Unexplored areas and canal trolling

My young son BB and his growing teeth have no respect for my fishing plans as yet. I was all keen to get out for a decent session after a few poorly executed trips prior to this. The day before I had diligently readied my kit for an early start and went to bed anticipating going to a far off spot that has form for better than average fish. Needless to say after spending most of the night taking it in turns getting up to settle our disturbed little one, both me and JB looked much as we did on the way back from Glastonbury festival in ninety seven, only without having any of the fun.

By the time I had grabbed enough unbroken sleep and done the decent thing and got the now radiant little munchkin up, dressed and fed there seemed little point travelling half way across the county to find the dog walkers had taken all the parking spots at the initial venue. So still half dazed I settled to instead go and check out a bit of the Grand union canal I haven't fished before above Hatton locks.

It's weird but I've done a fair bit of zander fishing on the locks themselves and below them, but have never once been above them. I must have crossed the bridge to go to Hatton country world a hundred times and it's always looked nice. A few friends have fished it and said it's not bad up there, but for some reason I've not yet been. So this seemed a perfect opportunity for a bit of an explore.

Even though I am not big on paying to park when fishing, the paltry £1.20 is a bargain and I happily left my car there whilst I tabbed off up the lock flight. It was on my way up that I came across something I've never seen before first hand. Someone had left  the upper gate of one of the locks open and with the ubiquitous leak the lower gates seem to have, most of the water had leaked from the pound, draining it down to the small pool at the bottom of the picture which was being kept topped up by the leaking gate above. Gravity and a night of flowing water passing over it had carved the soft silt quickly down to a nice gravel run into the open gate at the top of the picture.

I could have spent all day just peering into the drained pound at the various detritus collected and at the topography of the bottom. There must have been a few thousand snails on the marginal shelf alone, never mind on the huge silt bank at the back of the pound. I had my suspicions that the pool at my feet contained any other residents of the pound and tempting as it was to have a poke around in there, I left well alone knowing full and well how stressed any occupants of the little left water would be.

Once I actually got fishing I quickly caught a couple of small zander casting small salt and pepper zander shads around above the first lock in the brown tinted clear water.

Once a local barge enthusiast came reversing into the area I was fishing a little too enthusiastically, I decided it was time to get off and explore the new to me tow path.

Canal trolling

Features play an important part in all types of fishing and personally I have always tried to find something that might attract predators and me alike when I am fishing for them. The unseen underwater features are obviously problematic to locate, but the obvious ones like good far bank cover or big reed beds are always the first targets on new waters and a good starting place. 

These tempting target spots can sometimes be spaced out and the travelling between them has always felt a little of a waste of fishing time to me. So I recently concluded to do a bit of canal trolling as I was travelling down the tow path between spots. When I was a kid we used to do this to little avail using shiny silver spinners, now though having a few years and a lot more experience under my belt I realize that I was doing it all wrong. 

As a kid I naively thought a pike would chase any lure fished in the canal. Now I know that sometimes you have to drag it right across their noses in many cases to provoke a response. So after a bit of fine tuning and figuring how much line to pay out I have begun trolling baits along the marginal shelf as I walk between spots. This enables me to fish whilst travelling and why not, as a lot of fish lie up on the nearside shelf and I reckon I might find a few nice surprises by using this time a bit better.

It was as I passed under a bridge and past a row of barges on the far bank that my rod which was sticking out over the canal bent round. Either I'd found another branch lingering on the shelf or something had grabbed the white shad as it passed by. It turned out to be the latter as the line shot out into the centre trench. This wasn't a perch or even a zander, this was something much bigger and rarer than those spiky finned culprits.

My light lure rod was bent alarmingly over as the yellow braided line cut across the surface towards the boats. It had to be a pike which had snatched the trolled lure as it went by, as not much else bar a carp would pull my string this hard. Praying my fluro leader would hold, I followed the fish off up the canal hoping it wouldn't bite me off. I must have played it for five minutes before I caught a glimpse of a dull spotted tail in the boil in the centre of the canal. It wasn't a humongous pike but it certainly looked like it could be around ten pounds. I really thought I was getting the better of the fish and was fumbling to open up my folded net went the fish came up and turned back in a massive boil and sent my lure flying through the air.

