Warks Avon where literally you could jump the river should you be brave enough to try.

It was great to be back creeping around in the under growth, well I thought I was creeping anyway. The reality is that with spending so much time on the civilised banks of canals I had forgotten how much harder it is to move round through banks lined with old reeds and six foot high nettles blown down by the wind. My techniques for traversing barbed wire fences could do with some polishing given that I nearly  hung my family jewels up like washing on a line on a couple of crossings. It was all worth it though when you get a view of sections of river that is hidden from view for most of the year and only reveals itself for a few short months at the point when the year's growth has died away and is still waiting to renew again.

My fish location proved a bit rusty as well, and it took me a couple of clumsily wasted swims to finally get that quiver tip to rattle round, before a small but very clean chub grabbed my nugget of bread as it skipped under a raft of rubbish collected round the branch of a tree.

Both previous sessions had been relatively short and sweet as they were mere stolen hours here or there. It wasn't until right at the end of the holidays when I finally got my act together enough as to spend an entire morning out fishing. Getting out on this morning wasn't the only problem though. The night before the sky had cleared and the temperature dropped drastically. With a heavy frost and frozen puddles lining the city roads I felt it was a safe bet that both the canals and the commercial pool where I wanted to try my luck for a new perch PB would topped with a thin layer of cat ice. So I switched kits, grabbed a lure rucksack and a light/medium weight lure rod and nipped of over to Leamington to target the sluggish waters of the river Leam.

I'd heard from a friend of mine, Dave Cook, that there was quite a few prey fish shoaled up in the sheltered stretches around Victoria park, and if I know anything it's that the resident pike will not be far away from those smaller fish.

My tactics were quite simple in truth. On previous visits I had formed a mental map of the depths and summer time features of the stretch. Using that knowledge and a few select lures I felt were suitable, I worked my way up through the park targeting the shallow margins where the dead lily pads were, using shallow diving hard baits like the storm ghost minnow and the deeper centre of the river using medium sized fox spiky shads on 10 gram jig heads.

It took most of the morning and a lot of casting before I located the prey fish holding just in the deeper water behind a shallow area at the top of the park. After arriving and making only a few casts, I spotted fish topping and new this would be the area to concentrate on. After eventually dropping the weight of jig head to 5 grams to slow the lure movement down, I cracked the code and got a couple of slashed takes before hooking a micro jack pike. From then I just concentrated on the area; repeated casting and a few lure changes routed out two more tiny pike and one slightly better one which I was very happy to finish with.

Coasting into the new year.

I know we all go through lean patches now and again as anglers and I can accept that along with the best of them, but just lately I reckon the drought is quite simply down to me being a bit apathetic. As always my time is limited and being as it is limited, doing the right thing at the right time is the key to success. As I have not been on point for some reason I've found myself doing all the wrong things and reaping no reward for my effort.

The last tiny modicum of success came a couple of weeks ago when I went out to hook up with Mick on the Stratford canal after zander. Even though I had half a mind that the cut might be a bit clear, I still pressed on and did badly on the zander front as a result. The tiny bit of action I got came right at the end of the session when we fished around a lock filled with leaves.

Only by targeting the structure did I start to get a few plucks from perch sheltering in the shadows. After fine tuning a little I finally hooked up a small perch just as a boat appeared on the canal approaching the lock.

On a dire mornings fishing the little information those perch gave me was enough to hatch a final plan. I had in the bottom of my bag a box of worms I brought along just in case and I knew the fast approaching boat would churn up the canal a lot as it passed by. So I quickly switched my jig for a drop shot rig and then proceeded to mince up a good helping of worms in a pot. As predicted, the passing boat quickly turned the water to tea as it gunned past me. Once the water stopped swirling I deposited the worn on a easily recognized spot on the inside edge. After letting it stew whilst I caught up with Mick above the lock I returned and instead of fishing a lure over the bait, I dropped a worm in over the top. First drop in I felt a quick tap up the line and I struck into a nice perch.

That single tiny patch of feed saved the day for me and I nicked two smaller perch off of it in quick succession, wiggling the worm over it. Had I had the forethought or the sense to just head to this lock first thing and bait up a few spots, then the whole session could have been a different one and maybe a red letter one at that.

My next outing could have been a mirror image of the last in terms of success. Foolishly I thought was being a clever bugger heading to still water with four days of freezing weather preceding. The little lake I went to in search of huge perch was half frozen, and what wasn't frozen was so clear that you could see a willow leaf on the bottom half a way out.

For all the chopped worm and prawn I chucked I reaped little more than a few small perch and roach. For once I would have been over the moon with an interloping winter carp tearing up the swim just to break the monotony and stick bend in the rod and as one didn't, it ended up being a very cold and disappointing session.

