Little Jack Under the Bridge

The blustery and showery weather continues and I've been seized by the desire to go spinning for pike and perch on the canal. It's been a couple of years since I last did this but my enthusiasm for this is suddenly back again. I like the wandering, roving nature of this type of fishing which frankly becomes more appealing as the temperature drops. It's also a great way to practice some watercraft. Can you think like a pike or a perch? Where would you be if you were the top predators in the canal?
Of course this being the 21st Century you can find the answers to all these questions and more on the internet and even watch a short film giving you all the hints and tips you need to make your trip a success.
However, it's much more fun to just head out armed with a small rod, a net and a selection of lures and use your instincts. I tackled up at the car and briskly walked the three quarters of a mile to bridge 129A. I thought I would start here and slowly work my way back to the car over the next couple of hours.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you should cover the area in front of you with a series of maybe six to eight casts and then move on. I like to try different lures and so tend to linger much longer in one spot. I started with three inch long plastic plug that does a good impression of a wounded fish as you retrieve it. After maybe 20 minutes a cyclist came along and at the precise moment he asked me had I caught anything a pike hit the lure. I gave an expert performance and promptly lost the fish as it leapt out of the water two yards in front of me. It was a small jack of maybe a pound or so. Although I failed to land the fish it at least gave me a taste of the excitement of a take.

I switched to a different lure and moved out from under the bridge. My next take was from a perch that was only marginally bigger than the lure it took. You have to admire their predatory instincts but he definitely bit off more than he could chew. Back under the bridge and I tried casting around 20 yards to my left and then retrieving the lure parallel to the towpath. Low and behold this worked and I got a savage take on my third cast. A quick spirited fight and I had the pike on the bank.

Saucy Jack...

This fine specimen was pushing half a pound and believe it or not this is not the smallest pike I've ever caught. Last year I took one that was around four ounces on a float fished worm. Irrespective of size they are still great fun to catch. ( Please note the blood on the towel is mine not the pike's - I cut my finger the night before and it chose this moment to start bleeding again ).
I'll be back for more soon as I really enjoyed this trip and maybe I'll find a bigger much scarier specimen.

Autumn Roach Diary Week #2: Mad ducks and leaves

This week's first session was at Lake 2. The wind from the previous few days had brought down copious amounts of leaves which seemed to have collected almost exclusively in the area in front of peg 12. As I didn't want to sit there all day picking leaves off the hook I decided to give peg 3 on the motorway side a try.
 My set up for the day was a Mitchell 300A with 2.6lb line, a homemade antenna float, size 12 hook with either bread flake or small discs as bait and a Hardy Match Roach 11 foot cane rod. This rod is a recent acquisition and has whole cane butt and middle sections with a spliced in split cane tip. I believe it was made around 1949 and has been refurbished by one of the country's master rod builders. It is a thing of rare beauty and using it reminds me in many ways of the fibreglass Sportex Mamba match rod that I used for many years when I first began fishing in the 1970s. It's probably a bit heavier than the Sportex but it has the same tippy action which I hoped would help when trying to hit some of the lightening fast bites I seem to get.

Hardy Match Roach

My first bite of the day comes after two or three casts. It's a positive take and soon I'm connected to something resembling a speedboat. I can do little but let it take line from me. After a few minutes it slows down and I gradually bring it back from the middle of the lake. I had hoped it would be one of the decent chub that are in the lake but I now know it's a carp. With only light line all I can do is to slowly and gently try and bring it my way. I succeed in getting it within a rods length of the bank after around 10 minutes. It's a real battle now and the big question is who's going to get tired first. My arm feels like it's about to drop off but the fish, although it's slowed down a bit, is resolutely refusing
 to come to the surface. Eventually I get it in close enough to almost reach it with the net. I can see that it's a common of around 6-7lbs but try as I do it's impossible to get him up to the surface without risking breaking the line. We reach an impasse so I decide to try and force the issue. The line doesn't break. It's the hook that pulls out and so ends the fight.
I re-bait and cast back out. The swim is quiet for around 15 minutes so I pass the time with a coffee and a roll-up. Another bite and I'm reeling in what resembles a wet sack. It's a bream of around one and a half pounds that fights more once I have it on the bank than it did in the water. After much flapping I get the hook out and slip it back into the water.

