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.

Just one more spot.

Sometimes there is nothing worse than having a preconceived idea of how a fishing session will go. Last week I ended my session on the fish. By that I mean I was lure fishing, had located fish and was getting hits even though I wasn't converting them. Time though ran out on me and I had to walk away from fish which were up for attacking what I was offering. So for days prior to getting out all I could think of was getting back and finding that shoal of zander and trying pick up where I'd left off.

I was convinced that they would still be in the area as they seemed to be lingering off the edge of a collection of flotsam pushed into a bend by the wind, and given conditions had been consistent, I was sure it would still be there with the shoal of zander somewhere nearby.

On the tow path again I headed straight for the area and began exactly as I had left off, bouncing a two inch orange koypto shad slowly across the bottom. But the zander it seemed had been replaced by snags. Quite honestly the week before I had not found a single snag in the vicinity, today though every other cast found one. I'd sacrificed two brand new lures and leaders to the canal before I eventually moved off.

After a little explore I found myself fishing right alongside the debris littering the surface on the bend, whilst trying desperately to not stand in any of the hundreds of dog turds that litter the bank. Still though I couldn't raise any attention after two hours had elapsed. By now I'd been through most of my A-team of lures using various speeds of retrieve. The really worrying thing was that last time the little perch had also been up for it and this time like the zander they seemed to be very absent, which seemed to indicate nothing at all was on the hunt.

It was the faithful black curly tail grub which broke the stalemate in the end and found a small zander under the rubbish. That first one came off but a few casts later I snagged its bristling and angry shoal mate.

I really thought that was it and now I had located them it would all kick off, but before it had begun it just fizzled out and I couldn't find another willing fish. So we decided to move on to another stretch a car drive closer to home on the same canal to see if we would fare any better there. The area we arrived at had been very reliable over the colder months and I hoped it would be on this occasion too. In truth, it too was off form and after well and truly thrashing the water to a foam, I was elated to hook a sprightly micro jack which was hanging around just on the marginal shelf.

The next day I was planning to fish the same canal in a different area, but the lack of interest had me thinking that zander and perch were not responding to lures very well at all at the moment. Not wanting to write it off I decided to still go ahead with the session but rather than just commit everything to the lure fishing, I'd take a light dead bait outfit along to see if they might be interested in a static bait rather than a moving lure.

My worries that I wouldn't get much response on the lures were well founded. Once again I worked hard to wring anything out of all the areas I fished, but no matter what changes I made I could not fathom out what it was going to take get these fish to actually lash out at a lure.

On the other hand every swim I cast a dead bait into was populated by something interested in eating the small roach on my line. As with many waterways the signal crayfish seems to be making a big impact on the midland canal network. Undoubtedly their spreading population is contributing to larger fish sizes, but the little beggars are a proper pest when you're dead baiting. Although I was lucky and didn't lose any gear I did have to pry my hook from down a few crayfish burrows throughout the morning.

By midday the sun was out and I had just about had it! I'd been casting and moving constantly since early morning and had nothing at all to show for my efforts. Having travelled so far along the canal I had actually come close to a swim I used to fish many moons ago that had good record for holding perch. Thinking this would be my last chance to break the blank, I decided to fish one last area just in case.

After dropping the dead bait on the far bank to my left I went about working the swim over using a tiny green koypto that has scratched me a few bites in the past. I'd hooked and removed a couple of minor snags and had not long dispatched one of them behind me when my float began moving as if something with claws was dragging it off. I watched it thinking I would have to sort that out before it got dragged away, when the float did a single large bob and the culprit quickly went from crayfish to small zander in my head. I've seen enough little zander picking up baits to think this was definitely one. Crouching down by the rod I waited as the float did that little circular movement they so often down when a schoolie is farting around with the bait. I waited and waited for it to actually run before I struck and then as the float slid off I struck low and hard.

The tightening braided line instantly drove the hook home and the fish shot off. I've had loads of zander do this when hooked; they shoot off in a moment of panic and run about ten feet or so generally in the direction the float was travelling and it's really hard to keep a tight line. This one headed straight towards me on my right hand side. Luckily the reel picked up the line quickly as and the rod bent over. For a moment I was being a bit blase, but then I saw a huge white flash in the murky canal water and the fish went from schoolie to monster.

The bite was awful, fight wasn't epic but my panicking excitement made up for that, especially when the fish came to the surface shaking its head trying its best to discard the hook. It was then it really hit home what I had on the end of my line. With the thoughts of a hundreds zander getting away I was desperate to get this one into the net. With only a fleeting moment of worry when it seemed reluctant to cross the cord, the fish was in the net. Resting in the edge it looked huge from above and then on the bank it seemed even bigger.

It was absolutely fighting fit and perfect in every way apart from the top of it tail being missing. Looking closely, the wound was perfectly healed and looked to be from a boat propeller or possibly an otter attack. Either way it had healed up well and judging from the condition of this magnificent fish, it wasn't effected by the missing bit of tail.

I knew how heavy I thought it was going to be before I even put it on the scales or maybe how heavy I wanted it to be, but it didn't quite make it. It was two ounces off what I so wanted it to be, but was still I very happy with 9.14lb and it truly made walking that little bit extra and giving one last spot a go before chucking in the towel worth it.

All part of the learning curve.

