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.

Specimen lure fishing.

It seems modern society nowadays is obsessed with identity and this categorising has seeped its way into fishing as well. Once upon a time you were simply an angler, now though we all as anglers seem to want to categorise ourselves; carp anglers, predator anglers, match anglers, specimen anglers, barbel anglers, sea angler, lure anglers and pleasure anglers just to name a few. No doubt as you read those descriptions you quite likely would have put yourself into one of the categories as you read it. For my part though I don't see it this way... I see it like this: I think of myself as the centre of a pie chart where the surrounding sections are made up of the previously mentioned types of angler. Dependant on what I am interested in at any one time the specific sections of that pie chart might be bigger. I suppose by description that make me some kind of all rounder, but being an all rounder has its advantages in that by being informed of methods of many facets of angling you can mix and match what your doing to you're advantage!

Of late it is not untrue to say that I am leaning more towards lure angling, but its my knowledge as a specimen angler which inspired my most recent outing. You see I have long theorised that there might be some rather generous sized perch lurking in one of my favourite lakes. I actually know there is a large population of perch which are generally very focused on tiny baits like caster and maggot. These fish range up to 2lb in weight or 35cm-40cm if you're a lure angler. My thoughts though were that there must be a few really big mommas around and that maybe targeting them with lures which the smaller fish really don't respond to until later in the year might help target the big girls specifically.

My idea when I arrived early doors was to target some feature strewn spots using crayfish lures fished on Carolina rigs with which I had been having a lot of success lately. I love the way this set up works! By having the weight of the rig set away from the lure you get these few moments when the weight hits the bottom, the lure is no longer being pulled down by anything and it flutters slowly down - nine times out of ten that's when the perch hit.

Being as I was after a specimen and I knew the smaller perch were unlikely to make an appearance I wasn't expecting many fish, but after making hundreds of casts in likely areas I had zero to show for my efforts. That was until I began casting into a reedy bay where I hoped the perch could be gathering ready for spawning. On my first cast I watched the rig hit the bottom and then the sagging braided line shot taught and I struck into thin air. I was sure a fish had grabbed the lure and quickly ejected it. Then three casts later I felt a very distinctive thump resonate up the braided line which again came to naught. The wind was actually blowing a little into the bay and this was helping me to cast onto the reed line and fish a bent retrieve along the edge of the reeds where I thought the fish might been holed up. About three or four twitches along the reeds something smashed the lure hard sending a fizz up from the lake bed as it moved off. I really thought it could have been a perch at first but the fish just piled on the pressure and powered off sending my little 500 size reel into melt down. Ten minutes of me retrieving line and it smashing the swim to bits and I got my first sight of a nice looking pike deep down in the clear water. It wasn't until it went into the net that I realised just how much of a pig of a pike it was.

She might have been only 75cm long but she was probably 80cm round. Even though she obviously hadn't spawned, she was very much still feeding hard and her stomach was very much laden with fish. Other than her obvious weight issues she was a stunning fish all round and catching her more than made up for the lack of target fish on this outing.

Tusses Freestyle Warm Up friendly.

I'd been really looking forward to the Tusses warm up friendly for quite a while. These friendly get together club matches have a great vibe about them with anglers of all nationalities that love lure fishing coming together for a good time. The only fly in my ointment was the fact that nine days prior I'd had some long awaited carpel tunnel surgery on my right hand to cut the transverse carpel ligament and release the pressure on the median nerve. Thus I was left with a stitched up wound at the bottom of my right hand and the ligament that helps the thumbs movement severed. Prior to the event I had a little experiment with a super light lure rod and found that although I was able to fish I couldn't really cast as such. A second experiment with my left hand had me casting like a drunken toddler so I concluded that in the approaching match was going to be strictly limited to fishing under the rod tip dibbling style.

Luckily for me I was green lit to drive by the quack a few days prior to the event and after a wary drive through dense fog I arrived early to see plenty of competitors readying rods in the car park near the Greyhound pub at Hawksbury junction.

I think everyone had trepidations about the fishing as the recent wall to wall sunshine and high temperatures had probably had little effect on the water temps, so the fish would probably be quite cagey still. This was even worse for me given my limited range; I would be scrabbling around on the shallower shelf rather than being able to search out the deeper water. With this in mind I opted to travel out a bit to find a spot of unchallenged canal where I knew there was deeper water close in and things initially started very well when I hooked and landed a high scoring jack pike early in the match.

