The Big Perch Quest - Somewhere under the Rainbows

Steve of Watery Reflections dropped me a last minute proposition on Sunday. 'Jeff, fancy coming on a trip early Monday morning after a record perch, all expenses paid, bait and tackle provided?'

Well, I was all set on washing my hair on Monday, but...

River Bream - Rosettes for Everything

Wasperton on the Avon has not been my favourite of river locations having suffered two royal blanks out of my only two sessions there to date. It's not as if those sessions were uninteresting as the scenery around those parts of the Avon is well lush, but I had no action at all in the hours fished and on the Avon, which the EA have pronounced the 'best stocked river in all Blighty',  I do want and expect, knocks, indications, liners, sail-aways, pick-ups, rip-offs, whack-arounds, drop-backs, dips, bobbles, nibbles, dibbles or what have you in the way of that all important evidence of fish being out front - a bite.

Canal Roach - Gone Goozling, Again...

Keith has made me aware of what I am, or rather what I have become. A gongoozler, or someone who watches the activities of the canal network. Not a trainspotter in any sense but an idler in essence - one who watches things happen at lock and basin but at a remove, a distance, observes, is not involved in any direct way, is a spectator, an onlooker.

I am involved though. I fish it and I'm known to the local live-in boaters as an angler. They talk to me, tip me the wink, offer advice and the occasional can of cheap and nasty lager. I give them almost nothing in return as my sandwich of cheery greeting and a chirpy farewell has very little in the way of substantive filling apart from what little tittle-tattle I have picked along the towpath from other boaters and about other boaters and boaty things, which is all the filling they are really interested in.

Gravel Pit Bream - Down't Pit by Crack a' Dawn

I'm really into the gravel pits this summer. It's a rekindled old flame as I always did love to fish the pits down Essex way for carp and tench but when I lived there I never really considered just what it was I had on my doorstep as I wasn't that concerned with catching lumps at that time.

Canal Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - Punch Drunk

The Coventry Canal gave up one of its secrets on Sunday afternoon, something it does every once in a rare while and when it happens it's always well worth witnessing. Most of the time the Canal is silent, opaque and mysterious and you could be forgiven for thinking that very little of any consequence lives in it. However I have been privy to a number of brief revelatory sightings of its occupants and I can tell you that there are far more and far greater fish living down there than than the very difficult fishing would ever let you imagine.

Gravel Pit Bream - A Sniff of the Slimies

In my new found enthusiasm for figuring out the foibles of large stillwater bream I decided that I'd need to have at least two waters to fling a feeder at in order to be able to compare and contrast data sets. With a little googling I found one not too distant that contained them in small numbers of the required size. Also, I had it on an eyeball from Lee that the other pit was still choked with its current algae bloom and showed no signs of a pending die back, so having suffered an eerily silent blank there I wasn't about to suffer another.

Canal Tench - Seeking Silver - More Fin Than Fish

Lee Fletcher came over to my local silver bream emporium yesterday evening to see if he could wangle one out for himself as they have seemed a quite safe bet this season with no less than... wait for it... steady in the ranks... eight, yes that's eight whole silvers banked since end of April. Whooo - eight - who'd have ever thought that? I personally have had only six as two of the total fell to the Northern rod, Mike Duddy, also on a visit - of course I hoped that Lee would fare the same as Mike and catch a pounder too.

Gravel Pit Bream - Bloomin' Eck!

'Next to actually going fishing ' Say's Phil Smith, 'the anticipation of the trip is almost as exciting'

There's a lot of truth in that but I would add that often the anticipation is far, far better. Yesterday was such a day, a day that began with high expectation and boundless enthusiasm for the projected trip where I would, according to my overactive imagination, catch not only a double-figure bream or two but also a tench of the same weight, if I was very lucky, which I was certain I was.