Late season catch up.

Ah, alas once again I find myself writing a catch up blog to bridge some of the larger gaps that have appeared in this fishing diary of late. The reason for catch up is simple yet sad, as I have felt little like writing after the passing of a dearly loved family member has left me feeling somewhat introspective. Although throughout this difficult time I have continued to fish, the fact remains that the ripples caused by this period in my life have taken a long time to dissipate, but now the waters of life are settling and I once again feel the need to leave behind civilian life and re-enter the fishing blogosphere and fill in the blanks in my tome.

The silver incident!

I've tried quite a few times over the years to try and catch a silver bream by design, only to basically fall flat on my face into a mire of roach, bream and hybrids. This year was no different and early season forays achieved little more than me stinking like a bream. Then a while ago I was out dropshotting for predators trying to locate some hotspots on a local canal when I struck into what I naturally assumed would be a average perch as I was using a small black leech intimation. This perch soon turned into a hybrid then in my net and on the bank it became clear I had actually caught my first silver bream of the year on a lure and therefore not by design... 

Maybe next spring I will save some time and just go out after them using lures as this is the second one I've caught on the dropshot on the same section of canal.

A trip to the Wye.
It's been a few years since I've trod the banks of the Wye and normally I'd head over to a friend's private beat, which was initially the plan when my good friend Martin Oxley asked if I fancied going. Unfortunately though our friends beat became unavailable when the late running croy repairs were rescheduled for when our trip was organized. After a panic to try and find another venue we settled on the Letton Court fishery which has three beats available to day ticket anglers along with a very interesting oxbow lake.

The river as always was stunning but beautiful as it was, the fishing was hard. Recent rains and the lack of weed meant we were faced with a fast and potent Wye that I don't mind admitting I struggled to cope with.

We choose to fish the middle beat where the river dropped away in depth after a field length run of riffles. I was hopeful that even with the cold temperatures and clear water that we might be lucky enough to find a few barbel laying up in this sort of area. Even after nearly losing my rod once to my single savage bite I was unable to return anything for my efforts on the river. Martin faired a little better and winkled out some chub.

All too soon my feet started to itch and after mooching the entire available length of the river I discovered little to move for as the other three chaps on the upper and lower beats had nothing whatsoever to show for their efforts. Now the oxbow lake that flanked the river started to seem rather appealing to me as I had brought along a medium weight lure outfit and as sure ducks like bread, I knew that lake had to have a few pike in it.

What met me when I began snooping around the lake was shocking to say the least. The bank that divided the river from the lake was at least six meters high and as I walked along the bank I could see that the recent flood water had left debris hung all over the trees surrounding the lake; thus the Wye had actually gone up more than six meters and filled the lake with dirty cold river water which left the lake murky with sediment. All that aside a single turn up and down the bank resulted in a couple of follows from some jacks and one hard hit from a tiny pike. The highlight had to be when I offered Martin my rod for a few casts whilst I went down to try and find a path through the trees, only to go back and find Martin with the rod doubled over and a huge pike thrashing around in the margins. Sadly though the monster came off just before it was ready for the net, much to our disappointment.

So simply put this was all I caught on that trip to the Wye...

Return to the CRT match stretch.

During the recent CRT match there was a few decent zander caught and the areas of these captures were duly noted and filed away for a return visit in the company of the equally zander mad Mick off of Piscatorial Quagswagging. Once we finally got a date we could both make we met up early doors at the parking area just off the canal.

Armed with a pair of dead bait rods, Mick chose to wait it out whilst I fished a single dead bait and a lure rod as well to try and find the fish as my bait rod stewed away. Early on we thought we'd struck gold when Mick connected with a good fish after a stuttering run. The bend in the rod had both of our arses squeaking until what we hoped was a big zander morphed into a better than average canal pike.

For my part my incessant working of a gaudy lure up and down the trench soon rooted out a small zander which threw the hook, but was followed by one which nailed the lure so hard it was never coming off.

Myself and Mick are very much of the same mind when it comes to zander fishing and after more than the average amount of time in the first swim we were off searching for active fish. This actually works brilliantly for me as not only is my bait rod always fishing in fresh spots but I always have new areas to work lures. We struggled to find zander but the occasional perch took umbridge to my rhythmical gyrating of rubber and through the deteriorating morning I scratched a few stripys here and there.

