Romanian Angling Club UK spring predator race - Hawksbury junction

I was really looking forward to this match being put on by the Romanian Angling Club. Along with the Polish anglers I see regularly on the local lure circuit, the Romanians are brilliant lure anglers and therefore there is so much you can learn from fishing with and against them. Knowing how good they are I suspected that this match was going to a really competitive event but once again all the people involved were the most friendly bunch I have had the pleasure of fishing with.

My only concern was the late start of the match as I knew from previous visits that Hawksbury junction is getting very busy and once that boat traffic started thumping the fishing would only get harder. Luckily with all the rules covered and everyone registered the organizers let us off early and anglers shot off in every conceivable direction.

With competitors lining the banks as far as the eye could see my early priority was to try and find some space in which to fish. It was on my way to find said space that I happened on my friend Ian Whittaker, who was in the process of landing a large section of plywood that was easily over the 15cm limit but sadly not on the capture list for the day.

I had it in mind to try and get the pike box ticked as I theorized that that my best chance to do this was early on whilst the canal still had some clarity. For once I did the right thing and not long in I hooked a big pike which held deep in the deep water before turning and powering off, where upon my line parted. Knowing they were about, I quickly tackle up again and began searching; luckily I found a nice 51cm jack hiding under some lily pads. One cast of my J.M Soft baits grubby shads and it attacked.

From then on though things were very tough. As I expected the sheer volume of anglers was making things harder but by working some cover I routed out a pair of under sized perch which were both only just under the 15cm size limit. With the canal quickly coloured I began targeting known zander spots and a few in I hooked a nice little zander of 29cm.

With the hard work done I figured my best bet was to scale down and try to bag a perch over the size limit. If I could just get one I would get the 50cm bonus and then any other captures would be extras. I don't think I have ever worked so hard for a single small perch in my entire life. I switched to fishing the dropshot and micro lures down the edge and after a couple of timid attacks and walking an entire length of canal I found just what I was looking for hiding close to my own feet.

Total = 95cm + 50cm multi species bonus 145cm

After waiting round for the all the sheets to be handed in, the chaps from the club began calling out the winners. How gutted was I to miss out on 3rd place by a mere 2cm. I could have kicked myself as I spent the last hour fishing bigger lures whereas had I stuck with the dropshot I feel sure I could have scratched at least one more perch to push me into the top three. Oh well hind sight is a fine thing, but everyone including myself had a great time and its a match I will certainly look to fish in the future. Well done to the Romanian Angling Club UK for organizing such a great event.

Practice sessions (Coventry)

With the second round of the Tusses freestyle league fast approaching and me being a substitute for the Lure Witches team I felt I needed to get in a bit of practice so as to hopefully be of more value than just making up the numbers. Considering how well I know the Coventry canal from the city centre basin through to Hawksbury and beyond into bandit country (Bedworth), I really know very little of it beyond the border into Nuneaton. As a result this was really going to be a venture into the unknown for me to get an idea of where and what possibly, I should be doing once the match commences.

On this outing I joined up with Ashley Dixon from the Boinging Baggies team as he too wanted to familiarize himself with the water. I think we both knew it wasn't exactly going to be a fish fest and that the reality of the situation was pinning down areas that held fish...any fish.


Venue = Coventry canal/Hartsill area

Total = 100cm est

After initially deciding to venture in one direction from the starting point we eventually began fishing in some very fishy looking water and early on I pulled up a small sub 20cm zander which let go of the lure once at the surface. We worked that area hard with little to show but a few plucks to Ashley's rod and looking back probably spent a little to much time working the area. Once we moved on though, things changed when a few casts into a new spot a very large pike engulfed my lure and tore of savagely before severing my leader. A little way down the stretch Ash landed a very nice spawned out perch over 30cm and after leap frogging him I rooted out a long lean pike easily over 65cm. Bar few more fruitless hits we didn't land anything else in that productive area.

Our next bit of action came when Ashley began getting some interest off some tiny zander fishing a marginal feature. By this time though the boats had begun moving and any water clarity we had early on soon went as the shallow canal became more turbid. With the sun high and hot and the water conditionings deteriorating we had to change tactics to stand hope of catching any more fish. Going onto an old faithful lure helped me land another zander this time over 30cm for my final fish of the foray.

As expected this was a hard session with some of the fish still preoccupied by reproduction. Happily though it seems like little by little the predator spawning is coming to an end and with some ideas of fish holding areas this might mean the upcoming league match might not be as torrid as the last one.

Two days, two rivers and more pike.

I keep having to remind myself that its actually January as my brain and reality ain't quite linking up. The problem is that January is meant to be cold isn't it and to me it just don't feel that cold right now, hence the disconnect. It's at this time of year that I normally let opportunities pass me by with the rivers but this time round I am, or should say was, determined to make the most of the back end of the river season by getting in some sessions when I can.

A few weeks ago I was actually fishing two days back to back on two different rivers and I was determined to get the best out of both sessions no matter what the date and what the conditions. And so on yet another mild January morning I walked across the fields towards the quiet stretch of the Upper Avon with dreams of eager predators waiting for my lure to tempt them into attack.

I have thought long and hard about how to put this and concluded that simply is best! It was January and the fishing was hard...very hard! I worked through two huge entire sections casting in just about every spot possible, reaping very little considering the effort I put in, and landed two perch in a weir pool...

...and two jack pike from some very heavy cover in a dark back water.

