Predators, Prey and Passers-by

 I've a new pair of fingerless gloves with me today and I'm glad I've got them as the wind is funnelling its way down the canal again chilling me to the bone. It's just after 10am and I've just made my first cast hoping for a bigger inner city roach. The immediate dipping of the float lets me know that the roach are still here and they're hungry. I fail to connect with the first bite but get the second one. These roach are quite speedy and I'm conscious of playing them carefully, but quickly away from the spot where I'm getting the bites and keeping any splashing to a minimum. I try to swing this one in but it's bigger than I thought and it drops off - should've used the net. The first lesson of the day.

The roach hotspot

Bites continue and I land a couple of roach. The second one is a beautiful fish of around four ounces and I'm suddenly struck by how amazing roach look in the winter. A fish in prime condition. It's not just the metallic sheen of the shiny silver scales along its flank or even the ruby red fins that catches my eye, it's the subtle shades of blue and grey across the top of its back that really make it stand out as a creature of rare beauty. It also has the beginnings of that deepness of body that you see in bigger roach. I must have caught hundreds of roach during my time fishing but I still have that same feeling of it being a huge privilege to be the presence of such a wonderful being. They really are my favourite fish and it's probably why I spend so much of my fishing in pursuit of them. Part of it is the quest if you will to catch that elusive fish of a lifetime but most days I'm content to just see one whatever the size. A simple pleasure, but rewarding at the same time and of course there's always the chance that the special fish may turn up. That sense of optimism is somehow always there but it's a part of a much larger and complex set of reasons for being on the towpath.

I've brought some worms with me again today and have a feeling that maybe a big roach will take one. Failing that I'm still convinced there must be some perch about, maybe even a big one that will fancy an easy meal rather than chasing roach about. To boost my thoughts of perch a young lad on a bike stops and chats about fishing with me. He tells me he's been walking his dog some evenings and shining a torch into the water and has seen the many fish just sat quietly close in to the bank and on one such evening he scooped out a large perch with his landing net. Just then a 'towpath expert' appears and greets us with 'the basin up there is the best spot to fish'. I reply with 'I'm doing fine here thank you'. I generally enjoy my conversations with passers-by and have met all kinds of interesting folk and had wide ranging chats about the history of the canal, their personal memories of it and even literature but there's nothing that rubs me up the wrong way quite as much as someone telling me I'm in the wrong place or fishing in the wrong way.
 The expert then decides that showing off to the young lad is preferable to trying to impress me and soon he has his phone out looking for a photo of a large pike taken from the basin. He shows me it too. It's a fine looking fish and the lad is suitably impressed. I'm somewhat sceptical about its supposed 18lb weight as there is nothing in the picture to lend any sense of scale. The expert leaves and I ask the lad why he's not at school. Home schooling apparently so I stop worrying about truancy. A few minutes later and he wishes me good luck and leaves too.

During this time I realise that I've not caught a single fish. I reel in replace the worm with bread and cast out again. The float is pulled under violently and I'm into a what I first think is a better roach. However, it's a tiny jack of maybe half a pound and it has definitely taken the bread, of that I am totally convinced. I put him back some 25 yards along the towpath from my swim.
As I try to catch a few more roach my mind wanders and I try to imagine what is going on beneath the surface. There's obviously tremendous competition for the available food as I'm getting a bite every cast. I picture the bread sinking slowly and hordes of little roach whizzing in to take small bites of it until only a small speck remains. The fish that takes this final morsel is the one I catch.  I've not even bothered introducing any feed at all today as it seems somewhat superfluous. The roach keep coming. They're not more than a couple of ounces but it's fun and stops me noticing how cold it is.
For a bit of variety I try a worm again, fished around two thirds of the way across the canal. I let it settle for a few minutes and then twitch it slightly towards me. After the second twitch I get a really positive bite and I'm into a decent fish. The cane hoops over and I can feel the steady pull of the fish as it moves slowly to my left. It's not a perch as there is no tell tale head shaking. Slowly I began to raise the fish up to the surface towards the waiting net. It's a pike of course and it's by far the largest one I've seen here. It makes a couple of determined lunges away from me but I gradually win the battle and draw it over the net. It's a bit tricky getting it in as it is longer than the net but I manage it without any mishaps.
This is the biggest pike I've ever caught. It's still only a jack but I estimate it to be approaching five pounds. ( It was actually just over 25" long and quite chunky). As I'm unhooking it a voice intrudes on the moment. ' You were just setting up as I went past before and now you've got a fish'. It's an elderly lady that I remember saying hello to before. I'm cheeky and ask if she would mind taking a photo of me with the pike. I show her what to do with the camera and she has a couple of goes. Things don't really work out. She cuts off my head and the pictures are so blurred I could be holding anything. ' I've been having trouble with my eyes' she says as I thank her for trying. Oh for the help of a tech savvy youngster. The pike is getting angry now and I try a shot on the unhooking mat but it keeps flipping about. I eventually get the shot below. I take the fish along the bank and allow it to recover in the net before releasing it back to the depths.

 

catch of the day

It's turning into a funny day. A mixture of predator and prey. I start to imagine the canal as something like the Cruel Sea. The roach are the merchant ships crossing the Atlantic with the ever hungry pike the deadly U Boat pack preying on them. Of course the roach have only their wits to protect them as there is no Compass Rose on the canal.
I catch a couple more roach and another jack of around 2lbs on a worm before the cold, and the need to answer a call of nature get the better of me and I head home. I'm really enjoying these short sessions on this stretch of canal and next time I think I may move further along towards the basin and see what treasures it holds. After I am meant to be exploring the canal and although this spot has provided plenty of entertainment I'm beginning to feel restless.