A bream in very nice condition

The next bite produces a tidy roach of 12 ounces. Some days it seems to take forever to catch what I came for. Around this time 10 ducks decide to invade my swim. They're taking off, landing again, chasing each other and generally being a complete nuisance that I consider moving to another peg.

So common, yet sometimes so hard to catch

Finally the ducks move away and I switch to maggots as bait. I've added turmeric to them in the hope that it may prove to be the miracle ingredient. It is! However, it's small perch that they seem to be the killer bait for. I catch at least 10 of them plus a totally unexpected trout. Only a little chap but I suppose with the lake being stream fed not a complete surprise.

I tried a short session of three hours or so on the canal later in the week but the strong wind whipping down the canal in the same direction as the flow made my usual approach very difficult. I have four spots that tend to produce fish but even these were only giving up one or two small roach and the odd skimmer. A change of approach may be the best way to deal with the canal. I've experimented recently at Lake 2 with legering with a swing tip and it would perhaps be the way to go on the canal as it is generally quite exposed and affected by wind.

My roach fishing has taken a backseat recently as the need to earn a living, poor weather conditions and an exciting trip to Dubai have dominated the last few weeks.

Leaving on a jet plane

The view from one of the fronds of the palm

October in Dubai- 34 degrees, bright sunshine, snorkelling and lazy days on the beach. Would you miss the canal?

Autumn Roach Diary Week #1

It's the last week of September, the horse chestnut trees are starting to lose their leaves and misty mornings announce that Autumn has arrived. However, there has been a definite hint of Indian summer about the days with periods of pleasant sunshine and only a gentle breeze ruffling the water's surface. My pursuit of roach this week has taken me out on two sessions, one to Lake 2 and the other  on the Lancaster canal in the Carnforth area.
My first session was a bottom numbing 9 hours at Lake 2. As I take the children to school each day I didn't arrive until around 9.30am and found that my favourite spot (peg 12) was free. Lake 2 is a roughly rectangular lake of between one and two acres. It lies parallel to the M6 northbound carriageway which is the other side of a row of trees and bushes. Only around two thirds of the lake is accessible to fish. If peg 1 is in the bottom right hand corner of the lake peg 12 is about half way down the opposite bank away from the motorway.
The depth varies around the lake. A couple of rod lengths out from the motorway side on pegs 1-6 you have around 6-7 feet of water. I've only fished pegs 1 and 3 on this side but have found roach to be plentiful. Peg 12 is a little different as you have around 10-11 feet of water within a rod length of the bank. This deep water also has a very definite flow that moves from left to right across the swim as a result of the lake being stream fed via a pipe on the northern bank.



Looking across Lake 2 from peg 12 (M6 behind the trees)

 

I have tried fishing at all sorts of depths on this swim and have found the best way to produce consistent bites and pick up decent fish is to fish around six inches or so over depth. If I cast to the left of the swim and allow the float to drift left to right across as the bread slowly sinks it will find a spot where it settles and stops moving. Bites can come at any time during this movement across the swim. The most successful bait is bread, either as pinches of flake or compressed discs but I have also discovered that the roach here will go mad for luncheon meat. It doesn't happen all the time but there have been odd hours where they will bite very freely on it.

So here's the results for this first session:

Roach x13 with the best 13 ounces
Bream x4 up to 2lbs
Bonus unexpected crucian carp of 12 ounces





You never catch more than one of these beauties.
 

Canal session results:

Roach x3 up to10 ounces
Skimmers x 4
Perch x2 ( caught on worms)

I'll give more details about my canal methods and favourite swims in the next update.
The canal roach is my favourite fish this week. A scale perfect, pristine fish that is unlikely to have ever been caught before.



Pristine canal roach of 10oz

Another update in a couple of days. Enjoy your Autumn fishing.