 I have to admit that I don't feel that the last few months have been that productive for me and I feel like I am just coasting along up to Xmas, not really making the most of my time. Now though I feel change is afoot and I find myself planning for a new year of fishing. With young BB fast growing up I am becoming more accustomed to life as a parent and with this settled feeling I want to get back into the swing of fishing as I used to, with an eye for big fish rather than just lure fishing and predator fishing as time permits. The Avon rods and light quiver rods have already been dusted off and reels have been re spooled ready to do some chub and dace fishing in January. Plans are forming to use some of the information I've collected whilst lure fishing on the canals to hopefully target some big canal chub in the winter months and huge carp in the spring. Now I know I will still be doing a fair bit of lure fishing next year, but I am really hoping to have some much more varied catches next year and get my lust for all round fishing back again. 

Snow day.

I love being out in the early morning fishing in the snow, and as we don't really get that much opportunity to do this, I was really looking forward to getting out and having a few casts in the white the other day. One type of fishing I would love to have a go at is ice fishing and thus I am quite jealous of my old fishing buddy Noo-noo Harrison who moved to Grand Cache in Canada a few years ago for work, who I saw on Facebook the other day was out ice fishing on Grand Cache lake.

Bar a bit of a distraction watching Adventure Land cartoons with BB, I was out not long after sunrise. Though there was little more than a dusting of snow, I could easily see that I was the first person to set foot on the tow path of the Coventry canal. Other than my own footprints the only tracks were that of foxes and possibly a deer which had come down from the woods and wandered along for a while before nipping back into the cover.

Large swathes of the canal surface were covered in a layer of thin ice topped off with a few centimeters of slush, but a few decent size bits of water had been kept free of ice by either the wind or had possibly thawed the day before. The water that was still accessible looked a really nice clear winter green that would give good visibility to the fish, whilst not be so clear as to make them nervous due to a lack of cover.

I knew I would have my work cut out and previous experience told me that the zander probably wouldn't play ball in the freshly chilled water, so perch, the illusive pike and the super rare chub would be what I was after. I also suspected it wouldn't exactly be hectic sport given the conditions, so first things first I just needed to get a hit. That first hit came quite quickly in truth after I hooked up a red head spiky shad lure which has done quite well previously on this bit of cut, and did so again attracting a welcome pristine perch.

They seemed to be quite tightly shoaled up at the bottom of the near side shelf, but once a I found a group of perch I managed to convince a couple of three to attack before the action dried up. Only problem was finding the shoals, and in trying to do so I covered quite a lot of very slushy and muddy tow path. Before I located more fish I did cross paths with yet another water vole. This one was crossing the canal to forage under some brambles overhanging the water. I watched it cross back and forth once before trying to get a picture. The next time it came back across the canal I pulled out my phone and just as I pressed the button it did a neat little dive never to be seen again and left me with this picture.

After the vole I struggled to locate fish in any numbers and just hooked a single small perch here and there until I moved onto a very snaggy area which last year produced a belting chub for me. I could feel the lure bumping into small branches on the bottom of the canal that had fallen off the overhanging trees. I often find fish lingering in these sorts of areas probably using the small branches as cover for safety or attack. The lure found its hold in three or four more serious snags where I had to twang the line and change angles to retrieve it. Then right at the end of another retrieve I felt the lure get thumped hard just as I was lifting it up in the water. I really prayed for it to be another chub but the fight lacked the power of the last time and quickly a solid perch succumbed and went in my net.

With the snow quickly melting and several very unwelcome drips finding their way between my hat and hood onto my neck, I didn't last long on the thawing canal. It really was well worth the effort of getting down to fish in the snow to catch a few perch on freezing morning when everyone else had stayed in bed.

A new mobile approach.

Prior to the weekend I spent an inordinately large amount of time trying my best to devise a suitably efficient way to fish using both lures and dead baits. The crux of which has come down to quantity of tackle I want to carry. The reason I want to refine everything is my need to keep as mobile as possible whilst still giving myself options. Having already scaled my general kit down to a backpack, fold up landing net which hooks onto the aforementioned backpack, rods remained the only decision. I was always going to take my super light finesse outfit as it's the method I most wanted to concentrate on. The dead bait rod though was something I needed to review. 

I have for the longest time favoured barbel rods of either one and a quarter or one and three quarter pound test curve for my zander fishing and to save having to swap between the two I have always leaned to the heavier end of that spectrum just in case. But lately having seen how well modern short lure rods perform I've been thinking the barbel rods needed reassessing and that after doing so that they wouldn't make the cut for my updated canal kit. Hence I came up with the idea to scale down my zander rigs so as I could fish them on a shorter and lighter general purpose lure rod. This way not only could I use the outfit to fish a small dead bait on a float, but should I want to remove that rig and tie on a trace to fish larger lures I would have that option at my disposal.