Winter Canal

The canal can seem like a bleak and uninviting place in winter. Gone is the vibrant bankside vegetation, the trees stand as bare bones with only the hint of new buds and the expectant promise of new life. The water is cold and inhospitable seemingly devoid of living things. People hurry by on their bikes or with dogs. Collars turned up, scarves wrapped tightly, walking briskly, pausing only perhaps to throw a few scraps of bread for the ever hungry ducks. Of course as an angler you get  to slow everything down. There's ample time to just sit and watch, to notice the tiny things, the almost imperceptible changes that are going on around us all the time. You may be joined by a friendly robin who will happily eat any tasty morsels of bait you invite him to take. A water vole may scurry past in the undergrowth at the waters edge and if you're really lucky you could just catch the electric blue flash of a kingfisher speeding down the canal. All of this adds to the pleasure of being out fishing, of escaping for a few short hours to pit your wits and skills against the fish you hope you can find.

After an unavoidable absence from the bankside during December and January, February has seen me approach the canal with a renewed enthusiasm. I now have a permit that allows me to fish some 35 miles of the canal although I intend to concentrate on the areas closer to home to begin with.
On a pleasant January afternoon I cycled along the towpath for some six miles or so south of Lancaster to explore an area of the canal that I had never seen before let alone fished.
With the reconnaissance done I have now have a selection suitable areas to target that I can either cycle or walk to. I will be travelling light in much the same way as I did as a boy. Rod, landing net handle and bank sticks tied to the crossbar, a small rucksack with tackle and food and a bag with unhooking mat. landing net and bait hung from the handlebars. The aim is to see what I can catch and build up a picture of the area as a whole.  I know there are roach, bream, perch and pike and I have even heard of tench still being around. Who knows there may even be the odd carp lurking about but generally it is a very under fished waterway, written off by many as only containing small fish if any. Of course I don't believe this is true at all and want to explore and document my findings through the year.
With the plan made and tackle prepared I headed out the other week to an area I liked the look of. As I was passing by the large basin in town I came across another cycling angler. Wielding a battered looking pole he was happily catching bream in mid canal. I stopped for a chat and discovered that the previous week he had been fishing a little further along the canal and had found a large shoal of roach that were eager to feed and claimed fish up to a pound were present. Information duly stored away I carried on to my chosen spot.
After some three hours without a single bite despite moving three times I decided to head back into town. Inner city roach fishing. Maybe it would work and save me from a blank.
By 3pm I was set up in what I thought was roughly the area the pole fisher had told me about. Behind me is the college and in front of me a block of flats. The towpath here is wide with a tarmacked path and enough grassy edge to sit on allowing you to stay out of the way of passers by.
I began fishing a single maggot on a size 20 hook roughly two thirds of the way across the canal trying to place the bait just off the edge of the shelf. Within ten minutes my first fish was in my hand.

Small but beautiful. Bites continued for the next hour and a half with the fish, all roach, varying in size up to around two or three ounces. It became apparent that the fish were all over the swim and I could virtually drop the float in anywhere and get a bite. They seemed happy to take either maggots or tiny pieces of punched bread with equal enthusiasm. I finished with 25 roach before my hands had lost all feeling. The wind chill gets you every time.


I finished work at 2pm the next day and despite having been up since 4am I was back on the bank by 3pm. This time I only had bread with me and decided to use a size 14 hook with either discs of bread or small pinches of flake. It was very windy so I fished just off the near shelf a few yards down from where I sat. Bites began straight away and roach of two ounces plus were duly caught. I managed 10 roach before dusk with the best being a good six ounces. The were a lot of bites that I failed to connect with but I put this down to the bread being attacked by the really small ones so it was a case of ignoring a lot of the little dips and waiting for a positive float sailing away bite before striking.



The best of the day

The following week I popped down for another short late afternoon session. This time I upped the hook size to a 12 with a larger piece of flake. Once again I fished just off the near shelf as the wind was whipping up quite a swell. With plenty of bites again mainly from roach of around two to three ounces I managed another 10 fish including a roach/bream hybrid or around a quarter of a pound. On my last cast, as dusk drew in, I hooked something much bigger. For a few minutes it dragged me around the canal in a very slow, ponderous yet powerful way before the line finally parted company with the fish. I did get a glimpse of a golden flank as I raised the fish up in the water but I couldn't say for definite what it was. It could have been a big bream or maybe a carp but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
All evening I couldn't help but wonder what is was as well as feeling a definite sense of excitement about the fact that larger fish do still exist in the canal.
The next morning the weather was fine so I went down for a couple of hours again. Once again I fished bread flake on a size 12 hook but also took a few worms I'd managed to find in the garden before leaving.
The first bite of the day and I'm into something decent as the cane hoops over. I'm glad I've upped the line to 3.2lb from the finer one I was using yesterday and I slowly bring the fish up in the water. I can't believe what I'm seeing. It's a pike of around a couple of pounds that has taken a piece of flake.

'I'll eat anything me'

Now I've read of Jeff Hatt catching both a perch and a pike on bread but he attributed that to the fact that blood had got onto the bread from a cut he had. I wasn't bleeding so either the pike tried to take a roach that was taking the bread or it took the bread itself. It was nicely hooked in the scissors so maybe it took the bread itself. I will never know for sure.
I caught a few more roach before giving a worm a try just on the off chance that a nice perch might be lurking about. The float sat still for at least five minutes before diving under. Once again the cane bent over nicely and I carefully played the fish up to the surface. Another pike. I slipped the net under her and lifted it on to the bank. This one was a bit heavier, probably pushing three pounds. So far three roach and two pike. I went back to fishing flake and managed a couple more roach before heading home to get ready for work.
I'm hoping to get out again later this week once the snow and hail showers stop and the temperature rises a few degrees. Who knows what I will catch next.