Even though I caught I actually went home a bit disappointed as this section produces zander so well in the late summer and early autumn, but once winter kicks in those zander seem to just disappear. I am sure there are some really big ones hiding somewhere on this stretch.

The day after I found myself heading out with my good friend Martin Oxley to fish the diminutive River Windrush in Oxfordshire. It's both underrated and overrated if that makes any sense. It's overrated in the way that the controlling club portray the fish stocks as there's not a huge amount of fish in the river, but I know for a fact that it does throw up the odd insane capture here and there which probably makes it underrated.

Martin had Grayling in mind of which there is a small population on this river; as for me it was all about trying to locate a humongous perch from a tiny river. Through the morning we worked one section on the river hard. I was either presenting lob worms around any perchy looking features or combing the deeper areas using Z-man TRD craws to try and replicate the crayfish that the Windrush is rife with. Apart from an errant chublet which grabbed my trotted worm as it passed a overhanging blackberry bush, all I had to show for my morning was a tiny little baby jack pike which was so small it hadn't developed spots yet and was still stripy.

My afternoon fared no better and on the open runs and deep glides I failed to locate any of the Windrush monsters, even after prebaiting several swims and fishing every likely looking spot with both bait and lure even as good as the water looked.

The highlight of my trip had to be the tiny run of fish I got towards the end of the day. Between the two of us we'd fished every possible swim available to us. I ended up fishing the quiet and sheltered mill race where I caught a small dace and tiny trout trotting maggots in the shadows of the trees. Thinking I had finally found a group of fish I rolled the dice that there might be some predators around and cracked out the lure rod. After diligently fan casting the whole area I got a hit right at the end of the run as the lure dropped into deeper water. I really thought I'd found a good perch judging from the power the first showed on that first run. That was until it came flying out of the water like a rocket two or three times before performing a perfect flip on its last jump. Even once I knew it was a trout I wasn't disappointed as on this light outfit it was the perfect capture on which to end this winter foray.

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.

Zed heads.

The weekend started with a wander down the Coventry to try out a new rod I've just bought. You see I've become a bit obsessed with finding the perfect rod to suit my canal lure fishing. By that I mean a rod that feels right and can perform multiple tasks, as I've been looking for a lure rod that can function both as a dropshot rod and light lure rod. The Sonik lightec I've been using for a while is an outstanding light lure rod for small hard lures and soft lures, but is a bit soft in the top section, which means it doesn't transfer much information back up the blank when fishing the dropshot with it. 

Its actually proved a hard task, as rod manufacturers would prefer you actually bought a rod for each discipline and so don't make an all round lure rod from what I can see. In any case this has led me to actually look for a rod which I think will be capable of multitasking even if it is labeled as something specific. A mistake I think I'd been making for a while though is only looking at light lure rods and thinking they could work as a dropshot rod, but then I saw a review of a dropshot rod on-line that said it worked well with small soft lures as well and realized maybe I'd been looking at the problem this the wrong way round. Once I'd handled several different dropshot rods I settled on Wychwood agitator dropshot rod in the 7ft version which is rated to cast 3-18 grams and I was dying to get out and have a go with it.

Unusually for me there was no real specific target for this little outing. Literally I just wanted to see how this new rod performed fishing both drop shot and small jigs. So I dropped on a section of the Coventry that is generally well populated with predators and began by using a super light dropshot rig to target any fishy looking structure. Straight away I could feel small perch plucking at the tiny pink shirasu lure I was using. After quickly landing a few small perch a little zander zipped off with the lure after hammering it close to some brick work on my bank.

A few stops later I switched over to fishing a 3 gram jig in conjunction with one of my favourite cannibal shads. The rod worked perfectly with this light rig and the stiff dropshot rod actually transfers so much information back up the blank. Literally as I lifted the lure off the bottom at any distance I could feel the paddle tail vibrating away. Happily the local perch were being obliging and quickly they were snatching the little lure as it dropped to the bottom, really engulfing the lure as they attacked.

So far so good with the Wychwood agitator dropshot rod; it does seem to be able to perform both as described as a dropshot rod and as a general purpose light lure rod. This hopefully should enable me to only carry the one rod and switch methods when I need whilst having confidence that the rod is doing a good job in any scenario.

A couple of days later I arranged to meet up with a fellow zed head Mick Newey to fish the Avon at night for zander. But a trip to Stratford with the JB and BB gave me a glimpse of the condition of the Avon and all confidence drained away after seeing it was very low and incredibly clear. On this occasion sense prevailed and we rearranged to instead have a session on a bit of canal that has produced some big fish quite consistently. I was almost tempted to take the new rod along, but as this bit of cut has such good form with big zeds I wanted to gamble and go big, taking instead a medium sized outfit so as to fish bigger lures.

We met up before first light miles away from anywhere and just as I arrived the rain began to fall gently in the half light. By the time we'd fished one known haunt, the rain began to pick up pace. By the time we were at the third spot it was torrential. We had no choice but to just shelter as best we could under some trees, Mick in his water proof jacket and me in the poncho that I always carry in my bag.  As we sheltered I had little choice but to abandon the lure rod which Id been casting repeatedly all morning, and this left me staring intently through the rain at my float rig. Nothing whatsoever happened whilst it was raining which was a bit perplexing as the dank conditions looked perfect for the zander to be feeding. Eventually the rain abated and once my soaking hat was rung out and abandoned it seemed like we could happily get out from under the trees and restart the session.