After that things went very sour for me. I was intermittently locating single fish that I was just about persuading to bite. The problem I was having was with my hand strapped up in a brace for protection I was just that bit too slow to connect with these very subtle fast hits. I missed or lost no less than ten small fish, most of which I felt vibrating for a moment before they just disappeared. Psychologically it was very damaging as I knew that in what was going to be a tight match I lost what could have been a metre of fish. Towards the end of the match I finally found a decent perch lingering in a bank side snag which tore so hard into the lure that even I wasn't going to miss it. At 29cm it was a very welcome addition to the score card.

My final hope lay in a bridge at the end of the stretch that I had been fishing. Most of the year you can pick one or two fish up around its deep structured margins and I had saved it deliberately till last just in case. My final half an hour saw me work every reachable inch of it again and again until finally I connected with a small zander which looked no bigger than 20cm when it came up to the surface and let go of the lure in one final insult.

Total = 79cm

Once back at the meet point it became evident things had been hard all round and most people had struggled to return any decent scores. Though a few anglers had done very well and reports of a big pike and a few decent zander helped make the difference between the top three and everyone else when the scores were tallied up.

1st Place = Stephen Coldicott 261cm + Biggest pike 79cm

2nd Place = Cautis Tiberius 215cm

3rd Place = Greg Bafia 132cm

Biggest zander = Salwomir Mikolajczak 55cm

Biggest perch = Daniel Everitt 29cm

I couldn't be to disappointed with how I'd done as things were really against me on this one with my hand not being one hundred percent. I was a little gutted that I didn't bank at least a few of those small fish to bulk up my score. Had I have been on point then I am sure I could have added close to a meter to my score which might have seen me possibly placing. It was however a nice surprise to get the prize for the largest perch and win a load of Realistic shad lures to try out before the next match.

At the end of the day though I had a great time as did everyone attending which I must say is down to David Warrens hard work organising the event, and I can't wait until the next open Tusses event in a month or so time when hopefully I will be able to cast further than my rod tip.

What was I saying.

Who was it that was banging on about the weather being rather mild for this time of year...Oh yeah, it was me! I should have known better than to start whacking on about such things by now as fate has a way of making you look a bit foolish when you make statements like that. In the week that followed that rash sentence the weather here in old Blighty went from hints of spring to practically Arctic in an instant. One day we were thinking the daffodils would soon be out and the next the rivers froze over. It was almost like some kind of promotional stunt for the upcoming final season of Game of Thrones where they had got the actual Night King to come and touch the UK with his icy finger, and freeze it. That or Donald Tusk had turned off the heating to punish us for daring to have our own will and voting for Brexit. Whatever the cause it was cold, very cold and thus the fishing was not going to be easy.

Before I'd even left the house to scrape the ice from the car I knew finding liquid water might be a slight issue. As I chipped away the hard frost I considered that every lake and canal in the county would be out of action so rivers were my only option. Not fancying the Avon I concluded to chip over to the Leam to fish some urban spots where I know the fish shoal up in winter.

Upon arriving I found...

Section 1 - Very frozen

Section 2 - Faster water but still very frozen

Section 3 - I didn't bother with section 3 as I knew it would be frozen

With only a few viable options I headed homeward thinking to check out somewhere on the way just in case it was fishable. Although free of ice when I arrived it turned out I was a bit too late to the party and a group of lads were camped out by the weir I intended to fish. So on I went to my final last chance spot way out in the country where the Upper Avon crawls silently through the potato fields.

Finally my luck was in, the river was flowing and the stretch was vacant. Although there was no more than a couple of hours worth of casting in this field, that seemed a perfect amount of time considering it was currently minus five Celsius.

Between the two freezing margins the river ran winter green. I knew the slower water just off the flow was a known haunt for a perch and chub so I set up a Texas rigged finesse shad from Z-man and flicked the rig tight to the far margin. It took a few casts to find a taker, but all of a sudden I felt a definite thump resonate back along the taught braided line. Suddenly a powerful fish was heading for the far side reed bed and all that I had to stop it was seven feet of lightweight carbon and thirty feet of six pound braid.