With a two week solid block of work in the pipe line I was eager to hit the tow path as soon as possible to try out this new system. Now I should make it clear that given the current weather conditions I knew it was going to be a bit hit and miss in regards to finding unfrozen water and therefore even before I left the house I had the feeling I would be concentrating my efforts on metres of tow path instead of miles of canal.

My first session was a bit of a gamble as I was having to travel with no knowledge of whether the stretch of canal where I was going would be frozen. Luckily for me there was at least some free water when I arrived but it was still thawing, probably reducing the temp of the surrounding water as it did. So undeterred, I picked a starting point and began. In these conditions I knew I was looking to try and find pockets of fish grouped in specific areas and therefore if no indications of interest were forthcoming within half an hour of working and area over I moved on.

The first few spots produced zip, but not long after finding a sheltered area out of the wind where I surmised the sun had been on the water recently, I got a run on my scaled down dead rig which was holding steady just at the bottom of the trench off to my right. The culprit which turned out to be a small zander was very welcome not only to break the blank but as an indicator that other fish might be present.

After returning the micro zed I turned the attentions of my finesse outfit onto the area only to receive a definite snatch as I bounced a small black and chartreuse kopyto shad slowly along the clean bottom. But even after casting the water into a foam I couldn't get anything to really grab the lure. I did go through a few other different soft lures but they to brought no response either. 

Knowing there was fish that might be persuaded to attack in the area I was reluctant to leave and so instead changed angles by moving a short distance to my left. I was watching the dead float catching the tow as I once again retrieving the little kopyto shad. As it came up the nearside shelf it went solid as if I'd found a old branch of something on the bottom, but then it moved off zigzagging the line across the water. This little outfit might seem a little frail a first glance but I've quickly realised that once the sensitive tip bends right round the back bone of the rod kicks in and absorbs all the fight. In this case it was a beautiful thick set perch that had grabbed the little green shad.

I was out the very next day on a totally different canal and the conditions were totally different. As on the previous venue there was still ice which was also thawing, but whereas yesterdays stretch had maybe a foot and a half visibility, this one had mere inches. The water was that ubiquitous winter canal tea cup brown and the lures disappeared almost instantly after entering the water. Last visit though I had quite a bit of success using a small black curly tail grub and I still had confidence it would work again.

For once I was right and in just about every area I fished I would locate a shoal of perch somewhere whilst fan casting around the swim. Even as small as they were its very rewarding casting around and regularly getting miniature thumps and hits from these veracious little hunters. 

Quite happily I moved along the canal all morning fishing half an hour or more in each area until I felt the bites dried up and moved on. Even catching only small perch I was content knowing that sooner or later with the number of fish I was catching that something bigger might turn up. But I could never have predicted what that bigger fish would be.

There was a group of ducks getting a bit frisky a ways up the canal and truthfully I felt their amorous behaviour had probably spoilt the area they were in. Nevertheless I gave it a go and when I arrived they had shoved off. I flicked a slightly larger Hart M minnow on a 2 gram jig head tight under the far bank cover, felt it down onto the bottom and watched the yellow braid fall slack as it hit the mud. Literally I tightened up and jerked the lure up once, twice then a third time before I felt one of the hardest bangs I've ever had on a lure.

Obviously I had hooked something of a much larger size and straight away it was powering around the swim as I stood on the opposite bank desperately trying to steer it away from the snaggy far margin. Having only caught perch so far my first thoughts were of a big perch, or maybe that was just hope. Sense though soon prevailed and my theory changed from perch to zander. The fight though went on far too long for a zander and then the obvious culprit became a pike of possibly some size.

The fish though seemed to not be satisfied with just powering around in the centre of the canal as I would of expected a pike to do. Then all too soon things got a bit dirty as the still unseen fish began charging towards any bit of cover on my own bank. Finally it came to the surface and I spotted a very un-pike like flank roll. Then a few more charges and turns later it surface properly and it's true identity was reviled by a pair big rubbery lips that framed a mouth big enough to throw a golf ball down. I had landed certainly my biggest canal chub and even better I had done it on a finesse lure outfit. 

Lying in the soft grass on my net which it was nearly as long as. Next to my tiny rod and reel, it almost seemed comical  that I landed it on this light gear. 

After a couple of pictures that were hastily taken by a very excited me I slipped it back a good way away from the swim. It was on the way back to the scene of the capture that I remembered years ago I caught a couple of albeit much smaller chub from this stretch fishing worms for perch. I did hazard a few more casts but really I knew that the epic fight had ruined the swim and that any other chub would have done one after the pair of us caused such a commotion. One thing I can say is that I will be going back to this stretch again and again as the year progresses and that I am already concocting some surface lure plans in my head to try and nab one off the top once it's warmed up.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that even thought the dead bait line produced only one fish amongst many I was actually satisfied enough with how it worked out to think that this will for now be how I will be fishing this second rod in conjunction with my new super mobile approach.