Not long after the rain stopped dimpling the surface, the canal seemed to spark into life once again. Fish were rolling up and down the canal and after persisting in one spot as I was convinced it held fish, a zander finally hit the 90mm spiky red head shad I was working along the bottom. After waiting it out in that chilly rain that little zander really put a smile back on my face.

With the weather now a bit more conducive to fishing, we both switched into proper zander fishing mode. With three dead bait lines and a lure rod on the go, we worked over every area we fancied for a maximum of thirty minutes before moving onto the next. This is the great thing about fishing with other zed heads, they fully appreciate the need to constantly keep moving to find feeding fish. So many times before I have just kept moving all day until I hit a sweet spot and the action just goes off instantly. On this occasion I don't think there was ever going to be a sweet spot though.

We both worked hard moving constantly and covering each swim we targeted well by moving baits round,  in my case covering every square inch with lures. Luckily for me I found another similar sized fish to the first close to an overhanging bush and then later in another swim a boat went through and that seemed to get a few inactive fish moving, in turn sparking a missed run for each of us.

The final fish of the morning sniffed out my dead bait in the now chocolate coloured water in  exactly the same spot as where I'd had the missed run and turned out to be yet another similar sized zander.

Time soon caught up with us and even though we could have gone on and on looking for more spots and scratched a few fish out of them, prior engagements called us away from the canal. With one Mick landed early on and the three I scratched out after the rain stopped it might not seem a bad result, but on this canal this was a bad days zander fishing. On any other canal in these conditions this would have been a blank I am sure. On some occasions on this canal I've had four out of a swim in under half an hour and it's not uncommon the get some action every swim you fish. But whatever the case it was good to catch up with fellow zed Mick and put a bend in the rod, and we are already planning going back once we've had a few frosts.

Change of plan.

It's not that often that I walk away from a venue before I've even started fishing, but that was the case the other day! I'd dropped off both JB and BB and made my way to a predetermined section of canal for what I had planned as a day of light lure fishing and roving off into the Warwickshire countryside. Admittedly I was a bit on the late side arriving. But after I did eventually arrive I got the gear out of the car, walked the short distance to the canal and peered at the water to see the boats had been at it for hours and done their worst. Literally, I reckon moles would have been more at home in that water than fish. Any love for the venue evaporated quickly and left me feeling rather flaccid about the whole session.

It took me a while to go through the local venues to choose an alternative that was in reasonable proximity to where I was and where I needed to be. As all I had was a very light lure outfit, the choices narrowed quickly and rather than go to another section of the same dirty canal I opted to head over to Leamington Spa to have a session on the Leam town waters again. The torpid Leam I surmised might be a good candidate for some light lure fishing and having been there a while ago I knew the waters running through the Victorian parks  held a few nice fish amongst all the bank side cover.

I reckon I'd been fishing all of ten minutes before I figured I'd made the right decision to move venues. The Leam it turns out is rammed to the reeds with small perch, and those small perch loved the tiny lures I was casting into the river and hopping slowly across the current. Literally every cast was getting some kind of  hit and in many cases multiple hits. There must have been groups of these tiny little predators chasing the lure back to the bank, gobbling it up and spitting it out until one got caught out.

All the perch activity raised the attention of the pike as well. Several small perch got chased around in the first swim until the naughty jack in question saw my lure and had a go itself, ending up getting hooked close to my bank after thinking its quarry was about to get away and engulfing it with a flare of its gills.

The fun went on all day and catching huge numbers of tiny perch meant it was only a matter of time before I located some bigger ones. In the shadow of a huge white building the far bank cover ended at a brick wall. Just where the cover ended, the wall began seemed to hold some different sized perch. At first it was just ones half as long again as the wasp average, but with the odd half pounder here and there. Someowhere amongst the multiple plucks from the smaller fish came a hard thump as something bigger hit the small spiky shad I was retrieving. The little fish and the small pike had proved sporty enough on my 1-7 gram outfit; this fish though was really having it. After playing it out in the flow in the middle of the river initially, it moved into the shallower clear waters close to my bank and I saw one chunky perch with my lure hanging out of its mouth being tracked by its identical twin. The second fish disappeared at the sight of my net in the water but the hooked fish went in good as gold.

I ran out of fish-able bank by mid afternoon and after a quiet break for lunch on a park bench in the sun, I turned around and worked my way all the way back down the stretch. Amazingly even after casting hundreds of times into the already fished swims, the stripy hordes were still well up for attacking the tiny lures as they skipped across the bottom. By the time I reached the end of the stretch, the river was in shade and the sun was heading towards the horizon. How many of those tiny perch I caught through the course of the day was impossible to calculate, but what I do know is the Leam where it runs through Leamington Spa is a brilliant venue for light lure fishing, and I will definitely be back for another go before winter sets in.

Cockamamie ideas.

I am rather partial to a cockamamie idea now and again. Sure I like a safe bet as much as the next man, but every now and again I formulate a plan that to most would seem implausible. Take for example the Coventry brown trout! It's most likely anyone would instantly think I was talking about a turd floating in some heavily polluted body of water and conclude the term is a slang reference, but that is not the case. Right now if you're still reading I am willing to bet you're thinking that I have gone mad and that trout only exist in lovely southern chalk streams, Scottish tarns or stony Welsh rivers. Well, that's true but there is a rare and small population of  trout existing in the diminutive and practically forgotten river Sowe in Coventry, and the cockamamie idea I concocted was to target these special little wild browns on the fly.