I really wanted this unseen fish to be a big chub which this area is renowned for and from the way it kept trying to do me in the bank side vegetation I had high hopes of a five pound rubber lips soon going in my net. Deep down through the winter water I could see a pale fish shape struggling against me for freedom. A few more dives and the fish rolled on the surface and I thought for a moment a pike was attacking my chub. One last surge of power and the fish surfaced. A pike! For a moment I was confused to whether a pike had gone for my chub and somehow the chub had got away and the pike got hooked in the process. It wasn't until I looked and found the size one worm hook driven clean through the roof of the pikes mouth that it clicked that I had been playing a pike all along, no matter how much I wanted it to be a chub!

Really on one of the coldest days of the year so far I couldn't have been happier with this capture even though it wasn't a chub. All the effort I made to actually find a venue on a day when most normal people left the fishing well alone, was worth it, and I continue my unbroken pike run since Xmas.

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.

Jack.

Well after a recent session I am considering launching my own aftershave aimed at the modern lure angler called, "Jack", as I seem to be emitting something that attracts Jack pike under any circumstances. I can see the advert now... With moody clouds rolling overhead, Johnny Depp is standing topless in waist deep water surrounded by sexy water nymphs, he reaches down into the water and pulls out a writhing Jack pike and rubs it all around his neck and face before turning moodily towards the camera. He holds his stare for a moment as pike slime drips off his chin and says simply, "Jack". Hopefully I can have that in stock at every Savers and Poundland by next Xmas.

Back to the point, I actually went out perch fishing on this session armed with a light eight foot outfit. My hope was that I could fish small, fly under the rampant jack pikes radar and target the perch which grow to big proportions in this off the grid water. I also had a load of new Z-man lures I wanted to try out so I pitched up to the bank quite early to try and target the perch before the pike got in the swing of things.

After wading out to edge of the reeds close to a deep holding spot known to produce these big sargents, I threaded a Z-man finesse shadz onto my worm hook Texas rigged on 18lb fluro. Eighteen pound fluro is not what I would normally use, but given the pike population I was hoping it would be stealthy yet stand up to the pikes savage teeth if they became aware of my lure.

First cast I punch the rig out over the deep area which is often inhabited by the monster perch. I watched the tight bright green line as the lure sank down to the bottom and the line fell slack. I gave a gentle pull followed by two slight knocks and then repeated the same routine again before BANG! A pike was on! And it was to be the first of many...

The morning was bonkers! The Jack pike were switched on and my idea of fishing so small as not to register on their radar was out of the window; I very quickly discarded the fluro trace in favour of a very light wire one to prevent any unneeded cut off's. What made things even more interesting was the fact I was fishing with a super light rod and 400 sized reel and these little pike tested that to it very extreme. But saying that, I landed twelve and lost a few others through poor hook sets.

On the perch front I did actually find a few amongst the ravenous pike as I persisted. How none of these little fellows didn't get nobbled by those pike I will never know as they were mostly perfect pike size snacks.

About the best of the day was a near 30cm fish which I found lurking close to some structure as I sank a little beyond the edge of my wellies in a particularly stinky silt filled reed bed.

Sadly I do think at one point I may have had one of those massive old mother perch on towards the end of the session. Something hit the lure as I was raising it up in the water to recast. At first I thought it was another pike as it shot off along the reed bed. After getting it back it managed to slip the hook and I saw a large green flank turn in the swirls as it sank back into the cover. At the time I wasn't sure if it was a pike or a big perch, but having seen how silvery all the pike are in the above pictures and how coloured the perch are there is no doubt that that lost beast was a big perch. Hopefully I will get the opportunity to go back and try again to work through the hordes of pike to try and winkle out a perch before the season closes.

New spots and night pike.

Happy New year to any long time followers and I hope you had great holiday and made much merry. Luckily for me I have been fishing quite a lot over the last few weeks leading up to the holidays and thus I have much to catch up on over the next few write ups. My camera phones picture gallery reminds me of all the sessions I've been on and about the furthest one back was a investigation adventure.

I am constantly looking for fresh spots on the midland canal network for the off season when I become pretty much totally focused on canal fishing for zander. As I was driving to another fishing spot on a far away lake I passed over a section of canal which peaked my attention. A bit of research confirmed no discernible ownership and soon enough I dropped by for a proper bit of investigation.