If you will excuse the pun, this light lure fishing has really got its hooks in me. Although I haven't written much over the last few weeks it goes without saying that I have been fishing and mostly what I have been doing is lure fishing. Since I began to concentrate my  efforts on this different aspect I have discovered just how addictive it really is. But I have found myself in the strange position of being what I can only describe as the most experienced beginner possible. You see unlike a total novice I do have a large working knowledge of the target species and an existing ability with a rod. What to do with the said information and skills is another thing though. I don't mind admitting like many I was always under the impression that lure fishing was something that you did in September for pike; all it involved was hoofing a massive lure half way across a lake before reeling it back and a big old toothy pike ate the bugger. Maybe this misconception was why I have had a large collection of very shiny and rather dusty lures in my shed for so many years. 

All this has changed though, the learning process is now in full swing and I can't cram new information into my head quick enough. For a while it was all about the drop shot or walking the worm, but the more I looked into it the more rigs and methods came to light, one of which seemed very attractive to me! Even in the bad old days when I'd have ten casts with a lure before giving up and going back to bait fishing I had some success with jigs here and there. Then when I read about finesse fishing with tiny jigs something clicked. Given my previous success and proclivity towards canal fishing for predators this seemed like a perfect method for me to try. It was also quite convenient that a rod which I had initially bought to use for dropshotting that turned out to not be great for that, was exactly the sort sensitive stick that was required to fish tiny lures. After matching the rod up with a thousand size reel and some hideously expensive braided line, I was off.

I love being excited by a new method and truly I was excited to get out and use this set up, but knowing what I do about fishing in the depths of winter, I was apprehensive of what success I could garner plying lures when the water was on the verge of freezing. Thus it has been a mixed up and haphazard time for my fishing. Reluctant to commit fully I have found myself packing round all kinds of rods and swapping from one to another every five minutes, with mixed success. So a few weeks ago I fished in a normally productive section canal using float, dropshot and finesse set ups. On that day I scratched a few small perch on the float, nobbled two good perch on the dropshot worm and blanked on the finesse. The next week I went to a new stretch of canal which is reported to throw up some mental sized perch and zander. There I again scratched a few on the float fished worm and got nothing on any type of lure related rig. It's the third and most recent trip that has thrown everything I think I know in the air.

The other day I went to a bit of canal where I knew it would not be frozen. I turned out to be mostly right as the area I wanted to fish was free of ice but the entire canal to my right for as far as I could see was frozen over. Now I thought that as the water in this specific spot obviously had a higher in temp than the surrounding water, that the fish would number one, be there and two, be willing to feed. Well as JB has repeatedly said to me "You know what thought did...Laid in bed and shit himself" and this time it seemed well founded as the session was not going well. I did through sheer persistence force out a trio of small stripys using the float before a travelling narrow boat steamed past full tilt and smashed the ice flow to my right into bits. After that the tow picked up and sent the smashed up ice field steadily through my swim making it unfishable.

With no other choice I packed up and headed home, but on the way I remembered another little cheeky area that might be worth a cast on a day like this. By the time I arrived my hands were so cold I could barely remember what feeling felt like in my fingers and that's what inclined me to keep active and fish a lure whilst fishing a dormant dead bait on the far bank. That dead bait did remain dormant the whole time I was fishing but the lure though, that was another thing...

Really and truthfully I believed that it was far too cold for anything to make the effort to eat a free juicy worm, never mind chase and hit a lure. Well I don't mind admitting that was the second time I was wrong that session. The obvious choice was the super light finesse set up, but after half an hour chucking a few different and proven lures around I'd had nothing. Then after changing to a small black grub and flicking down the margin I bounced it back a few times and something hit it and surged out into the centre of the canal. Even small fish put a bend in this rod which makes playing even a four or five ounce fish like this so much fun 

Turns out I had located a pocket of perch prepared to have a go at the little grub, as I received a few more plucks before snagging a second smaller shoal mate. That action didn't last long though and I suspect the shoal spooked off into the trench after a while. What those perch did though was not only save the day but they give me the confidence to keep searching out all over the canal knowing fish were prepared to hit the lures even in this sub zero temperatures.

It was a lot of hassle to keep picking up my gear and keep changing spots as I wasn't really set up for roving, but it turned out to be worth the effort when I hooked a micro zander hardly big enough to fill my hand. Repeating the same cast  again a few more times picked up a second fish closer to a pound which really smashed into the jig just as I lifted it off the bottom.

It was time that ran out on me rather than luck in the end and even though I could have carried on all day I had to leave. I have always found that the walk back to the car and the journey home is the time when I am the most reflective of the days session and on this occasion it was no different. In no uncertain terms I would have never expected lure fishing to out perform bait fishing so much. I was and still am, shocked by this little revelation and this is exactly what I mean when I say I still have a lot to learn about lure fishing. It could just be a one off anomaly but I suspect in truth that's not the case and it was just more a case of tracking down fish. Maybe all those days I've spent freezing my extremities off blanking, sitting on my arse were wasted fishing barren swims when I should have been on the move throwing a few lures around. For now I know I am going to have to start committing to keeping mobile even though I suspect there's a few knock backs in the pipe line. But hey, it's all part of the learning curve and if I want to endeavour to get better at lure fishing,  the blanks are something I will have to take along with hopefully a few successes as I stick with it and keep on casting.