Technically, I am a bit late starting this seemingly implausible endeavor. I had hoped to be doing this prior to the start of the coarse season adding that illicit "I shouldn't be on the river before the 16th but I can legally if I am after trout" thing to the mix, but what with getting ill and getting fixed I never managed it. Back to the point, I recently obtained a 4wt fly rod, found out a small fly reel I've had for years and purchased what is probably a wholly inappropriate motley crew of flies and readied myself for an outing. However every time I've wanted to go, the river had a flush of water which has put me off until now. Having scoped out a few areas I thought looked good for it, I have just been waiting for the opportunity.

The time finally came and I packed up my spanking new fly outfit ready to go. Early morning I made the short journey by car. When I saw the river though my heart sank. The weed had come up so much that nearly the entire surface of the stretch I wanted to fish was covered. I don't think even the most experienced fly fisherman, never mind a novice such as myself, would have managed to cast a fly amongst all the weed. My session looked to be a wash-out on the face of it. After a little wander I managed to find a deeper area which was clear of weed, the only problem being that there was no space to make any casts. So to save me wasting time, I opted to go back to the car and swop my fly outfit for a light lure outfit I had stashed in the car boot and try and see if any small pike or perch might have been hiding in the deeper pool.

Even though the pool looked to be quite deep I initially opted to cast a small Snapper shallow bug around avoid any unseen snags. After nearly ten casts I would have expected any pike to show themselves but the lure failed to raise any attacks. As a matter of course I carried on casting it though to cover the whole pool just in case. I watched the lure wobbling back through the clear water when a fish suddenly rose up steadily from the depths and causally sucked it in. The moment it opened it's mouth and I saw a flash of white I knew it was a chub that had taken it. I've never actually seen a chub take a plug and it was interesting to see it very calmly taken, like it was a injured fish. The fight wasn't anything to write home about, but it was nice to finally hook a chub on a plug and it certainly saved the session for me.

I would have left the pool alone if I wasn't sure that somewhere in the unseen depths there was probably a shoal of perch. So I dug out a small cannibal shad and a five gram Sakura 5gram weedless jig head to help prevent getting snagged up. The combination worked well together in the flow of the river and I could feel the jig donking on hard gravel bottom as it crossed the main flow. The only weed in the swim was a raft of floating weed that had drifted down and caught on an overhanging branch at the head of the pool. When my lure went in just behind it I really thought that was where I would get hit. The lure though caught the flow and as I jigged it up of the bottom a couple of times, something ripped into it.

No sooner had I struck into the fish than it came flying out of the water looking quite angry. At this point I was sure it hit a highly strung summer pike, and casually played it on the light rod. Then it jumped again and I wasn't so sure of its identity. When it did a third jump and kart-wheel across the river I thought it wasn't looking that much like a pike at all. Now though it went deep, banging around against the bent double rod and for a moment I thought it was another chub, that was until it rolled close in and it clicked that it was a trout, and a huge one at that. I couldn't see the lure at all so I was confident it was well hooked. Several savage runs from the net later and I managed to turn its head into my waiting net to lift my prize from the water.

When I originally came up with the idea of catching a trout from the Sowe I kind of thought I would be lucky to catch something that would fit in the palm of my hand, but the reality of this amazing fish was mind blowing. Nearly two feet long and weighing over six pounds, this was the yeti of Sowe trout. This could well be the mother of them all and probably had never encountered an angler before. 

It truly was an honour to catch a fish that I would have never thought existed in a Coventry river in even my wildest dreams. I know some people might have been tempted to knock it on the head and take it home for a feast, not me though. I held that fish out in the flow in my net head for close on ten minutes and treated it with all the respect afforded to a British record barbel, it was that special, and why shouldn't I as this fish itself could well be a Coventry record brown trout or at least a Sowe record.

Just one fish.

All the local canals seem to really be waking up a bit now after a sputtering spring thing. I think it was three weeks ago that I saw the first little fish dappling the surface on the Grand Union. The zander might have spawned and now seem firmly on the feed and the catch rates are reflecting this. Perch though are another matter! A couple of outings ago I caught one solitary perch which was ready to pop, it was that full of spawn. Since then though the temps have risen so much that I was sure as hell the perch population should have got their mating done with.

One canal that I have neglected a bit lately is the Coventry as the general lack of a hard winter season did not benefit it at all. Usually when we get a good consistent winter the Coventry responds well and fishes consistently. In previous years when the temps have been up and down I have found that the fishing can be very patchy, even on normally reliable areas. Hence I have purposely been reluctant to fish there.

The warmer weather got me thinking that maybe it might have settled down and that the perch might be feeling a little peckish should they have spawned. It was a bit of a sputtering start for me on the day after an early wakeup call from my boy resulted in me turning off the alarm to glim a little more kip. In the end though I did get there and did fish, although the fish seemed hard to find or should I say, hard to convince to eat.

I was very diligent about working along the stretch, methodically using several different lures in various ways all whilst fishing a small dead bait as a sleeper rod at the bottom of the marginal shelf to hopefully appeal to a zander. But even working very hard it quickly became clear that the canal was still not on form.

My one sole bit of action was as pure as pure can be. From a short distance away I saw what I was sure was tiny roach flipping out in a flat calm section of canal hidden from the wind. As I approached, two more small silver fish jumped out of the water. After quickly flicking through the lures I had to hand, I settled on a small silver glittery paddle tail grub which I cast tight to the far bank cover beyond the jumping fish. I must have cast and recast twenty times before the lure got hit on the fall as it dropped into the trench. It turned out to be a big perch which had taken my grub and what a fatty it was as well.