Those beast zander never did turn up and I will sure as hell be back to have another go. Interestingly I took note of the rough sizes of the few fish on caught on this occasion back on the rock hard section where the CRT match was held just to see how I might have fared with this nominal catch. Surprisingly The rough 80cm+ catch would have put me somewhere 13th or 14th out of 125 odd anglers which would have still been a decent score in that very hard match.

End of the same old same old.

Its been a while since I have had chance to post anything and that's not down to not fishing, but is rather due to just not having time. I never thought I'd be this time poor, but I am right now. Fishing though, I always can shoe horn in some of that! To be honest I've not been that motivated of late, I really feel like I've been doing the same old things for the same old species every time I am out at the moment and am ready for a change of tack.

 I've done plenty of light lure fishing and caught plenty of plump spiny perch...

I even had a go to try and locate and catch by design a canal chub. Turns out the species my rigs best designed for were roach bream hybrids, of which I caught three nice examples of on my cheesy bread baits...

Somewhere in the middle of my canal bashing I did sneak an afternoon session to try out my new compact carp outfit. Sadly the carp in the pool I visited were more interested in sunning themselves than eating, and the only action came from the mini tench in the pool which seemed able to repeatedly pick up my baits without getting hooked. In the end I did hook one tench which was followed by a small bream. Neither put up any kind of fight on the heavy gear, so both were freed without even lifting them from the water.

Although frankly a bit sick of canal perch fishing I did conclude to end this self imposed monotony with an apt finale where I would go and fish one of my all time favorite perch haunts on the Grand union, and pile in the bait hoping for a big haul of kippers. The haul was big but the average size of the fish was low. Normally here you can expect three of every ten fish caught to be over a pound. On this occasion though I had to catch nearly twenty fish of around 8oz before anything big turned up.

When a bigger fish did finally show up it was quite obvious that they were gorging heavily on the chopped worm I was liberally plying into the murky water.  The first fish over a pound was spewing bits of worm out of its stomach and out of its gills.

The zander to were out and about in the sunshine looking for an easy meal. I had brought along the now ubiquitous dead rod and cast half a roach out into the centre channel. The float hadn't moved an inch for an hour whilst fished to my left. Once I moved it to my right though it soon shot off as the first of a trio of zander took the bait of the same spot one after another.

Having quite a large amount of worm at my disposal for this perch finale I kept feeding heavily and along with what seemed like hundreds of small fish the bigger ones homed in onto the baited area. I lost a good one as it rolled in front of me and it's escaping heralded a lull in the sport until another decent fish hovered up my hook bait along with a load of freebies. It wasn't over the standard 2lb mark which become common in this area but it wasn't far off. I turned out to be the last perch of the session and looked very nice in the setting sunlight.

This area is a very strange bit of water as both the perch and zander feed viciously through the daylight hours, peaking quite often around the brightest bit of the day, Whereas the witching hour once that light goes, is useless fishing. What that is to do with I don't know and frankly I ain't going to find out until possibly next autumn as I am very ready to draw a line under the perch fishing till then. Now though the carp gear is coming out and I am starting to once again try and locate and catch some proper monster canal carp.

Not sticking to the rules thank god.

A full day of boats moving round a busy junction of the Grand union canal and the water is going to be pretty murky, right! Well that's what I thought and I was totally wrong. I ventured a out a few days ago for a short session on a primo bit of the GU and basically ended up having a weird arse about face session where everything I thought would be the case was not.

Big perch were what I was after and as it was to be an afternoon into dark affair I figured, as I mentioned before, that the boats which are prevalent in this area would have ploughed the canal turbid by the time I arrived. Hence I had armed myself with a float rod and generous amount of worms to attract the fish in the poor visibility. I always do this 'peering over the edge' thing when I walk onto a canal to get an impression of the water conditions. On this occasion my initial peering was followed by a head shake, an eye rubbing and a second peering. Good god it was well past dinner time and I could see two bricks sitting on the shallow margin. The water did have a tinge of green to it, but shockingly the visibility was easily fifteen inches or more.

Even with the less than ideal conditions I pushed on with my plan and went in search of cover to target. Without too much elaboration, the plying of worms onto the canal was a total waste of time. The perch had no intention of moving out of wherever they were hiding to eat in the open. My only hope for this session was the drop shot rod I'd bought along just in case. Maybe, just maybe, by working lures close cover I could persuade any would-be attackers to burst out and hit the lure in the clearer than normal conditions. This is where it really goes against mores supposed rules.

