Rehabilitation sessions.

It always amazes me how quickly the countryside colours change in the warmer months. Through winter it always looks similar and even in differing light the fields and such are really just different shades of the same faded yellows and brown for months on end. In the summer though you can turn your back and look again to see the same vista looking totally anew.

In two weeks the land that surrounded the vole city stretch of the Oxford canal was nothing more than the new fresh green summer green. Now though as I stumbled along the bank, the waterway was flanked by meadows raging with so many butter cups that the horses walking among them looked like characters from a Doctor Zeus cartoon.

If that wasn't enough, the field opposite had turned from Warwickshire mud red with a hint of green into the dream scene from Ridley Scott's Gladiator. I half expected to see Russell Crowe walking wistfully amongst it fingling the wheat sheaves as he went.

Really I wanted to have returned before now, but nine days ago whilst putting out the bin I twisted in a odd way and something in my back went pop. Ever since then I have been delicately trying to rehabilitate myself from feeling like my top and bottom half of my body were not attached correctly to being able to hobble more than thirty feet in one go.

With only minimal recovery time off work and one very sedate session where I fished within eye shot of the bridge where my car was parked in a stance not that dissimilar to someone who had had an accident in their underpants, I now felt ready to return again. 

We all take walking for granted if you ask me and walking on an uneven tow-path with any element of a bad back basically wheedles out any weakness in your body, trust me. The previously mentioned session I barely got anywhere, and even with four more days of recovery I had only walked a very short way before my altered gate began to tell on my right hip.

Trying to forget any discomfort, I went about casting methodically along the reed lined bank trying to locate any predators lurking along the camouflaging reeds. I have to admit that I was under the impression that with the summers arrival the predatory fish would become vicious weapons of mass consumption and that they would be crawling up my line. The truth I am finding is not quite what I thought it would be! In fact although I do believe the fish are more aggressive, they firstly have more actual prey to become preoccupied with and secondly seem to be quite spread out on the canals. All of which adds up to summer lure fishing on the canal possibly being harder than winter fishing as far see at the moment. Maybe it will get easier as the time passes or maybe it's a case of tuning in to summer feeding fishes habits. 

Whatever the reason for the current state of the fishing I was in no doubt after an hour of casting that I wasn't doing something right, so quickly tied up a drop shot rig and began dobbing the ever reliable Wave tikki monkey along the near side margin and finally got a result by way of a chunky hard fighting perch. 

With the dusk approaching I left vole city and headed down to the spot where I had hobbled to a few days earlier. Although on that occasion I had fallen foul of the blank I did see at least three attacks on what looked like small roach that were taking something of the surface. I knew there were predators present and I hoped that arriving just before the witching hour would let me get the best of the area.

It took some time to come good, but in the furious hour after the sun sank beyond the horizon the small zander of which all the canals seem rife with came out to play. There seemed to be a shoal marauding around the area as every one of the four micro zander I landed and the one I lost were all within an inch of each other in length. The only lure that seemed to interest them was a three inch AGM black curly tail grub, which I suspect was showing up quite well against the clear sky as I bounced it across the bottom. Another hard fighting perch took a fancy to the grub just as I was about lift the lure to cast again and really gave me some stick on the light gear.

It was great to get out on the bank again and somewhere in the melee of action at dusk I actually for the first time in a while forgot about my niggling back. Now I am somewhere near full fitness I need to get back on it, as I have few venues I want to visit before the season opens again and my quickly dwindling time becomes even more stretched.

The things you see on the towpath.

What I thought I would see when I turned my head I could not possibly think. Only moments ago the quiet tranquility had been shattered by the single loudest splash I have heard on a canal. Part of me wanted to turn and witness a possible second jump from a wild giant golden carp. Another part of me didn't want to turn my head at all as the splash sounded big enough to be human and as I didn't fancy wading into the canal to try fish anyone out. Knowing my luck as well it was more likely the latter and given there were no walkers or boats around god only knows what had happened.

In the end I forced myself to look just in case I had to do my good Samaritan bit, but all I could see was waves emanating from the opposite bank a few hundred feet away, where it looked like someone had just chucked in a paving slab. Scanning the water I finally spotted a wake of something moving across the canal, what caused it though wasn't clear. Then after pinpointing the beginning of the wake I saw a brown head and instantly I concluded some stupid dog had dived in for some reason only known to stupid dogs. Now I could see me having to go down and try and help some soaking wet writhing dog up over the metal pilings that line this section of canal, as I have seen Jeff have to do every time Moll goes diving in after a coconut or something.

Walking closer my wet dog theory got blown out of the water as the wake turned towards me and I sighted what looked like female Muntjac deer powering along the canal. Any ideas of helping this thing out of the canal were shelved as I didn't fancy getting my teeth kicked in trying to be a Good Samaritan. 

 Instead I kept my eye on it as it swam down the canal till it came to a spot where the piling ended and the soaking doe could scramble up the muddy bank. Where the little deer came from was a bit of a mystery as this new bit of the Coventry canal I was fishing is right on the edge of an urban area. Given that the deer had jumped in on the side it had only meant it had actually come out of the housing estate. Mind you saying that I know the housing estate in question and given a choice between being stuck in there or jumping in the canal I know which I'd choose.