You could put a saddle on that!

One perfect hit from a perfect perch. I would love to say that I walked away and went home satisfied with my perfect moment. But the truth is that I combed that area again and again, hoping in vain that it might have been a shoal of big perch in the area, but I never got another touch.

It did however confirm that the Coventry canal perch at least haven't spawned yet, as this one definitely had spawn in it and had a very swollen vent. I can't deny being confused as I was sure as predators, the perch would have spawned already to give those little munchy baby perch a good head start.

Old schoolies.

There are a few old canal haunts of mine that I had been thinking about getting back to for a long while now, but the only thing is that these old haunts have in recent years been acquired by a new fishing club. Now truthfully I have never been big on joining clubs to fish on canals. I think it's a bit of a grey area regarding clubs laying claim to canals, as generally they make no effort whatsoever to bailiff or look after them and as anyone can just tootle on up and fish without being approached, then in my mind it's basically a free for all. 

That was until the Lure Anglers Canal Club came along. This relatively new club seems to be a new, different sort of club, unlike the stuffy old relics that cling on to their old canal stretches just in case the river is out of sorts or they've got a match on their one and only pool. Online membership, regular fish-ins and a well organized lure league. If all of that wasn't appealing enough to make me purchase the bargain £20 membership, the fact that they have under their control some twenty five miles of prime canal that will never get electro fished to remove zander, certainly is. So after joining up via the Internet and harassing the chairman with a few questions, my membership pack arrived and I added a Crimewatch classic photo to my membership card ready to hit some old haunts.

Wanted in connection to crimes against fishing lures.

My first short foray was to a section of the Grand Union that used to be a quality bit of water. Apart from the fact that it was late in the afternoon and the boats were thumping down the canal, it turned out to be an interesting return. Straight away I found a couple of small schoolie zander lying in the deeper water where the locks raging water had scoured away the silt. I moved away from the lock after it was opened and targeted a deep section of cover small a red spikey shad on a three gram jig tight into the cover, where I picked up a slightly bigger than average schoolie.

Along with the boats one other thing was proving to be a bit problematic; large swathes of the canal surface was littered with hundreds of thousands of spent catkins that had been blown from the trees lining the banks. Although pretty innocuous, these little buggers made casting the lures a nightmare. They got hung up on line and leader knots, they were so thick in some cases that the line could even get through them and the lure didn't sink. Even moving spots didn't help that much as when the locks opened up the collections of them moved on mass along the canal.

I finished up having to really pick where I was casting carefully, but even doing that I still managed to root out a few more small zeds fishing tight to the concrete structures above and below the many locks dotted along this section of canal, using curly tailed grubs.

A couple of days later I was back on the same canal but few miles downstream to meet up with Mick for a session. It had been a dreadful night weather-wise, with storms battering the south of the country. Although we seemed to have been spared much of the wind, the rain had really come down and was predicted for a large part of the morning.

Given that my faithful waterproof smock has grown a little tighter of late I had to make do with a stinky old poncho that has been lingering in my car boot where I'd dumped it since last year and looking like a proper old bank tramp I wandered off into the rain to find Mick.

Not long after hooking up with my accomplice for the morning I got the first tentative signs of action. Having brought a dead bait rod for this session which I had flicked out onto the edge of the trench as I was searching around for a tug on the lure. The small float sprang to life first when a tiny zander thought his luck was in and found my roach head. That one came off, but in the next spot I hooked and landed a slightly better one which objected to being photographed and made a slippery escape back into the canal as I fumbled with my camera. 

As we moved down the canal we came across a slightly sticky situation. A pair of swans had decided to nest literally right next to the tow path. With what looked like Mum on the nest and Dad lurking on the canal, slipping between them was done quickly with a definite squeak of the arse as you went. I've seen how aggressive nesting swans can be and this set up has got 'attacked dog walker' written all over it.

Worst of all was the fact that after doing the swan slip once, the pounding wind and rain turned us back for a second pass as we backtracked into the cover. Once cast out between some boats, Mick had a couple of small zeds and lost a better one on his dead bait rod, before I snagged a very spawn filled perch on the jig from the centre of the canal. Obviously still to spawn, the perch have me a bit confused as I would of thought with them being predators they would have spawned already.

The highlight of the session was still to come though. After fishing a few fruitless areas we came to a heavy bit of cover which looked right to both of us. Mick cast his dead bait out on the right hand side of what is now called 'Mick's bush' and I cast mine to the left. As we searched around with small jigs, Mick's dead rod showed signs of life. His strike was met with a good bend in the rod and straight away we both knew it was a good fish. I barely got hold of the net before he was doing the F*~# F*~# F*~# zander lament into the sky knowing he'd lost a big one. Then within ten minutes my float sank off like a U boat submerging. I struck and my rod bent round as another big fish shook its head. It was on long enough for me to see a long light shape under the water then it too came off leaving me cursing the sky like a mad man.

Really I thought that was it until after a little while Mick's recast float did a few different movements. He held that rod for ages waiting for some kind of definite movement. After watching the float move like a crayfish was doing one with the bait for ages, he finally struck and once again a big fish was on. This time it never got away and elated by the sight of a new PB zander, Mick was all smiles. We both thought it was bigger than it turned out to be, but even a pound and a half lighter than originally predicted it was still a brilliant fish of  7.6lb which I was really happy to see become Micks new PB.