Rather than plonk myself down in one spot I opted to rove around with a lure set-up to try and pinpoint any holding areas. By doing this you never really catch loads of fish, but it does reveal any obvious better areas. At first I thought I'd struck gold when I hooked into a hard fighting fish on a heavily structured bank. It turned out to be a nice perch of 30cm or so. Sadly it was only a speck of gold as I worked the whole area hard with the captured perch retained in the net, hoping to find any shoal mates but in the end concluded it to be a single fish or I had spooked a shoal away.

Bar a few more random small perch caught of obvious features the morning went by very quietly until I randomly discovered a shoal of small zander in the most featureless area I have ever seen. Normally I like the heavy bank side cover sort of areas for zeds but these were right out in the open on a section of hard bank canal with no cover at all, in a raised section. Honestly I'd have missed them if I weren't working the drop with a lure as I walked slowly down the tow path. The first fish was a high thirty centimetre fish as was the one that got off after it.

After working further up I turned back for a second pass which provoked a few more plucks and a second fish over thirty centimetres. Should I have been in a match or practising for one I would have dug in a worked some different methods to ring out as many fish as I could from this bland area but I was investigating a stretch, not just this one spot, so I moved on.

The only other noteworthy action came towards the end of this foray when I got spanked by some monster I suspect was a pike but hope was a perch. I got a really hard hit as I worked a bank side reed bed. The clutch was singing and the super light rod buckled over worryingly as the beast shot across the canal. A single change of direction and the fish was gone, sending my lure flying through the air.
I wasn't a great recce in my opinion but considering the conditions all round of late I might have been over critical of my returns. I think this new stretch warrants some more investigation once the weather warms a little and the preds get moving a bit more.

Night pike

Myself and my old friend Andy Lewis find it hard to get together to fish nowadays. He's got a boy and I've got a boy and both do plenty of extracurricular activities which means that although we both get out to fish it's hard to line both our times up. But wanting to spend some time with my old mate we both worked extra hard to line up a session to go and fish a quite section of the Avon I personally hadn't fished before.

Not knowing the stretch we were about to fish I brought tackle to flexible on target species. Andy was out for a barbel or chub in the fast water below the weir and had pitched up in likely looking spot. The still calm water above the weir appealed to me as I'd seen several small fish topping and I had it in mind that they might be shoaled up here. If the prey fish were as I suspected shoaled up then the predators wouldn't be far away and I happened to have a lure outfit in my quiver just in case. So as Andy waited for the witching hour downstream I began to work the water above the weir. I'd only made a few casts before I got hit by a small jack close to some rushes.

Having bought some barbel and chub gear with me it seemed like I should have at least a few casts and after priming up swim in the eddy of the weir I snuck in place a bait close to the bank. Embarrassingly I sat on this cast for half and hour until the light died away. Thinking a recast was in order I reeled in to find I had my rig in a very bad snag the whole time and was promptly snapped off. Unwilling to start again I decided my time might be better served trying to fulfill a long time ambition to catch a pike on  a lure in the dark.

The bank side above the weir was civilized enough for me to not fall in and so I set up a 15cm fox pearl spikey shad on a 10g jig head and began punching it out into the dark. It's quite odd lure fishing in the dark as with your sight being limited your other sense become heightened and thus you seem to focus on the sensations coming back up the braided line through the rod. You can literally feel every bump on the lure and every movement of the vibrating tail; it was bizarre and it almost has me thinking I should close my eyes once I've cast out a lure during the day. BANG! I instantly felt the pike rip into the lure and it shake its head three or four times as the hook point bit home. My heart was racing, I've caught hundreds of fish in the dark but this was my first pike and it was scrapping hard out in the pitch black. Once in the net it was revealed to not be the biggest pike I've had but honestly, I was so happy with the capture on a lure in the dark, it really made this session a special one.

Practice sessions (Ashby).

With the lure fishing match season well under way I really wanted to start focusing on pinpointing some good areas on the local canals for any upcoming matches in the near future. Hopefully by keeping abreast of the areas that are more prevalent I can save time on searching out good areas and concentrate on catching fish instead on the match day. With this in mind I went to the Ashby canal for a practice session to try and confirm if it has any potential. I should say at this point that I have actively avoided the Ashby as it's a local focus point of the ill founded attempts to stem the spread the local zander population (something you will see is totally pointless later).