 

 

Club Waters, Canals and small Commercials

I've always liked belonging to an angling club. As a boy in my formative fishing years I was a member of the Forest of Dean Angling Club. At that time it was the only way you got to fish as day tickets and commercials didn't really exist. I currently fish the waters belonging to Kendal and District anglers. We have two still waters and a couple of stretches of the Lancaster canal. One of the still waters is Banks Pond and this year it has blossomed due to the removal of large areas of weed. It's also much easier to get to now due to the construction of a hard track as a result of a wind farm being built nearby. In the past it was always a bit dicey as to whether you would make it across the two fields via a very slippery and muddy farm track.




The wind farm with Banks Pond down in the wooded hollow
 

I have been a frequent visitor this summer and my catches have eclipsed all my previous visits. The cutting back of the weed has really meant that the pond at last lives up to its billing on the club website as a 'terrific water'. Fishing aside it is also a place of wondrous solitude and peace with rhythmic whoosh of the wind turbines and the sounds of sheep and cattle providing the only background noise. There's rarely more than a couple of anglers particularly if you fish during the week as I tend to do. So what of the fish?
Well it has roach, perch, tench, carp, rudd, bream and gudgeon. The water quality is very good and produces common carp that look as though they have been cast in bronze, quite the most beautiful commons I've ever seen. They don't run particularly big- there's plenty around 3lb but boy do they fight.

Around 2lb but what a fighter!

As you can see from the above photograph I've been using an old porcupine quill that I fish attached top and bottom with a couple of AAA shot around six inches from the hook and the depth adjusted so the floats sits in the water at an angle of around 45 degrees to the surface. I call it laying on though I'm not sure if it is actually that. Anyway whatever it's called it works a treat fishing about a rod length out next to the lily pads. This approach has brought numerous carp and tench as well as the odd greedy gudgeon all falling to either sweetcorn, luncheon meat or bread. The bites are great from small ripples appearing around the float to the float sometimes laying flat or classic sail away ones.
For the roach, rudd and perch I've usually fished maggots or casters with a slim antenna float and a small hook and have found the clear water around two lengths out to produce the best catches. Of course gudgeon turn up here too and I do love catching them.

A brace of gudgeon dwarfed by a small roach

I think the thing I've most enjoyed about Banks Pond is the fact that I've fished with no expectations and have tried to tap into the young angler I was once that was happy with any fish he caught. It was Bernard Venables  who described three stages of an angler's evolution. In stage one you just want to catch any fish, as I've described above, stage two you want to catch big fish and finally you progress to stage three where it is the manner of the catch that counts at which point it can become a much more intellectual challenge. Luke Jennings mentions this in his excellent book Blood Knots but goes on to apply it to his quest for urban pike. For me I think all three can apply although I probably spend most of my time wavering between stages two and three as the desire to catch a big roach is never far from my thoughts. That said it's great to give yourself a day off and be happy catching small hard fighting tench or carp or to enjoy the exquisite colouring of a small rudd which nowadays seem to be a rare fish to catch.




No idea why this is orientated like this- a beauty!

As for the canal I 've had a few worthwhile evenings where some roach to around half a pound have graced the bank. However, I seem to have developed an almost uncanny knack for catching bream and have had at least five fish to 2lbs from a variety of swims. These are pretty good fish from the canal but I can't help thinking they are forcing the roach out of the swims. I've tried different approaches to feeding and groundbait but once they arrive there seems little I can do to get the roach back.
My other issue has been that my favourites spot seems to have really gone off the boil and I've struggled to catch even three skimmers when before roach to 12oz were always a possibility. This has meant going off in search of other potential spots but so far I've found nothing that matches the previous catches either for size or quantity.
As Autumn arrives it may be that the roach will reappear so I will definitely go back and try again. I still believe there is the possibility of a fish of more than a pound but it could take all of Autumn and Winter to catch it.

In the mean time I have decided to spend at least one session a week on a small commercial that has so far given me three roach of more than a pound this year. I fish on what I call Lake 2 and have discovered it contains a really good head of roach with half pound fish commonplace. Of course bream are present too but generally speaking it is possible to get the roach going by feeding hemp and fishing breadflake over it. I have a favourite swim that has been very kind to me so far and believe I may well of lost a roach of over one and a half pounds just last week. Although gutted by this it does at least fill me with optimism for the coming months.
I intend to start an Autumn roach diary from my next session and to publish it on here each week.
Thanks for reading and enjoy your Autumn fishing wherever it may be.