I don't think either of us will ever be sure if we stumbled onto the land of the giants in the 'Mick's bush' swim or if it was the same fish that struck thrice. I've personally seen the same zander caught and landed twice in the same session, as well as the same fish pick up, come off and come back again a few times, so part of me says it was the same fish on all three runs. But then there is part of me that loves the idea of a rogue pack of big zander mooching around like they own the cut.

That was it for the action for the day and considering the weather conditions weren't exactly enjoyable, we did have a good session in the end. The old haunts seem to be as good as they ever where and hopefully any skills and knowledge I've learnt since I last fished these stretches will help me stick some nice fish in the net. I can't wait to get out again and have already made plans to get on another tasty looking bit of new canal on the LACC waters as soon as I can to try and find myself a big old Grand Union monster zed.

Canal grubbing.

Quite simply my latest outing on the tow path was an unmitigated disaster. Really I probably should have ventured to the river, but I was guilty of waiting for what I thought would be optimum conditions (which might not come at this rate). So I headed to the Coventry canal to see if I could try and pin down any groups of zander or perch in the area.

The moment I laid eyes on the canal I should have got back in the car and gone to another stretch. Probably being a bit pig-headed I thought I could root something out, but the conditions were against me with a big drop in temperature. The section I was on is very susceptible to a north wind battering which seemed to have stirred up the sediment as well, leaving the section where I was very coloured whilst reports that it was clear on sheltered areas northward.

As I mooched the tow path persevering, I came across something interesting though. The canals with their infestation of crayfish have really begun to suffer with collapsing banks. I never thought it was that much of an issue until I spoke to a chap on a work party a few years ago. He explained to me that the crayfishes burrowing was speeding up the erosion rates on sections that aren't lined with metal pilings. Anyway, the interesting thing I came across was that a large section of collapsed tow path had recently had new metal pilings installed and that behind them it had all been back filled. Given the lack of accessibility where I was, it doesn't seem likely they could have transported the material in to use to fill behind the piling. So more than likely I must have been sediment dug from the canal onto the bank.

This stuff was a treasure trove! As well as a of a couple hundred years of accumulated silt there was remnants of broken bottles, from the classic Budweiser bottle right back to vintage square pharmaceutical bottles, none of which were intact sadly. Along with bits of plastics and crisp packets dating back to my child hood was a lost or dumped American express card which went out of date fifteen years ago. But what interested me were the signs of aquatic life. Literally everywhere was peppered with shells. The amount of swan mussels alone was shocking, but they were outnumbered fifty to one by some kind of clam which it would seem at some point were very prevalent in this area.

I must've grubbed around kicking about in the newly exposed soil for a good three quarters of an hour hoping to find something good and in doing so began to see evidence that the soil was certainly from the canal bed. Weirdly though I had a little plumb around to see if the excavations had changed the depth, only to find little difference at all to what I would expect to find anywhere on the canal.

In the end I left and continued down the tow path and to maybe even find a fish or two. At the next spot I was trying to be a bit of a smart ass and began targeting a large half sunken branch which I thought might be a good holding area. First cast and my jig found a hold of the snag! Turns out my outfit and knots were capable of a bit more than I thought. The 8lb braid and 6lb fluro leader all held firm under pressure and just as I thought the line would give, the snag slowly moved towards me. With gentle pressure and my braid bedding down badly into the spool, I managed to drag that dammed snag all the way across the canal and right to the edge under me feet. The moment I grabbed hold of the stinking silt covered branch I wondered if there might be a lure or two hooked on it, and there was. Along with a few manky rubber lures was a shiny gem!

Whoever threw this into the Coventry cut needs their head looking at! From the shape of it I had an inkling of what it was, but if that wasn't enough it had the manufacturer printed on its back. It was Yo-zuri floating minnow which retails for around ten quid in the shops and it didn't look like it had been in the water long either. 

Finding that made a bad session a little easier to take, I can tell you. The rubbish/snag infested nature of the Coventry especially is the reason why I find myself reluctant to cast expensive lures into it. I myself have had days when I will lose three to five jig heads plus the accompanying rubber lures and losing them can total up to £10. Lose five top of the range hard lures and you could be looking at more like £50 or more.

In the end though the session came to naught really and even though it was interesting grubbing along the tow path and retrieving that lure was a plus point, I really should have followed my instincts and gone somewhere else on this occasion.

A success or not?

Really I am struggling on whether to label my most recent sessions a success or not. Time and weather conspired to limit my bank time, and with only a fleeting amount of hours fishing in what should have been ideal conditions I can't decide whether what I did was perfectly pure or just a total failure.

I had it in my mind that the river with a deluge of rain would be in good condition to try and target zander on the lure in the slacks around Warwick. In truth upon seeing the water lapping at the wooden platforms when I arrived I felt I might have got this a bit wrong. Still though I persisted and endeavoured to chuck a few dark heavily vibrating soft lures in the eddies behind several fallen trees.

Maybe I might have stood a chance if I hadn't underestimated how heavy a jig head I needed to pull a six inch shad down in a turbulent river. Even the slightest of flow would catch the under weighted rubber lure and send it five feet left or right for every foot it dropped. As an experiment I punched the lure over the flow and literally in twelve feet of water it made it back to my own bank before hitting the bottom.