Venue = Ashby canal - Marston junction up - 4hrs

Total = 278cm

This little foray was very surprising to me. Certainly there was distinct lack of zander on this heavily persecuted SSSI area, but what it lacked in zander it certainly made up for in quality perch and on a searching foray I was over the moon with nearly three meters of fish. It has definitely given me a few areas to target and a bit more concentration on those areas in the future could make some very nice lengths in the future. As for the zander zapping you can see I caught one little zander and I should mention two other similar size one came adrift before I had chance to land them and given that those three are probably just the tip of the ice berg, you can see how little effect culling them has as this area was supposedly cleared less than a year ago.

Catch up part 1 - Lure sessions of yaw.

Well I am back after a brief blogging hiatus and holy cow, have I got some catching up to do here. In short I have not been hiding under some out of place rock in the corner of a field in upstate New York, nor have I been tied to a chair blindfolded in an abandoned factory in Nuneaton. Instead my life has exploded as much did my garden when the UK finally dragged its shivering land mass through spring, and that is in part why I find myself not just writing a catch-up blog but in fact a series of catch up blogs to cover this blacked out period.

Really, I feel as if my feet have barely touched the floor since the start of May. Away from fishing it seems half the organizations in the world wanted oversized promotional printed balloons, and half of them wanted them in half the time it takes to print them. Add to that my enormous garden which exploded like a claymore full of brambles which I have taken by the thorns and am currently still fighting, section by section, to make safe for the now super inquisitive BB; a brief and rare sunny holiday has been enjoyed in Wales with the family and if all that wasn't enough I have gone fishing crazy with the arrival of the warmth, fishing so many sessions since I last wrote that the only way to recall what I have done is by the pictures I've left on blank pages of this blog! So here we go back in time in the style of H G Wells time machine...back past green tench...past trips to far away fisheries...past the Morlocks and Eloi....back back in time to...Radford bottom Lock!

Yes, apparently the furthest back I can remember from these pictures was a fishing trip onto the Canal with my good friend and fellow blogger Mick from Piscatorial Quagswagging where we went in search of his old nemesis the Zander, and from what I recall it was a pretty good session for me. The chilly grip of winter still clung to spring as the two of us met up deep in the Warwickshire countryside. Mick was already fishing when I arrived with two gaudy floats positioned very professionally along the hull of a moored boat. Not long after saying hello one of the previously mentioned floats did a little dally before tootling off down the canal. Ever the experienced zed basher, Mick waited and waited before striking hard into nothing. The bite though was enough for me to cast my dead line along the hull of the boat, before being a right cheeky begger and poaching out his water by casting a light drop shot rig in between the lines of the dead bait rods. It only took a few casts to catch a tiny schoolie zed from right the trench next to the boat.

After moving through a few other swims we arrived at an area where I can remember thinking, 'I don't like the look of this'. As always my hunch was wrong and my float was soon heading off very quickly down the canal. Convinced a zander was the culprit, I was shocked when after a brief tussle a long spawned out perch rolled into my net. For all the dead baits I've cast into to canals I think I have only ever caught three perch on them. A month or so earlier this perch would have been quite a beast but at this point it was a very long way off regaining any condition.

Through the morning we tried all the known spots, one that looked perfect for zander and a ton we tried just to cover water. With three dead bait rods and one lure rod we covered just about every inch of water we could, with not much success at all really. It wasn't until we backtracked to the moored boat that we finally got some reward by way of a proper bus job; not one, but three fish all came along in the same few minutes of madness. My dead rod was the first to spring into life followed by Mick's. For some reason I chucked mine back out straight away with my fish in the net and whilst Mick waited for his active but unmoving float to go, I landed a second zed instantly to make myself a nice brace of schoolies.

Mick left not long after this, with cooking duties to attend to, but with a little more time to hand I stuck around to have a play around the lock with the dropshot rod. I love drop shotting and with some new Realistic shad spilt tails to try out it seemed the perfect time to try the out. There seemed to be small zander hanging out all round the features of the lock. Literally I did not seem to be able to go wrong! I took them off the stony incline into the lock mouth, from tight to the wall, from of the snag pile collected at the end of the overflow run and in the eddy it formed. Either these lures were the bomb or I was very lucky on this occasion. I think I added six more small zedlets to my tally before I left and it left me pondering the question...