By the power of thunder prawn.

I watched the weather like the proverbial hawk for days before finally deciding when to venture out. I had also been lingering around the EA web page like a bit of a stalker as well. Then right on schedule the rain began to fall and the river which I had convinced myself was receding once again began to rise steadily like gas bill on the run up to winter.

There was really nothing I could do but to continue to follow my theory that the woodland pool that once contained monster perch hopefully still should. I knew the carp were always going to be a little forthcoming considering the current mild temperatures, but after last weeks’ bagging session I suspected that I knew where to avoid fishing.

I was right for once as well. When I arrived at the deserted pool and walked down the spongy tree lined bank I spotted several boisterous carp rolling in pretty much the exact same area where they were crashing around last visit. So giving them some space I set up in a deepish area well away from the party that has a nice bit of cover, which I felt might be attractive to a perch or two. There was another reason I fancied this area. Last week as I built a respectable match weight I kept seeing a kingfisher zipping up and down the pool. From where I was fishing if I ducked down I could see through the thicket to where the little blue streak was perched. Time and time again this little bird dived bombed into the water coming back with a perfect bite sized roach every time. Of all of the swims on this ignored pool this area had to be a likely area where to find a perch.

Now I am not sure whether it's because I have been feeding so much prawn as I’ve fished over the winter, or whether they have always liked them, but the perch in this pool do seem to be rather keyed into the little pink stinkers now. Last visit I was getting two different bites using them, by different I mean the rod wasn't nearly wrenched from my hands, and I suspected the cause of those bites may have been perch. Even with a backup supply of worms, I had prior to arriving made the decision to fish only prawn on both rods and it was good job I did, because after letting a light scattering of chopped prawn stew, I got an instant reaction by way of a well formed perch of a pound and a half.

The perch was still visible sulking on the bottom when I heard some odd noises begin. Honestly I thought it was a farmer in one of the surrounding fields making the deep rumbling racket with some kind of agricultural machinery. Then my phone rang and my ever caring other half JB asked me if I was under cover. That's when I heard the rumble again and this one was followed by the unmistakable crack of lightning. Needless to say the conversation was quickly ended, my rods were removed from my general vicinity and reluctantly I put up my umbrella and secured it as best I could. Moments after I had finished a mini hurricane began as a wall of hail approached. When it reached me the pressure of the falling hailstones and howling wind bent my brolly right round. Though I really didn't want to cling onto the metal pole I had zero choice as without me as stabilising weight it would have been ripped away very soon.

Thirty minutes of repeatedly saying my 'please don't strike me' mantra over and over again and the storm passed. Even with blue sky on the horizon I felt my session may have been well and truly gazumped by the hail. Even though I had spent the entire squall looking up at the sky for lightning bolts the fact that a large amount of ice had been dumped into the pool hadn't gone by me. Knowing this was my only chance out for a few days I had to stick it out for the last few hours even if I thought I had little chance. Half-heartedly I recast both rods back over the baited area and waited. I only just spotted the first float bury in the ripples caused by water still dripping from the trees before the line pulled taught and I was chuckling away as the carp responsible tore line from the clutch when the second rod jumped nearly clear from the rest.

This took the biscuit. I was sitting on a clear pool, in January, after a thunder/lighting storm, the water temp had to have cooled noticeably after all that ice was just dumped in it and I was sitting there with a rod in each hand and two clutches that both needed attention. With one rod trapped between my knees I turned the rampaging carp which had calmed a little. Lucky for me it ran straight along the back and in a moment of pure cheek I scooped it up first time it surfaced. That one down I turned my attention to the other bent rod to find that although this fish was smaller it was ultimately a different sort of fighter and dirty one at that. Last visit I caught two of these interlopers at the end of my session so I knew what it was. Then after a big pair rubbery set of lips appeared on the surface I slid my carp filled net under a chub to finish of a bizarre post storm brace.

Turned out that the weather did little to deter the fish from feeding and for the next two hours more small carp and chub circled over my bait. Even if there was any more perch around I think they stood little chance of getting onto the prawn buffet with both carp and chub firmly in residence. I knew this pool contained a few chub that arrived as part of a rescue mission years ago, but up until know I had never really caught many of them. It would seem that my switch from worms to prawns as hook baits might be the obvious explanation for this turn in species. Two more long thin chub were unable to resist my whole prawn hook baits as night fell.

What was noticeable about this chub was their condition; they might have been long and thin but they were perfectly formed in every way and judging by the amount of prawn mush the wretches were regurgitating, it was them that were clearing out most of my freebies. Although I have caught a couple of chub whilst fishing prawns on the river it’s never really been a bait I associated with this species. However after seeing how much these fish are into them, I know that if the rains do subside soon I certainly fancy giving them a try on the Avon before the end of the season.

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.