Luckily the rain and wind saved me from persisting any longer than an hour and a half, because I know if it hadn't I would have stuck it out probably to no avail till God only knows when. Though I still reckon fishing lures for zander on coloured rivers on warm days has some mileage, I do now realise that waiting for the river to start dropping might be the course to take in the future.

Now that outing alone would have easily marked these sessions as a flop, but the night before I snatched an impromptu few hours back on the Oxford canal. This session too returned little by the way of fish, and after losing a small zander not long after hooking it, it too looked to be a pretty shitty out come. That was until dusk fell! Like all anglers I probably stay a bit too long and make far too many last casts when really I should have been driving home.

Somewhere in the falling light, around that point when you lose sight of the orange of a float I was retrieving my ever faithful clown cannibal shad slowly across the trench of the canal using a short lifts followed by long pauses. Not far from my own bank I lowered the lure on a tight line to the bottom and felt a hard thump. Next thing I know I've struck and the rod is bent double.

The fight on my light lure outfit was sporting, with the unseen culprit stripping line from the spool and me retrieving it. The fish made powerful runs, but declined to come thrashing open mouthed to the surface which confirmed this was no zander. Even with hardly any light I spotted a big spiky fin piercing a bit of reflection on the canals surface beyond my net, just before a big perch was engulfed in the nets folds.

This fish was immaculate from nose to tail, and it's with a hint of confidence that I say it is very unlikely that it has ever been caught before, as the stretch of canal I was fishing is really out there, overgrown and the one resident that lives there says he has never seen another angler bar myself fishing thereabouts for many years.

And this is what brings me to my quandary! For whatever effort you might apply, is one possibly never before caught, picture perfect perch around two pounds, enough to make your time a success. Because weirdly I feel right now that this was one of the purest captures I have made in a long time. Saying that, it may have felt different if I hadn't have walked away immediately after the capture due to the lack of light. I dare say I would have greedily thrashed the water to foam to probably catch one a quarter of its size if had had only another half an hour of light.

Hard conditions and bastard bass.

The autumn warmth is a wonderful thing. It's like a special illicit treat when rightfully the damp of winter should be creeping in. Piles of rustling dry leaves and early morning chill you know will seep away as the sun rises. As far as I am concerned it's been a slow start to autumn and as we travelled east the hedgerows reflected as much. Surprisingly only the odd tree here and there showed signs of change, and the hopes of a late warm break beside a lake were perfectly valid. Little did we know that something moved to meet us in a few days time...

Rightfully being wired the way I currently am, I should have been in heaven, with hundreds of moored boats, spread over several marinas on a lake which, at times, is paved with so many perch you could be forgiven for thinking the bottom is striped.  Add to that its previous form for big perch and you could understand my inclination to take just two lure rods and an array of lures every colour of the rainbow.

But on that first trip out and after much probing of every nook and cranny I found my dropshot and micro jig tactics reaped nothing from thousands of casts. This was concerning as in these very same marinas I have caught one perch, unhooked it and just dropped a hook with a hulled maggot still attached in the edge and caught another. Then repeated the same debacle again and again until I suspect it's the same fish again and again.

I've never really just concentrated on lure fishing here and at first I didn't want to over react to the lack of hits at first, so took the inactivity in my stride. Another short session with zero hits though scratched away at my confidence somewhat. It wasn't until the following outing that I hooked a powerful little jack pike bouncing a 7.5cm salt and pepper zander shad along the side of a boat that I clawed confidence back a little.

There was certainly the odd fish around but where were the masses of perch? I ruminated over this as I continued casting. The one thing I kept coming back to was the clarity of the water. Though perfect for sight feeding predators, the clear water offered little cover to anything and with the array of bigger predators, that kind of made sense to me. If we think we have it bad with cormorants inland then around the coast they have it horrendous. Literally of a morning it's not unusual to see twenty or more on this Broad and otters are quite common as well. It often amazes me that there is still a viable population of fish in the Broads considering how hard it must be to maintain those levels under the circumstances.

Still, in the belief that the fish were present, I decided to go a bit more subtle to see if there was fish that weren't in an aggressive enough state to hit a lure but might take a bait. So a few worms were procured in order to see if a slow moving natural bait might sort a few fish out. Whether it was the worms or the more favorable conditions on the day, but walking the worm did put a few more fish on the bank. Only one marina which unlike all the others had an open side to the rest of the Broad instead of an entrance, seemed to have fish moving in and out of it and produced. Along with a whole mess of tiny and even tinier little Sargeants I did manage to sort out one decent perch by gyrating a worm along just off the bottom at a snail's pace.

From the corner vantage point where I could cast all around the marina, I figured the perch were collected close to pair of cruisers that looked like they hadn't been out of the marina in years. As I looked for possible other shoals I hooked into a fish that went insane and turned out to be a roach bream hybrid that had taken a shine to my split dendrobena hook bait.

Weirdly, once I had established the presence of fish I again switched to the lures for the following outings around the marinas. But not long after this the weather turned decidedly worse as the wind which had been blowing from the north east strengthened and pulled in some showers.

Somewhere in the breaks in the weather I snuck out back to the open sided marina and managed to find another little pike, which went like a rocket on my 1-8g outfit. The wind though kept my options very limited as white horses now danced across the lake and reduced the fishable area by half.

It wasn't literally until the day before we were due to leave that I got out again. For probably the first time all week I was able to actually get on and fish from a trio of stages outside the marinas. Up until now the wind had prohibited any casting from these areas as the waves and gust had made casting and retrieving impossible.