Maybe I should take up competition lure fishing?

Whilst on the subject of lure fishing I have to regale one of my most exciting recent lure fishing experiences I've had, which happened not long after my canal zander adventure. A little while ago I bought at a very reasonable price some of these savage gear 3D suicide ducks.

Literally the 26g versions of these lures I bought retail at the insane price of £15 per lure. I have to be honest and truthful and say that I am far too stingy to ever throw a fifteen quid lure in a lake, but at half price I was hooked into buying a pair and after watching the online promo videos I was dying to fling these out. I had originally gone up to Napton to tench fish but after spending hours watching a motionless float and rolling tench in the middle of the lake, I packed away the float gear and pulled out a lure rod and ducks to see if I could tempt a pike to strike in the shallows at the south end of the lake.

After covering all the shallow water with the duck lure and being convinced I was fishing well, I was about to give up under the assumption that the pike were unwilling to come up and take something off the top. The water I was casting in was getting deeper and I never thought for a moment that a pike would be hanging round mid-water in such deep water. That was until on one retrieve when I was sure I spotted the water swell up like a fish had just struck but missed. Half thinking I'd spooked carp lying under the surface, I cast again hoping it was, in fact, a pike. A lo and behold it was! I cast well beyond where I thought it happened and just as the lure came into the target zone a wake appeared six feet behind the lure. I slowed my retrieve just slightly and boom, the fish accelerated into and right through the duck sending water everywhere and disappearing in a boil. It wasn't the biggest pike I have ever caught but damn it was the most exciting and one that has lit a fire to do some more surface lure fishing as soon as I get a chance  

Oh, and I went back and bought another pair of those lures next time I passed that shop to make sure I have these super exiting ducklings in my lure armoury for many years to come.

Happy to be back.

With the rivers now closed and my diligence to try and eek every opportunity out of them over, I find myself returning to the canals. Frankly it's about time because I get the distinct impression that I was wasting my time a little trying to wring anything out of the river as neither fate, luck nor skill seemed to be on my side at the end there. The canals though, they're a different matter entirely because my angling is born of the canal and the murky water which dissects the land holds comfort for me with its familiarity and mysteries. At this time of year when the hedgerows flanking the cut begin to spark back into life with white blossom of hawthorn, I find myself never more satisfied than when walking a tow path to go fishing when dawn breaks or heading back in the dark with the smell of wood fires from moored boats drifts along the canal in cooling night air. All in all I am happy to be back in this world of muddy paths, unexpected surprises and dog shit.

In my mind I have a map. It's a rough map of scribbled lines and marked around those lines here and there are poorly written notes. If anyone could read those notes apart from me they'd say unintelligible worthless things like, chub/night/worm/shallow. They are things that only anglers would want to know, but to me they are invaluable. On this mental map you see are twenty-eight years of fish captures covering the Coventry, Oxford, Ashby and Grand union canals. Over time the map has become bigger and the scribbled notes have covered it more. Often I have thought about drawing it out, but I always conclude that there would be no point as no-one would want to read it so why bother; I can always look at it in my head and recall a spot to go if I want to angle after a certain fish; And recall I did, a place to go for my first session back and it was a big perch I fancied.

It was Friday morning and the sun shone on my face as I skipped down the banks of the Coventry. The wind though was cutting hard down the stretch right onto the bend where I wanted to fish. The canal looked in perfect condition with a nice tinge of colour whilst still having six to ten inches or so of visibility. After land mine check I quickly set up stall before plumbing the depth of a line just off the shelf. After flicking out the un-baited rig I busied myself chopping six fat worms into little chunks before adding some casters in my pole pot. By the time I had finished, the float had settled onto the line it would always go to in line with rod tip. Baiting up on the very tip of the rod with the pole pot whilst the water was not towing, you can assume that the bait will go straight down then once it starts towing, be left to right or right to left, the scent trail and goodies should remain on the same line even it moves either way.

