Practice sessions (Coventry)

With little more than seven days to go before the LACC pairs match I really wanted to sharpen up. It's hard to explain this to non lure anglers but I will try my best to explain. Unlike say with float fishing where you watch a float in anticipation of some kind of movement that indicates a biting fish under it, with lure fishing and more specifically light lure fishing, you feel for the bite or hit. Now at its most savage a hit can mean the rod literally torn from your hands, but when the fish are not really in a very aggressive mood a hit can vary from a solid feeling, to a tug on the line, to the very extreme tiniest tap. As far as I can figure these tiny hits are quite often fish taking the lure into their mouth before spitting it out again, so striking at any suspicious tap can often result in a hooked fish. This is why sensitive rods and non stretch lines are vital to the capture of fish in this light lure world. But no matter how super sensitive your gear is, it means nothing if you're not dialed into hitting those tiny indications and by sharpening up I mean being on the ball and striking those tiny hits quickly enough to convert a half chance into a fish. Rather than use this practice opportunity to try and find fish I instead went to a known hotspot to try a tune up my reaction times.

Venue = Coventry canal - 4hrs

The canal when I walked down the tow path was a state and I very nearly turned tail and went to another venue as the entire surface for miles was littered with oak leaves. What stopped me was the thought if this canal was like it then any other would be as well and it could be that on the Grand union in a week's time I would have to compete with lots of leaf debris, so I pushed on and battled it out.

Total =181cm

This wasn't an easy session by any means. Literally I barely made any actual casts and in the end resorted to simply fishing under the rod tip down the edge as the floating leaves were ruining any casts I made. After covering quite a large section of canal with no results I found the fish tightly shoaled up and random section with no discernible features. I had to work very hard for 181cm of perch and small zander, though the capture of a 51cm jack pike was a very nice way to kick off the action especially on a super light 1-7gram outfit and 4lb line. The hardness of this session was almost a blessing as the lack of action really focused me on hitting every possible chance of a bite and literally I only lost one small zander and a tiny perch all morning.

Silver rather than gold in the end.

As I stood atop the bridge looking over the Avon I thought to myself this was either pure genius or total madness. It also occurred to me that if it did turn out to be pure genius, the attempting to fish the river when it was in such a bilious state could produce rewards not just big, but massive. It was that possibility of a huge, fat, late season barbel that drove me onto the submerged banks of Lucy's mill.

Now I've fished this section of the river on and off for close to fifteen years and in that time I've seen in it in all states, but this occasion this was the worst I'd actually attempted to fish it. I knew though that if I could access some of the slacker water between the two weirs, the chances were that some fish would have pushed in there to escape the savage flow.

The normal area most anglers fish from was a good two or even three feet under water and where the flow was diverted by forty-five degrees across onto the bank huge eddy had formed. This tempestuous bit of water looked as mean as they come. Fifty feet wide and constantly churning, it was full of branches of all sizes from those you'd throw for a dog to ones the size you'd throw for Godzilla. There were chunks of trees, old plastic drums and what looked like a section of a kids play house. Honestly, I would have not been surprised at all if a kraken emanated from the centre and grabbed one of the Japanese tourists that seemed obsessed with photographing it.

Happily though as I predicted there was a nice bit of slacker water on the far side of the river between the two weirs. The benches and ten foot wide concrete parade that were opposite the slack on my own bank were a bit under water and therefore I figured the safest place to fish was from behind one of the benches where I stood zero chance of slipping in. Although amusing at first the constant slew of comments about why I was fishing when the river was in flood grew very thin very quickly, until the point when I was ready to start throttling people whilst yelling "It's my last chance to fish that's why I am here you moron". The fishing though was actually easier than I expected! Most of the debris was drifting onto my own bank and under my rod. With my line cutting into the chocolatey water half way across the flow my tip remained motionless.

In an attempt to draw any fish downstream up I had been recasting every fifteen minutes to keep the message travelling down stream. Three hours passed with zero fishy attention to be seen on the rod tip. Really, when it's like this I was expecting the rod to instantly lurch over or all tension to spring off the rod tip. But in fact when some interest did begin to register it was more of a hint of a bite. That hint though kept coming again and again. On inspection of my paste wrapped pellet I noted lots of small chunks being bitten out of the paste. I reckon eels were the culprits and as I needed one for a few challenge points, I changed over to a lob worm hook bait.

The bites that ensued were lightning quick and I was struggling to register them on my barbel rod, so I swapped over to my Avon rod and hoped to hell I didn't suddenly find myself attached to a barbel on this much lighter outfit. The lighter tip turned a tap into a full on jerk and after missing three bites a blind man would have hit, I connected with something that was neither barbel nor eel...

What else can I say other than what better way to finish up the river season than with the last fish being a near mint condition 1.4lb roach caught in flood conditions. The only disappointment was that I couldn't catch any more even though I was convinced there were more in the swim. But anyway, I was more than happy with silver rather than gold to end the season on.