Lo and behold first cast, my three gram jig sailed out across the now still Broad; I felt it drop maybe ten or more feet to the bottom and a few lifts of the rod later I felt small yet distinct vibration come back up the line. Turns out the masses of perch were held up about fifty feet out into the water. Literally I couldn't go wrong as cast after cast brought me another little perch. They might have been small but I can honestly say I was truly glad to get into those little predators in the end and prove that if it weren't for that evil north easterly I might have been playing a numbers game to find a big one amongst the hordes of little ones.

Bastard Bass

Lake Loathing was full of juvenile mullet, bass and what not. I'd done a few circuits of the fishing spots searching for anything that might fancy a little rubber snack, like a tubby flounder or even a wary whiting, but only had a couple nibbles of interest from some unseen tiddler. Now though I was casting under huge concrete supports that supported a road over head. Years ago I am sure I saw a small cuckoo wrasse lingering in the shadows and that thought always made me cast into that area.

Watching half an Isome worm dance back a foot off the bottom leading a few tiny fish along was amusing, but when those fish scattered my vision opened up and I spotted something bigger move in and turn off quickly. Halting the retrieve and keeping the red worm moving brought it back in sight. Three times that fish went off and came back and when it passed into the half shaded water I got a perfect view of a mint bass of maybe three pounds.

Position, lure and tack were changed again and again, and in doing so I discovered that bass wasn't alone! Four or five similar sized fish repeatedly circled the concrete supports and after watching them for long enough it became clear they were interested in the shoals of juvenile fish. Luckily or unluckily I had a pretty good match for the fry in a small, random blue and silver shad someone had given me.

This where the frustration began; Moving the random shad around like a wounded fish would easily get the attention of the bass, which would fire in very quickly, but every time no matter how close, they would fall short and turn off as if they knew something was wrong. Two days this went on for and around the same state of tide those few fish would turn up and maraud around, sending the fry panicking whilst clocking my lure every time.

In the end those frustrating fish drove me to bait fishing. A pack of costly peeler crab was purchased and I set a trap. I knew where they seemed to patrol into the structure from and at the end of that route I cast my bait. I even used a sneaky fresh water running rig on fluorocarbon line so as not to alert those wary blighter's to my rouse. And what happened might you ask... well those bastard bass never turned up that day did they!

Drop dead dumb Jig.

I don't think there was any doubt in my mind that I would be going back to the newly discovered honey hole on the canal. I'd tried to hook up with Jeff but he had prior arrangements for a date with Martin on the river. This though did open up the door for me to go back and use some slightly different tactics. With so many predators in the area I really wanted to have a go on the lures, but I think this is a very disruptive method and repeatedly casting around is just not fair if someone is float fishing, so going alone was perfect.

Luckily I had a couple of mornings free and decided to use both to try and plunder the stretch. Not wanting to possibly ruin my chances, I decided to go softly softly at it and on the first day went back to fish the drop shot in conjunction with dead baits and the results were brilliant...

The previous session I figured out there were a few snags on the far bank, so kept well away from them and targeted the trench and near margin using some black and white fox micro fry Mick off of Piscatorial Quagswagging had kindly given me. The water again looked quite clear and I felt everything looked right for a few hits, and I was right for once. First cast working the tiny lure back across the trench and I got hit really hard by a average sized canal zander.

After releasing that one I began working the lure along the bottom of the near side shelf. I hadn't gone ten feet before I found myself playing a nice perch.

I am religious about taking perch well away from where I have caught them and after returning that one a really good walk away from where I was fishing, I made my way back to start again. Not knowing it at the time, something weird happened next. I had carried on working the line I'd caught the last perch on and gone quite a way before I hit a second pristine perch which fought equally as hard the first.

It wasn't until I looked at the picture on the computer that the similarities between those first two fish became clear. Then I looked closer and saw a tiny red spot just above the anal fin and it dawned on me that it was definitely the same fish and not just that, but it had fallen for the same lure on the same line probably back on its way back to its holding spot. So either my technique was pretty spot on or I had caught the dumbest perch in the Midlands.

After adding a further four more nice perch and bucket load of micro zander to my tally I finished off with a perfect finale. I was happily playing quite a big perch with my little Sonik lighttec bent double into the canal when my dormant dead bait line sprang to life. A bit of extra pressure got the perch in the net and then after grabbing the other rod I was playing a small zander. It was the perfect brace to end another brilliant session and also helped to prove that these predators were just as up for attacking lures as they were for eating worms.

The second day proved just as fruitful; only this time I went back aggressively and swapped the micro drop shot rig for a much bigger jigging rig just to see how up for it they were. In short, fishing a 7cm salt and pepper Fox zander shad did the business in the again clear water and I quickly tricked a trio of predators into my net. 

Worryingly as the morning wore on the ubiquitous micro zander turned up and the better fish seemed to disappear. Once these tiny terrors switched and started nipping at the lures the fishing became quite frustrating. Moving put me back on the perch, but the ones further away from the holding area were literally a quarter of the size of the previous days fish.

To most people it might seem insane for me to say that's it for me and the honey hole spot, but that is the case! Now I have had a confirmed recapture I am beginning to suspect there could have been others and it makes me realize that even though I suspect there could be bigger fish around or even move into the spot, that there is not an infinite amount of fish in the area. Having to recapture them again and again just on a hunch to wheedle out the mother of them all would just take shine away from them in my eyes and ultimately be detrimental to them.