Conscious of the low water temperatures, I went small with the baits to begin with and cast a lob tail over the baited line and sat down to wait. This was never going to be fast and furious session and I had to wait forty-five minutes for the float to finally show signs of fish be present. A single slight dip caught my attention and I waited for the light pole float to slide away. The light nine foot road bent over as if attached to the bottom and there juddered over even further as the culprit attempted to escape in a series of big boils in front of me. Caution and a light clutch soon brought it round to the net and my canal escapades had begun with a cracker of a perch. 

As I said before this session was not exactly action packed and to anyone reading, the details of a middle aged man shivering on the tow path would be boring. But what the session lacked in quantity it made up for in quality, though the single zander I caught on my dead bait sleeper did not rank high on the chart of quality fish!  

After the manky zed I only received four more bites. One bite I totally missed, another resulted in a miniature version of the first perch albeit only six ounces in weight. The next one was by anyones standard, a fish with some potential for years to come.

The last and final fish of the session was in the nicest possible way a football of a fish. It felt heavy in the water and in the net looked like a slab. When I picked it up and looked from above I couldn't believe its girth and just had to get a shot of a perch you could put a saddle on and a really tiny monkey, like a marmoset, could ride. 

I do love these shape of perch. Sure, I like all big perch but I love the big round ones that look like real life versions of the stuffed ones you see in glass cases rather than the long humped back ones, and it was the perfect way to finish a hard but very rewarding session with my second fish of the session over two pounds.

Two days later I found myself on a different tow path twenty or more miles away from the first. This time I  scoured my mind for a suitable place to try for a big roach and the Grand Union seemed to fit the bill. Armed with a bag of fluffy white bread crumbs tainted by a hint of a morish but mysterious flavour simply called 'big roach' and a few slices of a better than normal quality bread I hoped might attract a better sort of fish, I headed to a spot with form.

My diddy and faithful nine foot canal wand was tucked up at home and for this occasion I was once again armed with fifteen feet of carbon that I am quickly developing a close relationship with. The reason I'd bought along my Greys 15ft was I wanted to fish in the same way as the previous session only further out. So far this rod seems to be living up to the expectations of the manufacturer in that it is rated for lines between 2-8lb, which I thought a wide set of post to perform well between, but so far so good. Its not so much of a rigid beast as it knocks off smaller fish and when asked, the power of the rod progresses right down the blank with plenty of power. This time I was putting my faith in it that should a roach over a pound and half or even two come along then I should be confident in my gear.

The roach fishing did not go to plan! Saying that I did catch a roach but at a mere four ounces I felt almost shameful trying to photo it and instead simply flipped it back to grow bigger likes its siblings. Luckily for me I still had the remnants of the previous sessions bait and had by way of insurance been potting a few bits of worms and casters a rod length down the tow path in the margins. After sitting for three hours staring at a float which had moved only once I was more than ready to have a look for a perch or two, which after all was what I normally fished for here and were my target when big roach have turned up in the past.

Having already established the margin swim was a few inches shallower than the track swim beforehand, a quick adjustment of the float was all that was need before I lowered a lob tail on the spot. I watched as the cocking shot sank the float down so only the red tip showed above the water. My eyes barely had time focus on the float before it quickly vanished and I struck into a good perch. It feels a lot different playing a big perch on fifteen feet of rod rather than nine foot, but as expected the soft tip action cushioned every lunge and my third two pound perch of the weekend was soon in the net.

The insurance spot it seemed was alive with fish using the bank as cover and a string of smaller perch and a single zedlit which came off filled my final hour. With only six worms left and a sprinkle of casters, I baited up one last time before resting the spot whilst checking nothing had slunk back onto the roach line. Fifteen minutes and three barges later it was time for one last go on the margin spot before I had to get off. With a fresh half of worm on the spot I waited with the preposterously long rod resting across my lap as the float bobbed in the ripple only a foot and a half down out under the tip. I didn't have to wait long though before the float moved away from the edge and sank out into the canal. Once again the rod bent satisfyingly over as boils rose on the canals surface. This was another big fish and as much as I wanted rogue roach the fight didn't seem quite right. Finally spines broke the surface followed by stripy back. A few twists and turns later the white of the belly showed and big mouth appeared at the edge of my waiting net; My fourth and final two pound perch went in the net and helped to turn what was a disastrous roach session into the second perch red letter day on the trot.