Considering the perch were reluctant to feed I really thought the low light loving zander would never be switched on in such clear water. So how surprised was I when I manoeuvred a small Savage gear 3D bleak close to a moored boat and straight away something snatched it, I was even more surprised when the culprit turned out to be a zander.

I thought maybe that one zander was just some rogue fish that hadn't read the zander rule book, but when a few jiggles of the lure later a second smaller one hit, it began to look like the zander were actually on the feed in the clear water.  By the time I'd notched up three more little zander which all went for the drop shot fished 3D bleak fished six inches off bottom, I was convinced they were really up for it.

Although my original perch plan was well and truly out the window, it turned out that I was out and fishing on one of the wondrous occasions when the fish are hungry, the conditions were apparently perfect and I was using the right lure/technique. The random flitting and dropping of the very life like bleak lure seemed to draw the zander in like moths to a flame and every one which went for the lure got hooked perfectly in top of the mouth before zipping off like a torpedo.

It wasn't just the tiny ones that were up for it either; there were better fish moving around as well. Most were in that half a pound to two pound range and I quickly figured they weren't just tight to the cover. Fishing the nearside shelf brought me a few fish and even a random cast into the centre of the trench brought a hint of interest.

The perch though were just not around or if they were they were well off the feed, which possibly had something to do with the change in temperature. By the end of the short session the sun had long disappeared, the sky was glowing wintry pink as the last rays disappeared, smoke rose from every chimney of every narrow boat that lined the canal and the surface of the canal was like a mirror. 

Although I hadn't come anywhere near catching what I intended to, I had actually had a great session catching quite a few little zander on the drop shot. Had it not been for those zander feeding when they normally wouldn't there was a good chance I would have just frozen half to death whilst blanking. Once the weather has settled down I know for sure I will be back to try for the big perch again and I certainly will be bringing the dropshot rod and those lures along as well.

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.

Lure fishing microcosm.

Since beginning my lure fishing journey I have learnt that the world of lure fishing is just as, if not more than, as expansive as all the other fishing genres I have come across before. It's not just the array of millions of lures, the vast colours that they come in and the different sizes that I am referring to either; every lure can be used in so many different ways and different situations.

One particular facet I have been intrigued by lately is micro jigging. I love casting jigs anyway and already had some tiny jig heads and tiny lures which I had not really had any great success with until recently.

I actually started messing around with this technique a little while ago, but it was only the other day that I went out to specifically concentrate on doing it. At first when I had a go a while back I made the mistake of actually casting the tiny jigs out into the canal, it was then that I concluded that beyond a rod length out you really lose all contact and control of the lure. Between under a rod length out to right under your feet they are deadly. Having the lure on a constant tight line and using a light rod means you can impart some pretty damn sexy movements on the lure with the slightest flick of the wrist. Fishing like this also changes the way you look at a canal, and all the normal distracting far bank features fail to register as you concentrate on the four feet from the bank which is now your microcosm. Doing so turns what to most seems like a small gap between two boats into the micro jigging equivalent of a ten acre lake.

Tiny is the order of the day and this Crazy Fish cruel leech mounted on a size 8 two gram jig head worked perfectly to compensate against the slight yet disruptive tow on this occasion. The little black lure wiggles like a hula girl with the very slightest of rod movements.

Although I only had a few hours to fish, my micro attack proved to work perfectly. I had to work along a bit of tow path until I found a concentration of fish holding tight to the concrete lined margin, but once I found them it was one fish after another with perch making up the majority of the captures.

What has surprised me was how many fish you could catch from one area. In a normal casting situation I have found you easily spook fish out of spot by hooking a few of their mates. Fishing these light lures into a shoal seemed to have little effect until I'd had hooked loads of them and been hit by even more.

The zander too seemed to be hanging out in the shoals of perch, although these young immaculate hunters seemed to prefer the lure to be moving further and quicker than the perch which seemed more attracted to a gentle off the bottom wiggling lure.

I have to say I really like this micro margin jigging, but to balance the tackle and make everything move naturally I was having to fish some very light fluorocarbon leaders of around 4lb in breaking strain which would be OK if a big perch turned up. A better zander though could make mince meat out of such delicate tackle so really even if you see an opportunity of a bigger zed or jack pike the whole leader would have to be changed in order to reduce the risk getting cut off. Saying that, I reckon some of the lures I have been using are so small they might well not register on a big predators radar and given that most of the waters I am fishing are the colour of milky tea I'd probably never know if a big fish was hiding right under my feet.