As I mentioned before it was a new or should I say newish bit of canal I was fishing. The last couple of weeks I've been checking out some new areas which as far as I can see are a bit under the radar. The section that for me will forever be known as the deer jump section is an odd one. It is quite a long walk away from any access point and for my part I have walked in from both directions and never quite got on either occasion to this bit. The fishing when I arrived was OK. Not knowing anything I was just trying to locate fish and after finding only two micro zander after fishing a large chunk of it I was thinking I wouldn't be coming back. That was until I fished under a couple of acorn trees hanging over my own bank. The first one I got absolutely turned over by a pike which grabbed an orange koypto in the edge and proceeded to shoot across the canal and bite through the leader. The shadows of the second tree were in feasted with small perch which were a sucker for a two inch curly tail grub being dobbed along the marginal shelf.

A few nights earlier I had done a short evening session on the Oxford on a new spot with some interesting results. With the temps high the surface was buzzing with insects and looking down the stretch I soon spotted lots of small fish lipping and topping. It wasn't hard to surmise the predators wouldn't be far away, which they weren't. A few small zander and perch is enough to give me confidence in the stretch and get me to return again.

Towards the end of the session I found the ever present mega snag with claimed lure leader and hook. I nearly went home at this point but I couldn't waste even ten minutes of light so I rigged up again just in case. Most of the water I had fished had been unusually deep but just as I came into a shallower bit something really smashed into the big wave curly tail I was retrieving. It turned out to be a really nice perch of well over a pound that was hunting in the half light.

Now I feel I have to eat my words, as only the other week I saying how bad I thought the fishing was on the Oxford and now here I am saying that actually there does seem to be a few nice fish about. My only defence is that I think the temperature has played a key role round these parts. Up until now it has seemed quite lifeless, but now I am seeing more and more activity as the temperature rises. Hopefully this might mean that the Oxford round here is more a summer and autumn target rather than a winter or spring one.

The highlight of my session was surprisingly not a fish or anything to do with a fish! On the day when I caught a huge zander a few months ago I got a momentary view of a rare little creature. I'd forgotten all about it in the fuss of the big zed, but what I saw on the Oxford reminded me of it.

Not long into the session I thought I saw something swimming across the canal. The first one I couldn't get a clear view of and the second wasn't much better. The third though seemed quite comfortable with me watching it. Turns out the more time you spend on the canals the more you see and on this occasion I spotted four different water voles busily working along several large reed beds along this new section.

Before anyone says it they were definitely water voles and not rats, as rats swim quicker through the water and have a pointy snout, whereas as the buoyant water vole has no need to swim quickly to prevent itself from sinking as it floats like a cork high in the water and has a blunt snout.

I will certainly be returning to both deer jump and vole city as both of them seem to have oodles of potential for pretty much all species and given enough time over different conditions I reckon one or both might well throw up nice fishy surprises.

BOGOF

'You buy one, you get one free!  I say you buy one, you get one free' 

Those were the words that kept ringing through my head again and again as I stood on the tow path the other day. And why shouldn't they have been stuck on some torturous loop in my mind, because after all this was a bank holiday weekend, it wasn't raining and the boat wankers were out in force. At some points 'buy one, get one free' was an understatement to say the least. Seven boats in convoy was the record for the day. Honestly that lot coming down the cut was like an armada passing by, all churning up the bottom and blankly wishing good morning whilst inanely asking if I'd caught my supper. If it wasn't for the fact that I was actually having fun catching a few perch and some rather obliging strip zander I feel sure I would have been jumping up and down on the bank shaking my fist and ranting in ancient long forgotten language that they should keep their witty japes regarding my tea to themselves, before I am tempted to shove their barge pole in their rear hatch.

I had always known it was going to get a bit manic with boat traffic and to try and get some done before they started I had arrived just after first light. Weirdly the action prior to the boats beginning to rumble by had been in my opinion, a bit sporadic. All I had managed was a single chunky perch which I had winkled out by dancing a tikki monkey along the nearside shelf on a drop shot rig. 

The drop shot rig was partly why I was fishing in this area. You see I had a few new lures I wanted to try out and they all seemed more suited to the drop shot rather than a jigging rig. Given the past few weeks had been a little zander filled and that I have much more success with perch on the drop shot, I had come to a area stuffed full of the critters.

Convinced the margins were paved with the stripy Herbert's I stuck it out on the drop shot, working around any structure I could find. Although I wasn't finding them in numbers, when I did spark any into interest they were absolutely smashing into my lures.

The oddest part of the session came after a couple of boats really stirred up the canal. I have always thought that it actually takes a boat going through to stir the resident fish into moving, and off the back of that I have developed a theory that sometimes when the boats churn up the bottom, zander for one, actually go into the clouds of silt looking for anything that has been disturbed out of the mud, like worms, leeches and small fish. It proved exactly the case when the boats have moved on and I shot my rig right to the far side of the canal before pulling it back into the murk. Four or five small strip zander and a single nice perch fell for a black grub on a slow retrieve through the clouds of silt.

The boats I knew would all too soon begin to wear on my patience, and it was then that I sought a bit of respite and headed for the relative quiet of a small row of moored boats. Working the rig rhythmically as close to their hull as I could, I tempted one final nice perch that I can only say has real potential in the future. Although not much over a pound in weight I don't think I have ever seen a little fish that looked so much like a big fish before and that for me was the perfect point in which to leave the canal to the boaters.