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.