That one experience with a decent canal pike has proved my theory valid enough to certainly continue this practice whenever I find myself travelling between fishing features on the canal, and given the stature of this validating fish I feel I might well have to give some shallow running plugs a run out along with a wire trace just in case.

Springs and Valleys

It was all light hearted banter when we arrived and even as we set up there seemed an air of possibility about the venue. The place looked like a scaled down trout fishery carved by man into a small stream that serve to breath healthy life into those ever needy game fish. But there was no trout and I am sure if there was, Joe wouldn't have bothered chasing perch.

To me it looked about right, clean water bordered by reed fringed banks and supposedly stuffed with enough small silvers to turn any modest perch into the Perca fluviatilis version of Marlon Brando. It even started as I hoped with a timely enough pause after I deposited chopped worm at the bottom of the marginal shelf, followed by three deliberate bites. The first produced nothing, the second a nice roach and the third a maybe six ounce perch which really got me going. Then nothing, and I mean nothing! Every trick in our collective repertoire was employed before we all concluded it would be dusk before we saw any more bites.

My sarnies were gone when discord spread through the ranks and before the clock struck one, we were away hoping to make better of the light we had left on pastures new. The car seats had barely time to warm before we were descending a winding drive into a valley towards a small lake nestled near the bottom of the hillside.

I think we all knew time was at a premium as the dark would be encroaching around four. Although I had never wet a line in this pool I had heard from a at least two others that although diminutive in size, the stock of fish in this lake borders on obscene. In fact the exact words someone used the other day was "It boils with fish in the summer". Apparently should you sling a gallon of maggots into the water on warmer months it would be doubtful if one would make it to the bottom, there is that many veracious roach and rudd present. But that's in the summer and we were here pretty much as far away from summer as you can get.

After a punishing morning on the previous fishery I for one had got to that point where it was bites and not targets that I wanted. So with Martin and Joe on the opposite bank, I set up on a small point swim casting a ledgered lob worm down the bank a few rods out, before concentrating my efforts and what was left of my chopped worm on a spot just on the edge of the ripple where I would hope a perch might patrol.

Although I fishing what can only be described as monstrous hook baits I did purposely and regularly keep a steady stream of pinkies going in. If it was as packed with annoying little silver fish as I had been lead to believe, then if I could get them moving it had to attract the attentions of anything that might prey on them.

The reported levels of stock turned out to be entirely true and it was my ledgered worm which first got sucked up before my super sensitive rod tip bent round and it began. The last three hours of the day saw pretty much constant action, but I have to say that I was not exactly using roach tactics. Anyone who has ever seen my perch rig I think will agree when I say it's a little agricultural in design; four pound line straight through to a size four hook with nothing more than a string of BB shot and chubber float in between, and the ledger set up only differs with a lack of float really. All that aside the roach were loving my worms and even missing loads of bites I was still landing some immaculate fish from six ounces right up and over a pound in weight.

I wish I had put something in for perspective with this fish as it was a good foot long.

Thinking of the two fisheries I find it hard to believe that given they were so close in proximity  they were fishing so differently. Admittedly the spring pool was gin clear and this one had a tinge of brown to it, but as the valley lake was so exposed I would have thought that of the two, this one would've fished worse than the shelter spring fed pool. Mind you after twenty four years of fishing I have just about given up trying to assign rhyme or reason to why anywhere fishes the way it does on any given day.

I don't think I have ever quite felt the pressure of the sun setting quite so much as I did on this day. There were feeding fish in front of me from the off and I really think it would have only been a matter of time before all the activity would have drawn in what we all sought from that cute little pool. But with every bob of the float and twang of the rod I kept recasting to make sure I had the right sort of bait on should the next taker be potential record perch. 

But it was never to be on this occasion and all too soon the sun sank over the valley and we soon found ourselves straining to see the orange floats in the dank light. I certainly can't say I was disappointed by the second fishery at least and as for that first one I feel sure that too might have some mileage in better conditions. That valley pool really stuck a little hook in me and I fancy I will find myself back on its bank once winter has passed.