Where's your big sister hiding?



The Times They Are A-Changin'

Luxurious boathouse Lancaster canal

Roach 12oz Banks Pond

2lb Wigan tench

A near 9lb albino carp

A poor photo of a 2lb 13oz Villa Perch

1lb 3oz Roach from the Villa

It's been some time since I posted- a time of broken computers and relationships, house moving and new routines... the life saving constant has been fishing. Here's some photos that capture some moments from a turbulent time- some are a bit poor others fine but I hope interesting.
With the imminent arrival of a new computer I should be back to posting in a couple of weeks...good luck with your fishing.

The Pursuit of Roach and Happiness

As October drew to a close I said a fond farewell to the Leeds Liverpool canal by way of a couple of short sessions on my two favourite stretches. No remarkable catches just a few small roach and perch and a soaking on both days. So now I have a new challenge as we have moved to live in Lancaster. The canal is only a few minutes walk from home so I'm about to embark on exploring this city centre stretch. If I follow the canal in one direction it leads me to a large basin area which I'm told has plenty of pike and I would assume lots of other fish too. If I go the other direction the canal passes old mill buildings and eventually reaches the Lune Aqueduct. At the moment I favour investigating this stretch. I've walked a short section of it and there's plenty of far bank tree cover plus high walls that keep the canal separate from roads and houses that surround it. Of course as it is now winter the big challenge is finding where the fish have decided to hole up. This is made harder by limited time due to work and the short daylight hours. Some mornings I manage a quick walk along the towpath whilst I'm on the way to work. I'm searching for any signs of fish, even small fry breaking the surface would be an indication of where they have gone.

So far I have had a few short sessions on this new stretch and have blanked twice and managed a small bream and a roach of 4oz on the other occasion. In fairness to the canal and myself conditions on each visit have been far from perfect. One day it was snowing, another there was a fearsome easterly blowing and on the day I did catch it was actually fairly benign conditions. `Of course I've met a couple of local experts who've informed me that 'further along is better and that maggots are the best bait'! Being me I've ignored this received wisdom and continued in my own vein using breadflake or crust. If it was good enough for the old canal experts like Albert Oldfield then it's good enough for me. Angling may have become far more technologically advanced in recent years but roach are still roach and if you can find them it's my experience that bread is still a top class bait especially in the winter.

I've also been reading to brush up my skills at canal fishing. When I first began fishing way back when I was 12 years old my guide was Peter Stone's Teach Yourself Coarse Fishing.There was a copy in the school library and I probably spent far too much time reading that rather than concentrating on my studies. My new guide is Canal Fishing by Kenneth Seaman. Originally published as part of the Pan Angler's Library, which also published Dick Walker's Stillwater Angling, it is proving to be an invaluable guide plus it contains a few great stories about  the canal experts of the 60s and 70s.. There are chapters on bait, tackle and the fish likely to be found in your local 'cut'. My favourite chapter not surprisingly is the one on big roach and it's in this one that we get a few hints on the exploits of Mr Oldfield.
Apparently Albert rated lobworms or lob tails as his favourite roach bait. after a cold snap had ended and caught numerous  2lb plus fish using them. On one occasion he caught a magnificent 3lb 2oz specimen on a lob tail fished through a hole in the ice. The story goes that he had fished the same spot a dozen times without a single bite before this outstanding fish was caught. Most of us would have given up long before that and maybe that's the essential essence of fishing for big roach. It's easy to catch small ones but to net a truly remarkable fish requires perseverance, patience and a great understanding of both your quarry and the water you are fishing and maybe a bit of luck too.
By fishing a wild, unstocked water like the Lancaster canal I am of course making a huge assumption that specimen roach are still present. With increased levels of predation and illegal netting it could be that none exist.Thankfully we seem to be free of cormorants which may be a result of the canals proximity to the M6 and the fact that it is still a navigable stretch so there are plenty of smaller fish.  So far I have caught fish up to 9oz in the Carnforth area and truly believe that bigger fish are present. From my point of view I would rather spend another season trying to catch one, suffering the frustrations and blank days that I know will come because if I do manage to break the magical 2lb mark I will be the happiest man alive.